The Senate’s proposed Clean Waterways Act seeks to create a well-built regulatory framework to safeguard Florida’s most valuable resource: water.
Within the bill are most of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ water quality priorities, including initiatives in septic-to-sewer conversion, wastewater, stormwater, agriculture and biosolids. It also includes newly created Blue-Green Algae Task Force recommendations.
Despite its overwhelming endorsement, the measure – Senate Bill 712, sponsored by Sen. Debbie Mayfield, R-Melbourne – drew fierce fire from critics during a testy three-hour hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee last week before the advanced it to the Senate floor.
SB 712 was filed as a 35-page bill Oct. 30 shortly after DeSantis released his 2020 environmental legislative priorities. The bill senators will see on the chamber floor is 112 pages – the product of revisions and amendments incorporated into the measure as it matriculated through committees.
Two provisions within the committee substitute for SB 712 – PCS 413536, essentially a 112-page amendment – could give voice to previously muted opposition, especially when it moves to the House.
On page 7 of PCS 413536, which is now SB 712, the bill requires unanimous votes by water management district (WMD) boards to approve consumptive use permits (CUPs) “to use water derived from a spring for bottled water.”
“The thought process” for unanimous commercial CUP approvals, Mayfield said, is applicants are “drawing directly from the springshed. If they’re going to do that, there ought to be a unanimous vote.”
The amendment was installed as water quality advocates and area residents raise alarm over Seven Springs Water Co.’s proposed five-year CUP renewal before the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD).
Seven Springs needs to renew its $115 permit to supply Nestlé Waters North America (NWNA) with 1 million gallons of water a day from Ginnie Springs, which is fed by the Santa Fe River in north-central Florida’s Gilchrist County.
In 2015, the SRWMD, one of five state WMDs, determined Santa Fe flows and nearby springs had declined below sustainable levels. A Florida Springs Institute study documented a 28 percent decline from historical flow levels.
The CUP application has drawn protests, negative comments from nearly 9,000 people and an online petition signed by 83,000 people demanding the CUP be denied.
The controversy spurred a slate of proposals to safeguard springs and stop WMDs from “giving away water” to corporations making millions after securing inexpensive CUPs.
Democratic Miami state Sen. Anne Taddeo’s SB 1112 proposes a first-in-the-nation excise tax of 12.5 cents a gallon on spring water, with revenues dedicated to the state’s Wastewater Treatment & Stormwater Management Revolving Loan Trust Fund.
SB 1798, filed by Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, would require a specified fee for CUPs for water bottlers; SB 1096 and SB 1098, filed by Sen. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, would require CUPs be state-monitored and levy a 5-cents-a-gallon surcharge.
None has been heard in committee.
“It does concern me to give that type of governing power to these boards,” Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, said. “We need to look at that.”
Jon Steverson of Environmental Resource Management, which represents Seven Springs Water, said unanimous consent “was never discussed in policy debates” in previous hearings.
Steverson, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) secretary from 2014-16, said the threshold would create “gridlock” in processing CUPs.
“I’m not expert on Senate rules, but I am not aware of any requirement that requires a unanimous vote for this body,” he said. “You’re now placing that (requirement) on a water management district.”
“It would allow one board member to nullify the rest of the board,” NWNA Operations Manager David Johnson said, noting many WMD boards have open seats and fail to attain quorums.
The other surprise provision in PCS 413536, now SB 712, is on page 4. It states: “The head of the Department of Environmental Protection shall be a secretary, who shall be appointed by the Governor, with the concurrence of one member of the Cabinet.”
The language sparked an angry rebuke from Sen. Tom Lee, R-Thonotosassa, who said it was an attempt by the Governor’s Office to “sneak one past the goalie.”
Right now, all three Cabinet members – attorney general, chief financial officer, commissioner of agriculture and consumer services – endorse executive-level appointments. Requiring only one do so virtually assures the governor’s DEP appointee would be approved.
Lee, a former Senate President, said, as Senate’s Infrastructure and Security Committee chairman, he refused to hear SB 1758, filed by Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Jacksonville, which included the same proposal, because it was too great an expansion of executive power.
“If that is the way we’re going to operate, I don’t need to chair a committee,” Lee said. “Shame on them. I will vote against this amendment, vote against this bill and lobby against this bill as a matter of principle.”
