EPA Permits Florida to Pollute Freshwater Aquifers

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http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2003/2003-06-11-01.asp

 

EPA Permits Florida to Pollute Freshwater Aquifers

 

 

By Donald Sutherland

TALLAHASSEE, Florida, June 11, 2003 (ENS) - Before Christine Todd Whitman

resigned from her office as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) in May she had decided to sign off on a rulemaking decision drawn

up by EPA water administrators declaring Florida exempt from certain provisions

of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Published in the Federal Register on May 5, the exemption will permit Florida to

legally pollute drinking water aquifers with inadequately treated waste through

municipal underground injection control (UIC) wells.

EPA administrators, including Whitman, have been reviewing a problem that arose

when the federal agency advised the Florida Department of Environmental

Protection (FDEP) in the late 1970s to initiate a program of disposal of

municipal sewage and industrial waste by injection underground into deep

injection wells.

Municipal underground injection control well in Florida (Photo courtesy USF

Ficus)A Fortune 500 engineering consulting firm, CH2M Hill, had assured all

parties that the injected underground waste effluent would be contained by a

geological barrier and would not commingle with drinking water aquifers.

The injected sewage and industrial waste would also harmlessly be disposed of in

deep saline aquifers and then migrate into coastal waters, the company said.

Since the EPA gave approval for the underground injection of sewage and

industrial waste, more than 120 Class 1 underground injection control wells have

been built to service the unfettered growth in south Florida.

Officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection estimate the

flow of injected waste at over 400 million gallons daily, but environmental

groups contend it is closer to one billion gallons every day.

Now there is a big containment problem.

Monitoring tests conducted by the EPA and the FDEP in the 1990s and again this

year have shown the UIC waste is migrating upward into aquifers the region

relies on for drinking water.

U.S. Geological Society (USGS) tracer studies of injection wells in the Florida

Keys have shown that bacteria, viruses, and nutrient loading from migrating UIC

sewage waste are contaminating tourist beaches and destroying the nutrient

sensitive, fragile coastal reef ecosystem in the Florida Keys National Marine

Sanctuary.

Algae that choke coral, and algal blooms that harm and kill fish and marine

mammals, and dying sea grass beds are all associated with nutrient loading from

sewage waste.

The health of Carysfort Reef off the coast of Florida has declined in the past

25 years. Corals that were healthy in 1975 are visibly sick by 1985, and dead

and broken by 1995. (Photo by Phillip Dustan, College of Charleston courtesy

NASA)Government officials admit these events are occurring where sewage waste

injected into Florida's underground sources of drinking water is migrating into

coastal waters.

Still, federal and state governments have secured no funding to study the health

implications of this contamination - the nation's largest violation of the Safe

Drinking Water Act.

They have not funded studies of the environmental impact of municipal UIC waste

migration into coastal waters.

The tourist, recreational, and resort industries have not expressed a concern

regarding the economic impact of UIC pollution even though beach closings due to

bacteria contamination and harmful algal blooms have increased since the

inception of municipal UICs.

Florida's building, housing, and construction industries endorse the

continuation of the current sewage disposal process that is less expensive than

building advanced wastewater treatment plants with facilities to reuse the

treated effluent.

Communities and residents of most of south Florida's counties have not repealed

measures authorizing the expansion of municipal injection wells and have not

expressed a health concern with the practice.

Only Pinellas County has decided to plug failed UIC wells and replace them with

an extensive wastewater reuse program.

All of Florida's government representatives, officials, and agencies have

endorsed south Florida's loosely permitted disposal in underground injection

control wells.

Although two Democratic state legislators this year proposed legislation to

require a stricter accounting of UIC permitting, the proposal was not considered

by the legislature.

Florida's UIC municipal waste disposal program is banned in other states because

it is viewed as a health and environmental threat.

" There is no short term solution to the municipal Class 1 UIC fluid migration

into underground sources of drinking water in Florida, " says Nancy Marsh,

program manager for EPA Region 4 Ground Water UIC section.

" Municipalities are reliant on these injection wells and they can't be shut

down, " she says.

Drawing showing an underground injection control well (Image courtesy EPA)Only

two environmental organizations, the Florida Sierra Club and the Legal

Environmental Assistance Foundation, have mounted a campaign to oppose the

nation's largest violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and the UIC

destruction of Florida's marine ecosystems.

" The Sierra Club's Florida Chapter has been rebuffed by the state in a call for

transparency of the state's underground injection control program that would

enhance the public right to know, " says Alan Farago, the organization's Miami

conservation chair.

" Governor [Jeb] Bush and FDEP Secretary [David] Struhs failed to support a

proposal which sought simply to account for the massive pollution of underground

aquifers in Florida, " he says.

To date there are no lawsuits being brought against the EPA, FDEP, or any local

utility authority over the contamination of Florida's drinking water supplies.

A regional EPA official who walked out of the rule reversal sessions on

Florida's UIC program held at EPA headquarters in Washington, considered the

consequences with ENS on condition of anonymity. " The big question is, is the

EPA violating the federal law National Environmental Policy Act with this

action? " he asked.

The National Environmental Policy Act requires all federal agencies to integrate

environmental values in their rulemaking processes. They must consider any

environmental impacts of their proposed actions and give reasonable alternatives

to those actions. The act also mandates a detailed Environmental Impact

Statement (EIS) for these rulemaking processes.

The larger question according to the same EPA regional official concerns what

legal precedent has been set by this EPA rule change of the Safe Drinking Water

Act to accommodate a state's noncompliance with a national law that safeguards

the American public and the environment.

 

 

 

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