Opening a second front in their battle against the federal government, Florida officials on Tuesday sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its proposed water standards.
Attorney General Bill McCollum, already a lead plaintiff in a multistate legal challenge to the Obama health-care law, called the EPA's new rules a scientifically unsound "intrusion" into Florida's previously approved clean-water program.
McCollum's legal fight was supported by Attorney General-elect Pam Bondi and incoming Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, as well as members of Florida's congressional delegation.
In a joint statement, U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, and Sen. George LeMieux, R-Fla., also condemned the EPA's action.
This rule has the potential to cost our state billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and drive up water bills. EPA should instead scrap the entire ruling in favor of regulations that are both economically responsible and steeped in sound, peer-reviewed science, LeMieux said.
Rooney said he hoped the lawsuit "will put a stop to the EPAs misguided assaults on Floridas families and industries."
An April report concluded that compliance with the EPAs "numeric nutrient" rule would cost Florida approximately $1 billion annually, with more than $1 billion per year in additional indirect economic costs.
Studies by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, as well as two independent studies, have projected that the impact to Floridas economy will run into billions of dollars.
The EPA projects a compliance cost closer to $200 million.
State officials said the added expenses would be borne by the local users or, in the case of government-owned utilities, through higher taxes.
According to the states lawsuit, the EPA has continued to rely on a methodology that is not scientifically sound and not site-specific for Florida's waters.
In April, the EPAs own Science Advisory Board joined the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences in arguing that the EPAs methods for developing nutrient standards were scientifically flawed.
Florida's lawsuit alleges that the proposed EPA action is inconsistent with the intent of Congress when it based the Clean Water Act on the idea of cooperative federalism, whereby the states would be responsible for the control of water quality with oversight by the EPA.
Control of nutrient loading from predominately nonpoint sources involves traditional states rights and responsibilities for water and land resource management which Congress expressly intended to preserve in the Clean Water Act, the suit contends.
We all want clean water for Florida, and we all believe that scientifically sound and responsible numeric nutrient criteria will improve efforts to achieve this goal. Florida was in the process of developing such criteria under an EPA-approved plan when the EPA decided to preempt the states plan, McCollum said in a statement.
Charging that the EPA's actions were a hasty and ill-advised response to a 2008 suit by the Florida Wildlife Federation, McCollum said, "The EPA numeric nutrient rule and its proposed criteria are not based on scientifically sound methodology, and were adopted in an arbitrary and capricious manner just to settle a lawsuit."
Pressing ahead, the EPA said it is also committed to proposing numeric nutrient water quality standards for Florida's estuarinecoastal andsoutherninlandflowingwaters by Nov. 14, 2011, with a goal of establishing final standards by Aug. 15, 2012.
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 802-5341.
