"DEP committed to improving water quality" in Miami Herald Opinion Section.

Posted on Tue, May. 29, 2012
Drew Bartlett, director of DEP’s Division of Environmental Assessment and Restoration.

The future of Florida’s environment and economy depend on the health of our waterways. That’s why one of the top priorities of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection is getting Florida’s water right, in terms of quality and quantity. As part of our efforts, DEP is taking additional action to protect Florida’s water by improving our water quality standards and setting restoration goals.

Florida has always been a national leader in assessing and addressing the health of our waterways. Our efforts to advance environmental science account for 30 percent of the national water quality dataset, more than any other state in the nation.

We use this science to set standards for the amount of nutrients or contaminants that can exist in a healthy body of water. These water quality standards are important to protecting public health and the aquatic life in Florida’s waterbodies.

DEP is also launching an effort to adopt new, Florida-specific water quality standards to protect our citizens from eating contaminated fish and to protect our fish from harmful low dissolved oxygen conditions.

Florida’s current standards are based on science created more than 30 years ago. As you can imagine, our scientific knowledge has advanced greatly since then. Better data about our waters are available, and the ways we protect water quality have changed. We intend to move forward with these new standards by using updated, Florida-specific research.

Along these same lines, DEP is taking action to establish a mercury reduction goal (known as a TMDL) to address levels of mercury found in some Florida fish. When adopted, this will be the nation’s first mercury TMDL that addresses both freshwater and marine fish on a statewide basis.

DEP is committed to using new information and science to improve the way we protect public health and aquatic life into the future. Public involvement will be vital as we move forward with our rules through an open and transparent rulemaking process.

We recently held the first round of rule development workshops and are grateful to those who participated. There will be another opportunity for public participation during the second round of workshops, which we plan to hold in July.

I encourage Floridians to learn more about these rules and efforts to protect water quality by visiting www.dep.state.fl.us. We can all play a role in getting Florida’s water right.

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