Received in an email:


Water Quality HAS become a vanguard issue in Florida politics:

"Clean Water State Revolving Fund program provides low-interest loans for
wastewater and stormwater projects"

http://www.flgov.com/2014/03/14/gove...than-27-millio
n-to-improve-central-florida-water-quality/

http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/n...nnounces-27m-l
oan-to-improve-c-fla-s.html

That is good news, but we still need a Strong Comprehensive Springs/Aquifer
Protection Bill rather than a piece-meal approach.

Section 5 of the originally filed Springs/Aquifer bill had these
Requirements:

"All Waste Water Treatment Facilities within those (springs) zones that are
impaired by nutrients to meet a 3mg per liter total nitrogen standard which
is also part of the Advanced Wastewater Treatment (AWT) standard. "

"Local governments within springs protection and management zones have to
establish or revise their Storm-water plans to be consistent with nutrient
removal."

"Septic tank systems within spring protection and management zones: Septic
systems would have to be connected or upgraded at no cost to property owner.
State will cover 100% connection or upgrade cost."

Section 5 also notes: "For all Government projects there is 25% minimum
match that is required. Fiscally constrained counties will have no minimum
requirement. They could have up to 100% State funding."

As Senator Simmons pointed out in the Spring bills workshop "while we've had
laws on the books that authorize regulatory agencies to move forward there
are things that haven't been done for 30 years because two significant
things have been missing that this bill puts in place":
1) An IDENTIFIABLE MEASURABLE TIME PERIOD TO MEET GOALS that needs to be in
the statute.
2) A DEDICATED FUNDING SOURCE.

Off the top of my head, It seems that every Senate Environmental
Preservation and Conservation (EP) committee member's District has a project
on the water quality list of projects. Good for them for lighting a fire
that got the Governor's attention, even though he still hasn't acknowledged
their Springs/Aquifer bill publicly (that I know of).

Maybe by the time election day comes around Guv Scott will "have invested
record funding in protecting our environment."
(Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/0...-record-fundin
g.html )

The Senate "new" Springs bill, SB1576, is scheduled for the Senate EP
committee meeting next Thursday, 03/20/2014.

I'm hearing that some of the changes in the new bill are weakening and some
are strengthening.

Stay tuned.

Hope y'all have a good weekend.

Best Wishes,
Jeannette Hinsdale

p.s. If you have any corrections, additions, criticisms of this message,
please let me know. Also, if you are receiving duplicate e-mails or want to
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Thank you









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