Governor to tighten rules around environmental crimes and disasters

Tampa Bay, Fl
Opinion by: E. Eugene Webb PhD 
It is going to get a lot more expensive for those firms and jurisdictions that create environmental disasters in Florida if Governor DeSantis has his way.

Get more detail in the Tampa Bay Times article by Josh Solomon and Emily L. Mahoney: Gov. Ron DeSantis wants tougher fines for sewage spills. Is it because of St. Petersburg?

In his announcement Governor, DeSantis said, “What you end up seeing happening with some of these municipalities, it’s cheaper for them to pay a fine and spew all this sewage into the waterways because it’s the cost of doing business."

DeSantis also made reference to the sewage spills in St. Petersburg over the last few years.

For some background, here are a couple of my Posts from 2016.

Kriseman- One step short of starting to clean up the sewer mess

St.Pete's sewage problem is becoming a political football

Kriseman on the Crap

Mayor Kriseman’s office has been generally silent on the DeSantis comments.

The other thing the Governor touched lightly on was the process of pumping millions of gallons of wastewater into the aquifer.

There needs to be serious funding for a downstream study of this process and what the effects on the Florida’s under ground water are likely to be.

Never was the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” so relevant.

While the aquifer is a natural filter for underground water, there is little science or reason to believe that it is capable of sustained filtration of large volumes of chemically treated water.

This one is likely a ticking time bomb as the growing bloom of underground wastewater migrates south and gradually rises to the surface through the aquifer.

The unanswered question is where it will end up; in the Bay, in the rivers, in the Everglades, in lake Okeechobee or in the Gulf.

No one knows for sure, but we better start investigating now before an unmanageable water disaster occurs.

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