Florida environmental regulators say they are again postponing proposed protections to stop turbidity churned up by dredging and ship traffic from damaging reefs.
In their first public meeting on the proposed rule change Tuesday, Florida Department of Environmental Protection staff said they were working “behind the scenes” after receiving additional input on a proposed rule to limit turbidity caused when silty mud and sand gets churned up in water, smothering coral and other sea life.
“There are additional revisions that we are currently working on that weren't ready to include in this triennial review,” Nia Wellendorf, program administrator for DEP’s water quality standards, said. “So we're taking time to potentially reevaluate our proposal.”
READ MORE: Florida muddies water on rule to protect coral
But critics say the clock is ticking as reefs continue to struggle against a rise in coastal construction and a post-pandemic return to big ship travel.
“The big picture is they put a lot of work into this draft implementation and it hasn’t gone anywhere,” said Audrey Siu, policy director for Miami Waterkeeper. “This triennial review period is an opportune time to finish finalizing this criteria to be truly protective of coral ahead of these port projects to deepen and widen harbors.”
Under the Clean Water Act, states are supposed to update water quality standards every three years to ensure they reflect the latest advances in science. Florida has been chronically behind, failing to update standards nearly 24 years after the reviews were required. A 2014 update was approved by federal regulators in 2017, but another round of revisions started in 2019 stalled amid the pandemic. During that revision, problems with turbidity drew more attention in the wake of the Port Miami dredge, which blanketed nearly 300 acres with churned up bay bottom.
In a 50-page March 2021 report, FDEP found the state’s existing rule failed to adequately protect coral, along with other sea life in sensitive bottom habitat. The report outlined the latest science and recommended reducing the allowable limit for turbidity near reefs and hard bottom areas.
“Stress from elevated suspended sediments, turbidity, and reduced water clarity have been shown to cause significant adverse effects on coral and hardbottom ecosystems globally and in Florida waters,” the report said.
Among the groups calling for stricter limits was Our Florida Reef, a large working group that includes state and federal agencies, divers and businesses, and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and FDEP.
The change had also been endorsed five years earlier by a task force created by Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties, which border the reef, the only inshore barrier reef in the continental U.S.
“The State standard for turbidity is not based on impacts to coastal resources,” the group wrote in its final report, warning that studies needed to be done to establish “meaningful criteria.”
In the years since, Florida’s coral reef has been slammed by disease and hotter water fueled by climate change. In 2022, NOAA and the University of Miami found that for the first time, the reef was shrinking rather than growing. Without a reef, South Florida loses a powerful barrier to hurricane storm surges that a 2019 study said provides about $1.6 billion in protection to Miami and Fort Lauderdale alone during severe storms.
“My reaction is like, 'What are they waiting for?'” said Arlo Haskell, cofounder of Safer Cleaner Ships, a Key West-based nonprofit formed to fight damage caused by cruise ships entering the small port. “We hear statistics out there that 90% of the reef or more is dead. Are they waiting for 100% to be dead before taking action?”
The group helped pass a local referendum limiting the capacity of cruise ships, that delivered about a million people a year to the island, and setting a limit of 1,300 passengers a day. Gov. Ron DeSantis overturned the referendum, so the city of Key West passed its own rule for city-owned docks, allowing only one ship per day to dock. That helped cut ship traffic in half. But new monitoring done by the city found turbidity continues to exceed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits, the same limits FDEP found were too weak to protect coral.
“They’ve got these rules ready to put on the books, which could then be enforced and we could start saving the resource,” Haskell said. “Instead, more time goes by and more of the resource is gone.”
FDEP did not respond to an email Tuesday asking for information about the additional revisions and how they would differ from the agency's 2021 recommendation. The agency also did not respond to a follow-up request on Tuesday.
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