http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/11/2162515/bill-eases-sewage-restrictions.html#ixzz1JQ97p0uD

Posted on Monday, 04.11.11
 
POLITICAL CURRENTS | THE LEGISLATURE
 
A measure advancing in the Legislature would give three South Florida counties and one city more time and leeway in phasing out how much sewage they flush into the Atlantic Ocean.
 

A diver writes down observations of marine species in the Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida.
 AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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By Patricia Mazzei
 
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau
 

TALLAHASSEE — Three years ago, state lawmakers set a timeline for South Florida to stop pumping 300 million of gallons of sewage a day into the ocean — and to treat most of the region’s wastewater to reuse for irrigation, industry and other purposes.
 
But that was before population growth stalled, reducing the need for more water, and before local governments felt the full impact of the economy’s dive, leading to fresh sticker shock for the pricey water-treatment projects.
 
Now two Miami Republicans are pushing to loosen the sewage restrictions and extend the deadlines for six plants in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties to comply with the rules.

The measure put forth by Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla and Rep. Carlos Trujillo would give the plants five more years – from 2018 to 2023 – to upgrade from minimal to advanced treatments for wastewater reuse.
 
The sewage discharged into the Atlantic Ocean is screened of its worst components but still rich in nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus dangerous for, say, watering lawns.
 
Environmentalists, divers and some scientists say the wastewater has damaged beaches, marine life and coral reefs. And more of the treated sewage, they say, could be recycled for other uses, including recharging the underground aquifers that supply fresh water.
 
Under the bill, as the ocean-dumping practice is phased out, the plants would be given more leeway on what and how much sewage would have to be treated — a move that could result in more wastewater being spewed into the ocean than originally stipulated in state law.
 
The entire practice is still scheduled to shut down, with provisions for limited backup use, by 2025.
 
An original draft of this year’s proposal would have pushed back that date by five years. But the diving industry fought back and now favors the amended version.
 
“We just want the outfall pipes closed,” said Bob Harris, a lobbyist for the Diving Equipment and Marketing Association. “It has been for a long time an embarrassment, and our divers see the impact on the reefs.”
 
The measure also has the backing of Florida’s cities and counties associations. Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and the city of Hollywood, which operates one of the plants in question, would save hundreds of millions of dollars with the changes — including $867 million in capital outlay costs for infrastructure in Miami-Dade alone.
 
Savings to operating costs, Diaz de la Portilla said, would amount to $4 billion to $5 billion over two decades.
 
At the bill’s second Senate committee stop Monday, Diaz de la Portilla characterized the bill as one that would keep consumers from seeing rate hikes on their water bills.
 
“Folks need some relief,” he said.
 
The bill, which has advanced to the House floor, faced no opposition at the Senate community affairs committee. But a couple of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have voted against the proposal in other panels.

The rest of the state recycles more water than Southeast Florida, home to the last remaining pipes dumping sewage one to three miles out into the Atlantic.
 
One of them, Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole, said he feared South Florida officials would lobby for another extension down the line.
 
“Sometimes,” he said at a committee last month, “you’ve just got to bite the bullet to clean this thing up.”
 
Patricia Mazzei can be reached at pmazzei@miamiherald.com.

Learn more at www.reef-rescue.org

Friday April 8, FDEP Enforcement issued a letter to the Town of Hillsboro Beach warning they may be facing fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars for misrepresenting turbidity monitoring data and for damaging coral reefs and shoreline habitat.

Link to FDEP letter of noncompliance: http://www.scribd.com/doc/52607956/WarningLetter-4-8-11
This would not have been possible without the days and nights of tireless effort by Reef Rescue, Cry-of-the-Water, STOP  and Vone Research volunteers, local scuba dive boat operators and divers who all helped collect evidence of permit violations. 
We hope this is the last beach renourishment project that is allowed to run wild and lay waste to the coastal ecosystem. Because, the only thing different on this dredge and fill project was not the flagrant disregard for the environmental permit requirements it was the number of witnesses who stepped forward to demand enforcement action. 
Continue to follow the Hillsboro renourishment saga at the Reef Rescue Coral Reef Blog.
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Thank you to everyone,
Palm Beach County Reef Rescue

Special thanks to Reef Rescue

Fisherman, Backyard Inventors and Students Encouraged to Submit Entries

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is pleased to announce the launch of the 2011 International Smart Gear Competition<http://www.smartgear.org>, to find innovative ways to reduce the amount of fisheries bycatch. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Fondation Segré, ISSF, and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans are supporting the 2011 competition which will take place from March 1 to August 31, 2011 and is open to anyone from fisherman to backyard inventors and students.

The 2011 International Smart Gear Competition is offering a grand prize of $30,000 and two $10,000 runner-up prizes. Additionally, in partnership with the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), the competition is offering a $7,500 special tuna prize that will be awarded to the idea that will reduce the amount of bycatch found in tuna fisheries. Tuna sustainability is the top WWF global fisheries conservation priority.

Since its launch in 2004, the Smart Gear competition has grown more competitive with the winning entries gaining traction with many fisheries around the world. Flexi Grids, which won in 2006, are now mandatory in blue whiting fisheries in the Faroe Islands, and are used in an increasing number of countries all over the world. A winning idea from 2007, a net designed to reduce the bycatch of cod, “The Eliminator” is now being used by more than a dozen fishermen in the northeastern U.S. haddock fishery, as well as being adopted by the EU as a mandatory measure in cod bycatch reduction under certain conditions. Vessels throughout the U.K are also using a modified version of the net.

The International Smart Gear Competition has demonstrated that conservation and industry can successfully work together to identify and eventually implement solutions to bycatch issues in different types of fisheries around the world.

The competition begins March 1, 2011 and ends on 31 August 2011.  Employees, agents, current contractors, and relatives of employees of WWF are ineligible. Judges and relatives of judges are also ineligible. The competition is void where prohibited. Odds depend on number of entries received. No purchase is necessary.

For more information, official competition rules and instructions on how to enter, visit www.smartgear.org<http://www.smartgear.org>
Or Contact:
International Smart Gear Competition
c/o Mike Osmond
World Wildlife Fund
171 Forest Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94301
U.S.A.
smartgear@smartgear.org<mailto:smartgear@smartgear.org>

Posted by:

Susanna Wingard Brian
Fisheries Program Officer
World Wildlife Fund
1250 24th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037-1193
Office: 202-495-4703 ext. 703
susanna.brian@wwfus.org<mailto:email@wwfus.org>
worldwildlife.org<wwf.worldwildlfe.org>

Special thanks to Coral-list

www.reef-rescue.org

This is so counter intuitive. We worked so hard to achieve the outfall legislation; now it may be undone.   DV

Feb 28 2011-Tallahassee, FL  After a brutally harsh winter for many Americans, Florida Governor Rick Scott and VISIT FLORIDA®, the states official tourism marketing corporation, have organized the Share a Little Sunshine Tour to invite those hit hardest by this years unseasonably cold weather to defrost in sunny Florida.  Governor Scott and the rest of the Sunshine Ambassadors will start their two-day tour March 1 in Orlando and make stops in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Chicago.  Read more.
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What they are not telling their audience is that along the southeast Florida coast five ocean outfall pipes spew over 300,000,000 gallons-a-day (MGD) of partially treated sewage into the coastal waters.
In a July 2008 ceremony held at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium, Ft. Lauderdale, then Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed into law legislation ending the practice of dumping inadequately treated sewage from ocean outfall pipes into Florida coastal waters.  The signing was hailed by hundreds of coral reef scientists gathered from across the globe who attended the international conference.

Now the Florida Legislature is moving to derail the ocean outfall legislation.  Three years later newly elected Florida State Senator Miguel Diaz de la Portilla of Miami introduced bill SB 796 designed to delay the implementation of the 2008 legislation and allow the continued dumping of sewage into Florida waters until 2030. An identical House bill HB 613 was filed by Representative Carlos Trujillo, also of Miami.
SB 796 does not deny the sewage is killing the costal environment, in fact the bill states:The Legislature also finds that discharge of domestic wastewater through ocean outfalls compromises the coastal environment, quality of life, and local economies that depend on those resources. The Legislature declares that more stringent treatment and management requirements for such domestic wastewater and the subsequent, timely elimination of ocean outfalls as a primary means of domestic wastewater discharge are in the public interest.

What the pro-sewage lobby, led by Miami-Dade County, is saying is that it just costs too much to protect Floridas coral reefs and coastal tourism economy. This is the same county that can afford to build a new half billion dollar sports stadium for the Florida Marlins baseball team (as long as the team agrees to change their name to the Miami Marlins).

Thinking about South Florida as a Spring Break destination?
In 2004 NOAA performed a tracer study on the Hollywood Florida ocean outfall that pumps 42 MGD into the coastal waters. They found the sewage effluent flowed northward parallel to the coast with a broadening of the width of the plume to about 3 km at the farthest point sampled, 66 km from the outfall.  That 40 miles (66km) delivers the Hollywood poo to the doorstep of ritzy Palm Beach. And the Hollywood 42 MGD is less than 15% of the 300 million gallons dumped everyday into south Florida coastal waters
Source: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/themes/CoastalRegional/projects/FACE/PDF/EST_2004.pdf

Killing coral costs jobs
According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection: 239,000 acres of coral reefs and associated reef resources lie within the four-county area that stretches more than100 miles from the northern boundary of Biscayne National Park in Miami-Dade County to the St. Lucie Inlet in Martin County. These reefs are part of the third longest reef system in the world which annually sustains more than 71,000 jobs and generates $6.3 billion dollars in sales and income for Florida.
Source: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/secretary/news/2009/02/files/0212_02.pdf

Tell Gov.Rick Scott what you think about Senate Bill SB 796: Rick.Scott@eog.myflorida.com
Tell the Florida official tourism marketing corporation VISIT FLORIDA: http://www.visitflorida.com/feedback/
Please forward this to everyone on your email list that cares about protecting coral reefs or is thinking about taking a dip in South Florida waters. Thank you for your support!
Palm Beach County Reef Rescue

Special thanks to Reef Rescue

http://www.keysnet.com/2011/02/26/312706/no-harvest-of-goliath-grouper.html