Florida Everglades Phosphorus Criterion Rule Development

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Published January, 2002
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CBI Practitioners: 
Patrick Field

 

In August of 2001, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) asked CBI to assist in preparing stakeholders for the final development of the phosphorus rule for the Florida Everglades. Establishing this criterion is only one of many projects at the state and federal level to restore ecological balance to this unique resource.

 

Background
The Florida Everglades is one of the world’s most unusual ecosystems. Once stretching from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, it included forested uplands, large areas of sawgrass marsh (the basis for the famous description of the Everglades as “ a river of grass”), tree islands, and the Bay’s estuary. Since the turn of the century, flood control and irrigation projects, urban development, and agricultural practices have reduced the Everglades’ size and affected its water quality and hydrology.

As a result of Federal litigation and the state’s landmark 1994 Everglades Forever Act, the FDEP has been charged with developing a numeric criterion setting a maximum phosphorus concentration for the waters of the Everglades. Over the past fifty years, agriculture and urbanization around the northern Everglades have raised phosphorus concentrations in waters entering the Everglades. Consequently, there have been changes to flora and fauna in this unique ecosystem.

 

CBI Organizes Technical Workshops and Information Sharing
CBI initiated the process with an informal assessment of the issues and opportunities for agreement among the parties. The parties include agricultural interests, environmental advocates, municipalities, Indian tribes, state and federal agencies, and the public at large. From this assessment, CBI learned that reaching full agreement on a phosphorus criterion among all stakeholders by the 31 December 2001 statutory deadline would be difficult. However, the stakeholders agreed that a series of workshops to better understand key issues would be useful.

CBI first facilitated an introductory workshop, primarily to scope the issues and plan for future workshops. In the second workshop, the process brought together three primary research teams who have been conducting a series of studies to seek to identify the level of phosphorus concentration that would not cause an imbalance to the natural populations of flora and fauna. The technical experts, along with a panel of experts from stakeholder groups, were able to discuss the methodologies used in study, compare and contrast the findings, and identify areas of technical agreement and disagreement.

In the third workshop, CBI worked with the stakeholders to identify several options for how compliance with the phosphorus standard in the Everglades Protection Area (EPA), would be measured. Stakeholders compared and contrasted these options in a two-day workshop, considering the strengths and weaknesses of each. Throughout the workshop process, CBI also maintained contact with stakeholders between meetings to further clarify issues and explore various options for development of the rule.

The Florida DEP used the information gleaned from these Workshops to prepare and submit a draft rule under Florida’s rulemaking process in December 2001 for consideration during 2002.

 

For more information on this case, please contact Managing Director Patrick Field.