EPA Sued to Limit Phosphorus in Florida's Largest Lake

The suit, filed by the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and Save Our Creeks, Inc., argues that nutrient pollution in the lake has caused toxic algae blooms, which can contaminate drinking water supplies and sicken people and animals.

The EPA sets a standard known as a Total Maximum Daily Load, a calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a waterbody can receive in one day and still meet federal water quality standards.

In 2006, EPA set a numeric limit - 77 parts per billion - for pollution by the agricultural nutrient phosphorous in Lake Okeechobee. The environmental groups say this standard protected the lake.

But after agriculture corporations mounted what the environmental groups view as an aggressive lobbying campaign, the Bush-era EPA in 2008 upped the limit to 113 parts per billion. The groups claim that this level of phosphorus does not adequately protect the lake or its tributaries.

"The EPA caved to the big polluters who are destroying the lake. It's shameful," said Earthjustice attorney David Guest, who is representing the plaintiff groups in court.

The suit asks the court to invalidate EPA's 113 ppb limit for the lake and its tributaries on the grounds that, among other things, it is arbitrary and capricious. The suit seeks to compel the EPA to go back and set more protective phosphorus limits.

These same three environmental groups have fought a long legal battle against the state to force stricter standards for phosphorus pollution.

Agricultural discharge is pumped into a tributary of Lake Okeechobee. (Photo courtesy Earthjustice)

Guest, representing the same groups, brought suit against the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in 2003, challenging proposed pollution load limits for streams that run into Lake Okeechobee. The court ruled in favor of the environmentalists, and required the DEP to revise its pollution reduction plan.

A previous lawsuit brought by Earthjustice on behalf of the same clients resulted in an agreement that DEP would draft the load standards for phosphorous. However, DEP allowed 25 tons of phosphorous annually, a level the groups say is far too high to result in any significant recovery for the lake, which is already heavily polluted and damaged from phosphorous runoff.

Nutrient pollution in the lake has touched off toxic algae blooms and fish kills and has stressed the Everglades ecosystem.

Lake Okeechobee, covering 730 square miles with more than 100,000 acres of wetland habitats, is located in the center of the Everglades ecosystem, a link between lakes and rivers to the north and wetlands and bays to the south.

It is the second-largest freshwater lake wholly within the continental United States, second only to Lake Michigan and the largest lake in the southern United States.

Most of the phosphorus loads to Lake Okeechobee come from truck and field crops, pasture, and dairy operations. Pasture has a relatively low load of phosphorus per acre, but is the largest land use in the watershed, thus its large contribution of phosphorus to the lake.

Dairies and row crops occupy only about four percent of the watershed yet bring in more than half the annual phosphorus to Okeechobee's lower watershed.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection said in a 1999 report that wetlands along the flowpath to the lake would reduce phosphorus loading, but many wetlands have been ditched to drain them for agricultural and urban uses. Loss of these wetlands has reduced their capacity to retain water and remove nutrients that now reach the lake.

One of the potential solutions for reducing nutrient loading to Lake Okeechobee would be the restoration of existing wetlands, and the treatment of "first flush" runoff from rain events, says the DEP report.

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