A Florida state senator has filed legislation aimed at cutting water pollution and improving efforts to restore tainted waterways after contending that lawmakers have ignored obvious fixes for years.
The bill filed last week by Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat, would task the Department of Environmental Protection with implementing an inspection program for septic tanks. It would also call for monitoring to ensure that the state’s pollution reduction projects work. The proposal is built on recommendations from Florida’s Blue-Green Algae Task Force, a panel of scientists convened by Gov. Ron DeSantis at the start of his first term.
Smith vowed to consider introducing legislation after a Tampa Bay Times investigation last year revealed how pollution imperils hundreds of Florida waterways, including the Indian River Lagoon, where enormous seagrass losses led manatees to starve to death.
“It is past time for the Legislature to act on the findings of the Blue-Green Algae Task Force,” Smith said in a statement to the Times. “Our waterways continue to be choked by algae, killing fish and wildlife, threatening drinking water, harming public health and devastating tourism and local economies that depend on clean water.”
Similar measures have failed to advance before.
Nearly 1 in 4 Florida waterways show signs of contamination from nitrogen or phosphorus, the Times showed last spring. Even places where regulators have reported progress have been getting dirtier instead of cleaner, reporters found, including parts of the Lagoon and several treasured springs.
Lawmakers have stymied solutions that experts say would reduce the chemical load, such as a septic inspection program to identify old, faulty tanks. Florida’s approach for policing water contamination amounts to an honor system that protects polluting industries — including agriculture and development, whose representatives lobby heavily in Tallahassee, the Times found.
DeSantis created the Blue-Green Algae Task Force to help limit the damage from pollution-fueled algae blooms. The group made a round of recommendations in 2019 and met for years to discuss improvements, records show.
Their work has apparently dropped off; members haven’t convened since June 2024. Lawmakers and regulators have implemented some — but not all — of the task force’s recommendations.
Task force member James Sullivan, executive director of Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, previously told the Times he would like to see another meeting scheduled. The sessions, he said, allow scientists to hear straight from regulators and to ask questions that foster accountability.
A Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson did not answer questions by email about why the task force hasn’t met or whether the agency will call another meeting soon. She said the department plans to track Smith’s bill during the legislative session.
As of Monday, no companion bill had been filed in the Florida House.