Environmental activists are bracing for a political kind of climate change in Tallahassee.

Some of the effects could emerge in a one-day special session of the Florida Legislature scheduled Tuesday , where lawmakers could deliver defeats to activists on two fronts.

That’s spurring forecasts that other disappointments could follow when more conservative, newly elected officeholders settle into power in 2011.

“With a pro-business, anti-regulatory mood, that doesn’t bode well for any environmental regulation,” St. Johns Riverkeeper Neil Amingeon said as he waited last week to address Duval County’s legislative delegation at a City Hall hearing.

Promises of smaller government during Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s campaign fed those fears, and a letter to Washington that Scott and other incoming officeholders signed Friday reinforced them. That letter asks the head of the U.S. EnvironmentalProtection Agency to delay new clean-water standards for nitrogen and phosphorus, scheduled to be announced by Monday.

Those standards will affect the state’s freshwater lakes and rivers, including much of the St. Johns River. They were mandated by the EPA as the result of a lawsuit by environmental groups.

“We each ran on the platform of fiscal responsibility,” says the letter, also signed by five incoming members of Congress and incoming agriculture commissioner Adam Putnam. It adds Floridians are tired of “an overbearing federal government” and challenged “the cost of this onerous regulation to Floridians.”

For Tuesday, the Legislature’s short list of potential topics includes a proposal to delay and possibly rethink a septic-tank inspection requirement meant to curb leakage into ground water and rivers, such as the St. Johns. Another item is a vote to override Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto of an administrative law that critics say will hobble agencies writing many environmental regulations.

To be sure, lawmakers have constituents who ardently want them to curb both septic inspections and new rules in general.

“It’s not a matter of inspection. It’s just a matter of them [septic tank contractors] trying to raise money,” said Ross Stoeffler, who said the tank he installed in 1977 on 92 acres of sandy Putnam County cattle land is not harming anything.

A far-ranging water resources law passed in the spring set a Jan. 1 deadline for state health officials to develop rules for existing tanks to be inspected every five years, at the owner’s expense. The agency is still drafting rules to accomplish that, and legislative leaders want to postpone the inspection rules until July 1 and consider changes next year.

By law, the inspection couldn’t cost homeowners more than $30, but critics fear it will become a tool for repair contractors to coerce customers into unneeded work.

Stoeffler’s suspicion of the law, which he describes as “snuck through” the last session, is bolstered by the fact that he didn’t learn about it until last month, when it came up at one of the two tea party meetings he attends weekly.

“I’m all for clean water, but the septic tank systems that most people have … are doing the job they supposed to,” said Stoeffler, 69. “I am not in favor of putting anything else on the people that they do not already have to have.”

There is another side to the issue, said Julie Wraithmell, wildlife policy director for Florida of Audubon.

“There are costs for Florida if we do not protect our water,” she said. “The flip side is everyone in Jacksonville pays for cleaning up the St. Johns River. … You have kind of a pay-now-or-pay-later scenario.”

At least 70,000 septic tanks are thought to be buried in Duval County.

Dozens of Duval County creeks carry more fecal bacteria than state rules allow. Leaking septic tanks often are blamed for much of that, although leaking sewer lines, animal waste and other sources also feed the problem. Cleanup plans developed by state and local agencies envision more than $130 million in spending — some already completed — to lower bacteria levels in 25 waterways.

State Rep. Lake Ray, R-Jacksonville, told the city Waterways Commission this week he expects the inspection delay to be approved.

The second issue worrying activists is a bill that passed unanimously through the Legislature, although two House members later reversed their votes.

The measure, H.B. 1565, required regulatory agencies, which the Legislature directs to write rules, to bring many of their rules back to lawmakers for final approval before they can take effect.

Activists celebrated when Crist vetoed that, because they feared lobbyists representing polluting industries would persuade lawmakers to weaken or reject complex technical rules that environmental agencies develop through a tedious process that can take years. Editorial writers had dubbed the measure “the Lobbyists’ Bailout Act” because of its potential to grow their business.

“Our concern is it’s going to cripple the ability of, especially, a lot of environmental agencies to promulgate rules to protect things like air quality, water quality,” Wraithmell said.

Groups including the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Association of Counties endorsed the measure, but critics said it could encourage agencies to write weaker rules at the outset, to avoid having to go back and re-craft them.

Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton joined a surge of opposition last spring that asked Crist to kill the legislation. But he hasn’t asked lawmakers to support or oppose any items on the table for the one-day session, said Misty Skipper, a Peyton aide.

steve.patterson@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4263

link: http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2010-11-13/story/environmental...