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*** Friends was founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas ***
Water district: Pumps legal
By Neil Santaniello
Staff Writer
October 2, 2001
An appellate court judge seemed skeptical at water managers' argument Monday that they did not need a federal permit to inject polluted water from western Broward County into the Everglades.
In the latest chapter of a four-year fight, the agency in charge of the Everglades cleanup told a three-judge panel the federal Clean Water Act does not apply to a trio of drainage pumps it uses to pour dirty urban storm water into the marsh to ward off flooding.
During a 45-minute hearing before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, presiding Judge J.L. Edmondson told the South Florida Water Management District: "Your water is more polluted than the receiving body of water. Tell me why you're not covered by these regulations?"
The court only heard testimony Monday in the water district's appeal of an October 1999 U.S. District Court decision that ordered water managers to obtain a federal permit to run the pumps at Everglades Holiday Park.
The water district stuck by its argument all along that it is not creating the pollution -- including phosphorus -- that flows with rain water into the C-11 canal along Griffin Road. Once it reaches the canal, that tainted storm water heads west and is moved into the Everglades by a complex of pumps, all to keep homes dry in Cooper City, Sunrise, Pembroke Pines, Davie and Weston.
"Fundamentally, our position in the case is we are merely moving water from point A to point B," said water district General Counsel John Fumero.
The Clean Water Act is aimed at regulating the sources of pollution, he said, and any required permits should be obtained by businesses and landowners sending the dirty water to the canal and the pumps (called S-9 pumps) it feeds, Fumero said.
"It should be really hung on those entities and landowners, ... not the government entities that convey the water for flood protection," Fumero said.
But the Miccosukee Indian Tribe's position is that it is clear the direction of water flow in the C-11 lays the blame on the water district. The tribe sued the water district along with the conservation group Friends of the Everglades over the S-9 water-quality problem.
Coastal canals generally carry storm water from west to east to dump it into the Atlantic Ocean. But moving in reverse, against the grain of typical water management, the C-11 whisks storm water into the Everglades, "in a direction it normally would not go," said Dexter Lehtinen, representing the tribe.
He said the water managers are shirking their pollution control job, yet "they want to take credit for being a pollution abatement agency."
A plan to address the pollution gushed by the S-9 is on the drawing board of a larger, $8 billion replumbing of the Everglades, so it is not being ignored, Fumero noted. The water district has spent $100 million to buy land in western Broward, some of which will be converted to treatment zones to clean runoff from that area.
"Right now just getting a piece of paper called a permit is not going to solve anything," Fumero said.
If the appeals court rules against the water district "literally thousands and thousands of other drainage works throughout Florida and the country could be implicated" and have to obtain federal permits too, Fumero said.
This report was supplemented by Sun-Sentinel wire services.
Neil Santaniello can be reached at nsantaniello@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6625.
Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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