Court: Everglades runoff against the law

Saturday, February 2, 2002

By Robert P. King
Staff Writer The Palm Beach Post

MIAMI —

In a ruling that environmentalists hope will have broad implications throughout South Florida, a federal appeals court ruled Friday that water managers are violating the Clean Water Act by pumping polluted runoff into the Everglades in western Broward County.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta also said the South Florida Water Management District should be ordered to get a federal pollution permit for its pumps on the C-11 Canal near Weston. That is a step the district has resisted taking -- not only for pumps affecting the Everglades but for those that move water into Lake Okeechobee.

However, the court threw out a federal judge's order that would have made the district halt the Broward pumps immediately. Water managers had warned that shutting off the pumps would cause widespread flooding.

Instead, the appeals court said, water managers could face fines or criminal charges if they fail to get a permit quickly enough.

"It's a very good ruling for the Everglades," said Joette Lorion, a consultant for the Miccosukee Indian tribe. The tribe and the environmental group Friends of the Everglades filed the suit against the water district.

Tribal attorney Dexter Lehtinen said he hopes a federal permit would force water managers to clean their runoff, as called for under a settlement to an earlier federal pollution suit filed in 1988. An Everglades-wide cleanup ordered under state law is supposed to be finished by the end of 2006, but state environmental leaders have said they're not certain they can meet that deadline.

"It's a tremendous victory for the principle that the Clean Water Act applies in South Florida," Lehtinen said of the ruling.

District General Counsel John Fumero said it's too soon to say what the ruling will mean, but he said water managers have objected to the idea that their pumps need federal pollution permits.

"That was our basic position in the case, that we were not adding pollutants to the water," Fumero said late Friday, adding that he had not seen the ruling. "We were merely transporting it from one point to another."

But the appeals court rejected that argument, saying the dirty water would not enter the Everglades except for the pumps.

The district's options include asking for the full appeals court to reconsider the case, or appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The district has long acknowledged that filthy water enters the Everglades through the C-11. Water managers say they also plan to clean it up.

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