Guest commentary: SCCF provides legislative update for Week 5
The environmental bill updates from the fifth week of Florida’s legislative session included:
– Carbon Sequestration
– Auxiliary Containers
– Mitigation Banks
We’ve reached the half-way point of this year’s legislative session. The subcommittees in the House have been granted one more week to meet, due to the volume of bills that still have to be heard. Budget discussions begin in earnest as there is a $4 billion gap between the Senate and the House proposals.
CARBON SEQUESTRATION
HB 1063, by Rep. Lindsay Cross, is a bi-partisan bill that passed last week by a vote of 15-2 in its first committee of reference, the Natural Resources and Disasters Subcommittee. The bill, scaled down from past versions, creates a statewide study and develops a two-year task force to evaluate the role of natural and agricultural lands, as well as our waters, in storing carbon. It also will examine the benefits of the ecosystem services provided by lands serving as flood mitigation and water storage and filtration. An amendment was added to codify the protection of private property rights in that participation in the study by landowners would be voluntary.
The majority of the committee members agreed that a study of this kind was necessary and would strengthen Florida’s long-term stability and land management strategy, and that specific data would highlight the positive role that our farmers play in our diverse economy.
The governor has spoken against the bill, but the Senate passed a similar version of the bill — SB 1148 — by a unanimous vote in its first committee, Environment and Natural Resources. The Senate bill is headed to Appropriations on Agriculture, Environment and General Government next.
The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF) supports the bill and the data it would provide as we continue to look for innovative ways to address our changing environment.
AUXILIARY CONTAINERS (WASTE MANAGEMENT)
CS/SB 1822, by Sen. Jonathan Martin, passed its second assigned committee by a vote of 5-3 in the Senate Community Affairs last week. In a meeting that went two hours over time, the bill — the most contentious on the agenda — was amended to add an entirely different component of incinerator placement in the Miami-Dade area, in addition to the original intent of the bill — to preempt local governments from regulating their own rules regarding plastic bags and auxiliary food containers. Martin referred to his bill as the “Food-Truck” bill, but then formally changed the bill title to “Waste Management” to include the new incinerator issue.
The comparable House Bill — HB 565 — was scheduled to be heard last week in the House Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee, but due to a packed schedule, the bill was not heard and should be scheduled this week in the same House subcommittee.
The SCCF opposes the bill because they impede and prevent local solutions to address Florida’s growing plastic pollution problem. It will work for pollution control measures to be implemented statewide, rather than preventing local communities from addressing the problem themselves.
MITIGATION BANKS
CS/HB 1175, by Rep. Wyman Duggan, passed by a vote of 17-6 in House State Affairs, advancing through the second and last of its assigned committees. The bill allows for mitigation to occur outside of a project’s watershed basin and for unfinished mitigation banks to award up to 60% of their credits before the ecosystem function has been certified.
This leaves certain areas overdeveloped without all of the protections provided by wetlands. It also creates an uneven balance of destroying wetlands before the ecosystem function or the mitigation bank has been completed. The bill is counter to the foundational concept of mitigation credits.
Citing the 9 million acres of wetlands lost across the state of Florida, an amendment was presented to increase the multiplier of credits required when purchased out of area, requiring more wetlands be created than the ones that were destroyed. The amendment was rejected by the bill sponsor, who went on to say that any changes to the bill would not work because he has diligently negotiated the components of the bill with developers and the mitigation bankers — leaving public interest out of the equation.
The comparable Senate version — SB 492 — has passed its first committee and was referred to the Appropriation Committee on Agriculture, Environment and General Government for its second stop.
The SCCF opposes the bill as bad environmental policy that creates an imbalance of protections and incentivizes unsustainable overdevelopment.
Visit the 2025 SCCF Legislative Tracker at https://sccf.org/what-we-do/2025-legislative-session/.
Holly Schwartz is policy associate for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF). Founded in 1967, the SCCF’s mission is to protect and care for Southwest Florida’s coastal ecosystems. For more information, visit www.sccf.org.