Guest commentary: SCCF provides Week 6 legislative update
Environmental bill updates from the sixth week of Florida’s legislative session include:
– Stormwater bills pass through committees with floor amendments to come
– Anti-Clean Energy bill temporarily postponed but rescheduled
– Single-Use Plastics bill is temporarily postponed due to lack of committee time (as was the Senate companion bill the prior week)
The last three weeks of session will see an increased focus on budget negotiations and the potential for bills that haven’t cleared their committees to be amended on to bills that are moving. The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation is diligently monitoring our priority issues as we approach the height of legislative activity this session.
State Ratification of Stormwater Rules — SB 7040, introduced by Sen. Gayle Harrell, passed unanimously through its final committee stop in the Senate Rules Committee. The bill will be heard next by the full Senate.
Controversial amendments were added in its previous committee that allowed for developments currently in the Development of Regional Impact or rezoning process to be exempt from the new stormwater requirements. Clean water advocates opposed the amendments as far too broad and not in line with the intent of the new rules. Committee leadership acknowledged the concern and said they would work to address it through upcoming floor amendments. The House version, HB 7053, has passed its two committees and will be heard next by the full House.
The new stormwater rules will only address discharges from new developments and do not require any post-construction monitoring as requested by clean water advocates. While any improvement is good, these gains can be considered minimal considering the legislators themselves cite that 40% of Florida’s waters are currently too polluted for fishing or swimming. The SCCF and its partners will continue to advocate for stronger legislation to prevent nutrient pollution and protect the waters of our state.
Energy — SB 1624 by Sen. Jay Collins was temporarily postponed as the first action of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Environment and General Government. Though sometimes a “temporary postponement” can mean a bill is meeting resistance, the bill had a secured agenda date on Feb. 20 in the subcommittee’s next meeting.
The anti-clean energy preemption bill seeks to:
– Make “resiliency facilities” to store and distribute natural gas a permitted land use in every county and municipality in Florida. It would include Compressed and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). No community could refuse to allow the facilities, because the bill rewrites all comprehensive plans to consider them a permitted use in commercial, industrial and manufacturing categories and their corresponding zones throughout all Florida jurisdictions.
– Discourage state agencies and local governments from purchasing electric vehicles by striking the requirement that the most fuel-efficient models be selected.
– Reduce public input on and review of natural gas pipelines by extending the exemption from the certification process for pipelines up to 100 miles in length (up from the current 15-mile threshold).
– Strike the genuine clean renewable energy grant programs in the state and, at the same time, provide cost recovery for the natural gas industry (which will be billed to ratepayers).
The House version, HB 1645 by Rep. Bobby Payne, has cleared all three of its committees and is headed for a House floor vote next.
At a time when clean energy advocates have shown the dangers and expense of fracking and the benefits of job-creating clean energy alternatives, the bill advances mandates that will only add to increased use of toxic greenhouse gasses at the expense of our health and our communities’ ability to regulate their own land use.
Regulation of Auxiliary Containers — HB 1641 by Rep. Brad Yeager was scheduled to be heard in the House State Affairs Committee — the second committee of its three assigned committees. The committee agenda was packed, and just as its Senate companion bill, SB 1126 by Sen. Jonathan Martin, got bumped the prior week, so did HB 1641, which was the only bill to get temporarily postponed from the agenda.
This bad bill preempts local governments from regulating re-usable or single use plastics or packaging and requires any regulation to be done by the state. The bill doesn’t just preempt local governments but all state agencies, including state parks, from implementing strategies to prevent pollutants from getting into the environment before it becomes a threat to wildlife and clogs stormwater systems.
The SCCF supports the Department of Environmental Protection’s recommendations on regulating “auxiliary containers” and encourages the Legislature to adopt those controls rather than preempting communities from addressing these important protection measures themselves.
Visit the 2024 SCCF Legislative Tracker at https://sccf.org/what-we-do/environmental-policy/.
Holly Schwartz is policy associate for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. 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.