SCCF provides legislative update on Weeks 2 and 3
The second week of the legislative session saw advances in three more Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation priority issues:
– SEA LEVEL RISE/RESILIENCY
Two new proposed committee bills were passed in the House Environment, Agriculture & Flooding Subcommittee on March 8 by a vote of 18-0. HB 7019 Statewide Flooding and Sea Level Rise Resilience and HB 7021 Resilient FL Trust Fund create a grant fund within the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to fund costs of community resilience planning, develops a statewide Flooding & Sea Level Rise Resilience Plan and requires the water management districts in conjunction with local stakeholders to submit proposed resiliency projects to DEP. The bill directs DEP to start tracking flood vulnerability and sea level rise on an ongoing basis. The data collected will be used to develop the statewide resiliency plan and will be submitted to the governor and the Legislature. The bill also establishes the Florida Flood Hub for Applied Research & Innovation within the University of South Florida and requires the hub to also submit reports to the governor and Legislature. These bills have been referred next to the House State Affairs Committee as their last stop before being heard by the full House.
While these bills seem to do much in the way of addressing the impacts of flooding and sea level rise, there was a debate during the committee hearing about the unaddressed need to manage the causes of climate change through statewide greenhouse gas assessments. Although this set of bills does not tackle that side of the equation, some regional climate compacts (local government consortiums) have undertaken their own efforts to establish baseline greenhouse gas assessments.
– ENERGY
SB 856 (State Preemption of Energy Infrastructure Regulation) was passed 7-2 on March 9 in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee. Although this bill is partially presented as supportive of renewable energy infrastructure, it is more focused on broad preemptions of local government regarding the policies that have to do with fracking pipelines, energy transmission line location, solar power and electrical vehicle charging stations. The public speaker’s comments were limited to one minute each, the majority of which opposed this bill due to the strong and sweeping preemption language. The silver lining is that there is an active effort to discuss amendments with the bill sponsor that would strike a balance to a more suitable transition on decisions regarding the future siting of energy infrastructure. This bill has two more committee stops and will be heard in Senate Community Affairs next.
– WATER QUALITY AND SUPPLY
One thousand people move to Florida every day. Floridians use 6.4 billion gallons of water a day. Without innovative solutions, Florida will be 1 billion gallons short of usable water by the year 2040. Those are some of the statements made during the discussion of SB 64 (Reclaimed Water) in its last committee stop in the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 11. This bill purports to address Florida’s projected water shortage by requiring certain domestic wastewater utilities to submit a plan to DEP to eliminate non-beneficial surface water discharges. It would reclassify reclaimed water for potable reuse as an alternative source of drinking water and it would direct DEP to create a technical advisory committee and initiate rule making to develop potable reuse as an alternative water supply among other technical requirements.
This bill brings much needed attention to the predicted water supply problems of our future, but while some see this only as a problem to be solved to facilitate more growth, the issues of over use must be addressed by better planning in order to ensure an adequate water supply for our citizens, for agriculture and for our natural systems alike. This bill passed 18-0 and will be heard next by the full Senate.
During the third week, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his federal stimulus budget recommendations. Of the $193 billion slated for states and local governments, Florida expects to receive $10 billion. Among the planned spending on bonuses for first responders, workforce development and transportation infrastructure projects, the governor wants to set aside $1 billion for his multi-year “Resilient Florida” plan, which would provide grants to local governments to address everything from storm resistant infrastructure and prevention of shoreline erosion, to wastewater treatment retrofits and future sea level rise planning. The program will be managed by the Florida DEP.
This spending is on top of the current spending proposals included in the governor’s $96.6 billion state budget. The governor’s immediate stimulus spending plan accounts for $4.1 billion and proposes to hold the rest aside as he and the legislature evaluate Florida’s economic recovery.
Legislative bills that progressed in the third week:
– FLORIDA FOREVER
SB 1480 (Land Acquisition Trust Fund), which extends the date to which bonds can be issued to the Florida Forever program, has passed two of its three committee stops. Bonds are issued to pay for existing debt service for lands and expenditures to the existing Florida Forever land acquisition program. While this is a positive development, there are other Florida Forever related bills that have been filed that extend the bonding and designate a specified funding amount for future land acquisition. Those bills have not yet been scheduled in their respective committees.
– RESILIENCY
There was little discussion in the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee this week during the passage of SB 1954 (Statewide Flooding and Sea Level Rise Resilience). The bill passed unanimously 6-0 and is similar to the House version, HB 7019, that passed last week. The provisions in the bills closely mirror the governor’s “Resilient Florida” plan and are expected to pass this session.
– TRANSPORTATION, MULTI-USE CORRIDORS OF REGIONAL ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE (MCORES)
SB 100 (Highway Projects) is the partial repeal bill of the environmentally devastating toll road expansion bill passed by the legislature two years ago. SB 100 proposes to return transportation toll road projects to the previously utilized FDOT needs based project process rather than the political process that created MCORES. While SB 100 proposes to eliminate the southern portion of the proposed toll road planning process, it does allocate funds to retrofit existing roadways in the area of the Northern Turnpike Connector in the Florida Big Bend area with potential environmental impacts to existing water and wildlife corridors in that region.
The bill passed its last committee stop in Senate Appropriations by a vote of 17-2 with one of the “nay” votes vowing to work with the bill sponsor to tweak the bill language through the amendment process to get to a yes vote as the bill makes it to the Senate floor next. There is no related House companion, but should this bill pass the full Senate it will be considered for approval by the House.
Visit SCCF’s Legislative Tracker at www.sccf.org/our-work/environmental-policy. We welcome your suggestions on how to better help you use this information to participate in the legislative process.
Holly Schwartz is environmental policy assistant for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. Founded in 1967, the SCCF is dedicated to the conservation of coastal habitats and aquatic resources on Sanibel and Captiva and in the surrounding watershed. For more information, visit www.sccf.org.