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Florida Springs Council sues state DEP over delay in proposing safeguards for springs

Poe Springs is one of 30 Outstanding Florida Springs a new lawsuit alleges have been harmed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s delay. (Maya Erwin/WUFT News)
Poe Springs is one of 30 Outstanding Florida Springs a new lawsuit alleges have been harmed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s delay. (Maya Erwin/WUFT News)

The Florida Springs Council is bringing the bubbling blue springs of North Central Florida into the courtroom in a new lawsuit.

A circuit court judge advanced the case on Tuesday, ordering the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to explain why it hasn’t proposed a set of protective rules for the state’s springs nearly nine years after it was ordered to by the Florida Legislature.

A law passed by the Florida Legislature in 2016 required the FDEP to create the Springs Harm Rule. The rule was meant to prevent harmful groundwater withdrawals from Florida’s 30 Outstanding Springs. Nearly nine years later, the FDEP has yet to propose such a rule or even a definition of what constitutes “harmful.”

According to Smart’s analysis, the FDEP usually proposes a rule within four years of legislative mandate. The Springs Harm Rule has taken more than twice as long and remains unresolved.

From 2016 to 2021, the department “never published a draft rule, never held a workshop, never made any attempt to actually adopt and implement these rules that were required,” said Ryan Smart, executive director of the Florida Springs Council.

“While that was happening, the Water Management Districts continued to issue water use permits, causing harm to Outstanding Florida Springs,” he added. Pollution exacerbated water quality impacts.

Weeki Wachee Springs in Hernando County, where the lawsuit was filed, saw a 20,000-pound increase in nitrogen per year measured at the spring vent between 2018 and 2023.

This year, the Weeki Wachee River and its springs saw nitrogen-driven algal blooms, causing murky waters and seagrass losses that may have contributed to manatee deaths in nearby Mud River.

In addition to Weeki Wachee, Smart pointed to Rock and Ichetucknee as examples of springs that had suffered “significant harm.”

“We have other systems that have not been evaluated in a long time, but where we're certainly seeing the impacts of over pumping,” he said.

For the nonprofit, legal action was, “something we turned to as a last resort,” said Rachael Curran, an attorney with the Jacobs Public Interest Law Clinic for Democracy and the Environment.

After numerous letters to the FDEP led to no action, the Council became frustrated with being trapped in what Curran called a “holding pattern.”

Since 2022, the FDEP has published three successive drafts of a Springs Harm Rule but hasn’t advanced any of them to the proposed stage.

“A draft rule isn't challengeable, but a proposed rule would have been,” Curran said. “That's keeping us in this holding pattern.”

The FDEP did not respond to WUFT’s request for comment by the time of publication.

The type of lawsuit filed by the Springs Council, a writ of mandamus, means “we command” in Latin. It’s used by a court to order an individual or entity “to do something that it should have already done,” Curran said.

“Any taxpayer in the state of Florida, any citizen, has a right to see the laws that have been passed by their legislators implemented,” she said. “There's no way that the DEP can get out of doing that.”

On Tuesday, Fifth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Pam Vergara found the writ of mandamus valid. That means the FDEP will have to explain why it hasn’t proposed a rule. “Once DEP is served, which should be any minute now, they'll have 20 days to respond,” Curran said.

Then, once the Springs Council replies, the court will rule whether to make the FDEP propose a Springs Harm Rule. While the Department could submit one of the draft rules it has already written, Smart would still see it as a win.

“Whether it’s good, bad, indifferent,” he said, “we just need the rule out there so that we can have something to challenge if it is insufficient.”

A proposed Springs Harm Rule would apply to all 30 of Florida’s Outstanding Springs. (Photo courtesy of the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection)
A proposed Springs Harm Rule would apply to all 30 of Florida’s Outstanding Springs. (Photo courtesy of the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection)

This is the second time the Florida Springs Council has sued the FDEP.

The first was in January 2019, when the nonprofit spotted gaps in proposed water quality rules known as Basin Management Action Plans. After a four-year legal battle, the 1st District Court of Appeals ruled in February 2023 that FDEP must rewrite the plans by July 2025.

“Last time we won,” Smart said. “It’d be nice to win quicker.”

Rose Schnabel is WUFT's Report for America corps member, covering the agriculture, water and climate change beat in north central Florida. She can be reached by calling 352-294-6389 or emailing rschnabel@ufl.edu. Read more about her position here.