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Sierra Club Asks State of Florida to Protect Drinking Water Supplies, Keep Sewage Out

Sierra Club Files Suit After Bush Administrations Fail to Protect Communities

Tallahassee, Florida -- To prevent treated sewage from being discharged into and contaminating drinking water supplies in Florida, the Sierra Club today filed a federal Safe Drinking Water Act lawsuit. The suit was filed against the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. For over a decade, the state has failed to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act, and as a result Miami-Dade County’s daily injections of 112.5 million gallons of treated sewage underground are migrating up into drinking water aquifers.

"Today, the Sierra Club is acting to protect Florida’s drinking water supply from sewage contamination because the Jeb Bush and George W. Bush administrations refuse to enforce basic safe drinking water laws," said John Glenn, Safe Drinking Water Issue Chair with the Sierra Club’s Florida Chapter. "The state and federal governments are allowing more sewage to be pumped underground and are taking insufficient steps to prevent this sewage from leaking into drinking water supplies."

According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the South District Facility is the largest underground injector of municipal sewage in the state. Florida is the only state that injects sewage underground, and it has some of the worst geology for this practice, leaving drinking water supplies -- and Florida residents -- vulnerable. Raw sewage typically contains bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens that can cause a variety of illnesses, from mild gastroenteritis (stomach cramps and diarrhea) to life-threatening illnesses such as cholera, dysentery and infectious hepatitis. From 1999-2000, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that there were 39 disease outbreaks associated with drinking water.

"The Jeb Bush and George W. Bush administrations are failing to protect communities and their water supplies," said Kristin Henry, Sierra Club attorney who was in Tallahassee for a press event today. "There is a better way. The Bush administrations should support building adequate infrastructure and provide necessary funds to protect Florida’s drinking water and communities."

The Safe Drinking Water Act prohibits injecting sewage if that sewage migrates into a drinking water source and could endanger public health. It also requires the state agency to take corrective action as soon as migration of sewage is detected.

The South District facility in Miami-Dade County has a long-history of violations. For more than a decade, monitoring data has revealed that sewage is migrating into sources of drinking water. However, the Jeb Bush administration has never followed up on these violations, which threaten Florida’s drinking water supply. Instead the Jeb Bush administration has allowed the facility to increase the volume of sewage it can inject daily. In 2001, Jeb Bush actually wrote a letter to his brother, President Bush, asking him to relax the Safe Drinking Water Act’s requirements for Florida. The Bush administration is expected to relax those standards in the near future.

"Sewage injection is one of the cheapest disposal methods, but the long-term costs to public health are likely to be expensive," said Dan Hendrickson, Legal Chair for the Sierra Club’s Florida Chapter. "If public health and safety are truly top priorities for the government, shouldn’t they enforce the law and provide adequate funding?"

President Bush just last week proposed a budget that cuts the Clean Water State Revolving Loan and Grant Funds, which provide money for water and sewage infrastructure, by more than $360 million. Combined with last year’s cuts, the President has requested more than $500 million less than what Congress enacted in 2003.

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