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Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water (washingtontimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Times: Despite the objection of environmental groups, state environmental regulators voted Tuesday to approve new standards that will increase the amount of cancer-causing toxins allowed in Florida's rivers and streams under a plan the state says will protect more Floridians than current standards. The Environmental Regulation Commission voted 3-2 to approve a proposal that would increase the number of regulated chemicals from 54 to 92 allowed in rivers, streams and other sources of drinking water, news media outlets reported. The Miami Herald reports that under the proposal, acceptable levels of toxins will be increased for more than two dozen known carcinogens and decreased for 13 currently regulated chemicals. State officials back the plan because it places new rules on 39 other chemicals that are not currently regulated. The standards still must be reviewed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but the Scott administration came under withering criticism for pushing the proposal at this time. That's because there are two vacancies on the commission, including one for a commissioner who is supposed to represent the environmental community.
The bottled water industry will be pleased as drinkable tap becomes more scarce all over the US. This is just part of the process. Maintaining a clean water supply is too difficult and expensive. So instead of raising the price, which is totally unjustifiable anyway, it's far easier to let the quality slip.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And I thought Florida water couldn't taste any worse than it already did....
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
headline should read "Rick Scott's plan to POISON Floridians, you won't believe what happens next"
another serving of GREEN SLIME , please!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Without all of the data ("two dozen known carcinogens" in an unknown concentration), this could still be a net gain for Floridians. There are plenty of substances that the rest of the developed world believes to be inert in small doses, but that "are known to the state of California to cause cancer" at any dosage. If they are loosening the regulations on some substances using actual data to devise allowable limits, and again using actual data to further restrict those chemicals that are harmful, then perhaps this change is completely above the board, and inline with the best interest of the people. Drinkable water is a disappearing resource, so practical guidelines (do I need to mention using actual data again?), seems a prudent course of action, and this article doesn't provide enough information to determine if these changes are indeed practical or detrimental to consumers.
So it appears Scott is peaved at Governor Synder of Michigan for his taking the lead in poisoning the waters the citizens of his state have to drink and this is his efforts to win back that worst governor in the world award. Its a real battle this year between these guys, Brownback, and Walker, LePage, and just about every other southern governor but actually making people sick looks like a winning strategy, making bankrupting your state look old school.
It is a big shame proper investigative journalism is disappearing, it would be interesting to know which companies that release the toxins whose increased concentration are allowed made contributions to the politicians involved.
The Monte Carlo method is an extremely widely used, proven technique for solving complex optimization and estimation problems. For an environmentalist to make fun of the method like this simply means he is a Luddite with no understanding of science.
As for the raising of limits, without looking at the studies, it's hard to know for sure whether there is anything wrong with them, but the people who did the Monte Carlo simulations at least have some data to support their case. Most of these limits are so conservative that doubling or tripling them would not make any significant difference. Environmentalists may also well be right that increasing, say, benzene levels is motivated by making fracking easier, and that is OK. In the end, environmental regulations are tradeoffs between immediate health concerns and economic concerns, for the simple reason that bad economies kill even more predictably as environmental poisons.
Adding a limit for otherwise unregulated chemicals is not increasing pollution. Raising a limit for a chemical that was regulated artificially low (and not based on toxicity) is fine.
The linked talks about benzene a bunch. The proposed lowers the limit for Class III (recreation water) and increases it from 1.18ug/L to 2 ug/L for Class I (Drinking water). EPA limit for drinking water is 5 ug/L, for reference.
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/water/wqssp/classes.htm
https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/table-regulated-drinking-water-contaminants#one
https://depnewsroom.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/hhc-criterion-comparison.pdf
Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water
Under the proposal, acceptable levels of toxins will be increased for more than two dozen known carcinogens and decreased for 13 currently regulated chemicals. State officials back the plan because it places new rules on 39 other chemicals that are not currently regulated.
I believe that Florida is our most naturally toxic state, and of course politicians are always terrible. But just based on the brief description in the linked article, I don't think that this particular policy change deserves to be characterized as "Florida officials vote to poison everyone." It sounds like it actually might be a net gain for environmental safety, though of course without exact data on the chemicals involved and their acceptable concentration before and after, it's hard to say.
What I want to know is, when did these officials stop beating their wives?
Tap water regulations are usually very strict.
Unless you live in Flint Michigan...
But once you bottle the water it becomes food, and food can contain pretty much anything.
Not even remotely true but thanks for trying. While there is (unfortunately) a lot of wiggle room, food production, marketing, and sales is actually pretty heavily regulated by the FDA and USDA among others.
I was expecting that the Florida government would say this was part of their plan to control the alligator population by increasing the chances of them eating only people who have cancer.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Class III is all surface waters. It covers fish toxicity / breeding / etc. as well.
As a former geological engineer working in the environmental remediation business 16 plus years ago, I was responsible for design and construction of groundwater remediation systems at old landfills. Old landfills are notorious as many were just old gravel pits which were filled with garbage. In this garbage would be all sorts of hazardous waste from a time when nobody cared about such things. When looking at Mass Spectroscopy plots I would see hundreds of peaks representing some sort of organic chemical. Many of these could be identified as a pollutant, like benzene, but many were “unknowns”. As long as we met the Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) established by the EPA all was fine, except the water would still contain many “unknowns”. And even if we had identified all the “unknowns” since no MCL was established we were still good-to-go. The treated groundwater had to go somewhere, either re-infiltrated off-site or discharged to a nearby stream or river. Again we had to meet discharge limits, which we did. But everyone knew full well that there were pollutants still in the water. Now what will happen in the future when one of these “unknowns” or unregulated chemicals become regulated? Good question.
Conservative, mod down for violating
In theory I agree but that's not how those things work.
Here's a link to the commission, note that every member represents some constituency: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/leg...
The two missing constituencies (local government and environmental community) are the two I would think are the most important for an environmental regulatory commission.
If you could somehow ensure that the other 6 people were selected based on their credentials then it makes perfect sense that the 7th should as well but it seems unreasonable to single out that one constituency.
We'll get an economic boost from this. I mean, yes, it'll increase the incidence of cancer, but with something like cancer, there's no real way to trace back exactly why any one individual got cancer, and even if that could be done, there's no way of knowing which company released the particular chemical that caused the cancer, because a lot of different companies will be doing it. And if everyone's responsible, no one is.
To parahrase Nelson from the Simpsons, it's a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark!
It was nice of them to supply some Bud Light during an emergency.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Yes, it's full of hydrogen which is very flammable and explosive in comfined spaces. The oxygen helps it burn too. I'd suggest gin, but, that's got water in it, and, anyway alcohol is inflammable and lethal too. We're doomed, I say, doomed.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
point of the matter is that Florida has a $677 million dollar industry fucking up a 82 B illion dollar industry.
And their environment.
And their citizens health.
That doesn't even make sense from a business standpoint, let alone the benefit of society.
But hey, at least the right politicians are getting that sweet bribery, er, lobbying.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff