As The Sewage Spews Across Florida, $600 Million In EPA Cleanup Cuts Will Keep Things Nice N' Stinky
Smell the Freedom!!!
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Climate change is causing more intense rain storms and rising sea levels that are making coastal septic systems less effective. For a septic tank to work properly, the liquid portion of the waste needs room to slowly filter down into the ground. But when groundwater levels go up, they push the waste back up, sometimes resulting in the sewage waste flooding into homes and streets. In South Florida, porous soil means that rising sea levels and heavy rains can push groundwater level upwards. Florida homes in low-lying areas that treat their wastewater with septic tanks will likely need to replace their tanks with systems that can handle the rising groundwater levels, according to experts.
Five years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency sued Miami-Dade County in South Florida for violating various water pollution laws. The county responded by reducing the volume of spilled sewage by 55 percent, or roughly 1.5 million gallons, according to its 2016 annual report to the EPA.
Due to proposed budget cuts by the Trump administration, Florida could lose up to $600 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that helps keep beaches waste-free, cleans up pollution from old chemical spills, and tracks leaks in thousands of underground storage tanks. “Florida has the second highest number of people in the country — more than 7.5 million — served by water systems with health-based Safe Drinking Water Act violations,” the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) said in a new report on the state of Florida’s environment and public health. “And the Trump administration’s proposed budget would slash nearly every EPA program that supports clean water in Florida, exposing Floridians and visitors to dangerous toxic substances and threatening its $17.9 billion tourist economy, along with the $7.6 billion worth of saltwater and $1.7 billion freshwater fishing in the state.”
President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts also would eliminate the EPA’s South Florida Geographic Initiative, which for 25 years has made Florida’s water cleaner by replacing 25,000 ineffective septic tanks and closing 4,000 cesspits, according to the EDF.
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https://thinkprogress.org/florida-slow-to-address-sewage-issues-1116de3b0a5c/
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