Regulating Water Quality: Current Legislation, Future Impacts: Introduction to the Colloquium

Additional index words. Chesapeake Bay, Clean Water Act, ﬂoating treatment wetlands, nitrogen, numeric nutrient criteria, nursery cropproduction, pesticides, phosphorus, sediment, sub-surface ﬂow wetlands, surface-ﬂow wetlands, water samplingIncreased rates of nutrient enrichment insurface water bodies have led to detrimentalimpacts to aquatic ecosystems; these impactsinclude algal blooms, ﬁsh kills, and deadzones. Environmental groups and concernedcitizens have begun to demand greater pro-tection and restoration of our natural water-ways,becausebothhumanandecologicalusesare currently impaired as a result of increasedrates of nutrient and sediment loading. Manypolicieshavebeenenactedinregionsthrough-out the United States to reduce nutrient load-ing with the ultimate goal of improvingsurfacewaterqualityandrestoringecologicalfunction (e.g., ﬁsheries, native plant communi-ties) [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), 2010a, 2010b, 2012].Concern for aquatic ecosystem health hasled to federal enforcement of the EPA CleanWater Action Plan in two current cases,which include: the numeric nutrient criterionimposed on surface waters in Florida and theChesapeake Bay consent decree where totalmaximumdailyloadswereimposedtoreducenutrient loading into surface waters (U.S.EPA, 1998, 2010a, 2010b). These nutrientloadreduction mandatesimpact allsectors ofsociety, including industrial, urban, and ag-ricultural water users, because wastewaterfrom all of these land use types contributeto the overall load of nutrients within anecosystem, regardless of whether the waste-waterisconsideredtobefromapointsourceor a nonpoint source.Manyhorticulturalcropproducersarebeingimpacted in Florida and the Chesapeake Baywatershed (Delaware, the District of Colum-bia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania,Virginia, and West Virginia); these statesare currently implementing changes in prac-tice or evaluating potential changes to mod-erate the amount of nitrogen (N), phosphorus(P), and sediment in wastewater leaving farms.Additional nutrient regulations will likely im-pact additional horticultural crop producersthroughout the United States over the nextdecade, because degrading surface waterquality is a national issue. Without an ade-quate understanding of the complex issuessurrounding agricultural water use and reuse,scientists, policymakers, and extension spe-cialists alike will not be able to address themultifaceted management problems that hor-ticultural crop producers are likely to face inthe coming years. In light of these complexissuesandtheneedforopendiscourseamongthese groups, the American Society for Hor-ticultural Science Nursery Crops workinggroup convened a colloquium entitled ‘‘Reg-ulating Water Quality: Current Legislation,FutureImpacts,’’cosponsoredwiththeWaterUtilization and Management, Waste Utiliza-tioninHorticulture,andFloricultureworkinggroups to educate attendees regarding 1) thecurrent state of nutrient-based legislation; 2)the impact of Florida Department of Envi-ronmental Quality imposed numeric nutrientcriterion on growers’ changing practices inFlorida; and 3) the remediation technologiesavailable for growers’ compliance with man-dated nutrient and sediment limits for runofffrom production areas.THE COLLOQUIUMThe three articles in this series discussthe current regulatory climate, the impactof regulations on managing water quality,and the remediation technologies currentlyavailable to cleanse wastewater of nutrientandsedimentcontaminants.Fourcolloquiumspeakers, Steve Beeman (Beeman’s Nursery),Pete Spyke (Arapaho Citrus Management,Inc.), Aliso Coe (EarthJustice), and Dr. P.ChristopherWilson(UniversityofFlorida),declined the opportunity to submit articles.An overview of the presentations is discussedin the order presented during the colloquium.A BRIEF HISTORY OF REGULATORYACTIONSMajsztrik and Lea-Cox (2013) presenta brief history of the legislative actions takento restore the Chesapeake Bay that culminatedwith introduction of federally mandated totalmaximum daily load limits in 2010 (U.S.EPA, 2010a) and current efforts to accelerateimplementation of best management practices.The need for increased communication amongregulatory agencies, policymakers, modelers,and stakeholders is discussed with regard tomanaging and accurately accounting forchanges in nonpoint source contributions tothe watershed. This article speciﬁcally em-phasizes efforts to accurately characterizecurrent nursery and greenhouse inputs, thepotential affect of altering production prac-tices, and implementing best managementpractices to reductions of nutrient and sed-iment contaminants in the Chesapeake Bay.The value and longevity of nutrient tradingcredits are discussed along with pitfalls andbeneﬁts for growers.AlisaCoe,anAssociateAttorneywiththeTallahasseeOfﬁceofEarthjustice,anon-proﬁt,public interest law organization, discussed therole of political activism in impacting policychange.In2008,acoalitionofenvironmentalorganizationsrepresentedbyEarthjusticeﬁleda lawsuit against the U.S. EPA for failing tocomply with its nondiscretionary duty to setnumeric nutrient criterion for Florida as man-dated by the 1972 Clean Water Act and the1998 Clean Water Action Plan (Douglas,2012; Stanton and Taylor, 2012). The depthof problems created by unmitigated nutrientrunoff into surface waters included humanhealth, ecological sustainability, and economicconcerns. Human health concerns were relatedto drinking water contamination and dermal orinhalation contact with algae that secrete/excretetoxins.Environmentalandecosystemhealth concerns were related to habitat lossand ﬁsh kills from low dissolved oxygen.Economicconcernswererelatedtodecreasedproperty values and declining tourism insome regions of Florida where waterwaysare detrimentally impacted by algal blooms.These issues were the motivating factors forthe ‘‘Clean Water Act Citizen Suit.’’The foundational argument for the CleanWater Act Citizen Suit was that the FloridaDepartmentofEnvironmentalProtection(FLDEP) had not developed numeric limits forsewage, fertilizer, and manure pollution 9years after the Clean Water Action Plan wasenacted. Thus, the U.S. EPA should enforcenutrient criterion in water bodies in Floridarather than the FL DEP. In January 2009, theEPA made a determination that Florida’snarrative standards were ineffective and nu-meric nutrient criteria were, in fact, neededfor Florida’s water bodies. In Aug. 2009, thelitigation was settled with a consent decreerequiringdevelopmentofspeciﬁcor‘‘numeric’’