Private companies could also offset water pollution with new credits
Passed by the Florida Legislature, SB 1532 allows private companies to buy the new water quality enhancement credits originally intended only for government agencies.
Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) is working on draft language for a new water quality credit trading program, after members of the public asked questions about the program and raised some concerns at a rulemaking workshop last week.
The program paves a new path for Florida entities to offset their pollution, by buying and trading the “water enhancement credits” and operating water quality enhancement areas, or WQEAs.
A WQEA, or “natural system,” is defined in the draft language as “a designed, constructed, or altered ecological system supporting aquatic and wetland-dependent natural resources.”
Environmental lawyer and current Waterkeepers Florida Chair Jen Lomberk said she’s concerned a lack of reliable water quality monitoring data could jeopardize the program, which would rely on modeling. The current draft rule mentions nothing about actual water sampling.
“This means that they are essentially predicting water quality changes, rather than actually going out and sampling to confirm what is happening,” Lomberk said. “Models are only as good as the way that they're designed and the data that they’re based on.”