DeSantis vetoes bill on beach closings over Florida's polluted water. What that means

Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed four bills Wednesday evening, bringing his total of legislative vetoes this year to 12.

One of them sought to require the Department of Health to take steps, including closing polluted beaches, if the water quality off the coast or in public areas did not meet standards.

The other bills axed included HB 133, which prevented applications for barber or cosmetologist licenses from being denied if the applicant was convicted more than three years earlier; HB 473, which protected local governments from liability for cybersecurity incidents; and SB 1078, which would have exempted the cellular phone numbers of all insurance agents, agencies, adjusters, service representatives and other licensees submitted to the Department of Financial Services from public records requests.

Nearly 180 bills are set to go into effect Monday, July 1.

What is Florida's SB 165, Sampling of Beach Waters and Public Bathing Spaces?

SB 165 would have required the Department of Health to adopt and enforce rules for sampling beach waters and public bathing spaces and issue health advisories within 24 hours if the quality failed to meet standards. Under the bill, the DOH would have to notify local television stations about the advisory.

The DOH would be able to close beaches and public bathing spaces if it deemed it necessary "to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public."

The bill also required counties and municipalities to notify the DOH within 24 hours of unsafe water quality and required counties to post signs during a health advisory against swimming due to "elevated levels of fecal coliform, Escherichia coli, or enterococci bacteria in the water" until subsequent testing finds the water within safety standards again.

The bipartisan bill passed unanimously in the Florida Legislature. The veto was an unexpected surprise.

“I thought there was no way the governor would veto something that was sponsored by a bipartisan slate of elected officials with unanimous approval in both chambers that would protect people’s public health,” said main sponsor Rep. Lindsay Cross, D- St. Petersburg, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “Why would you veto something like that?”

Beach water quality: Check the current conditions in your area

Why did DeSantis veto SB 165, the water sampling bill?

According to the letter issued by the Governor's Office, the "ill-advised" bill gave the DOH too much power.

"CS/CS/HB 165 suffers from a fatal infirmity," DeSantis said in the letter. "It grants authority to the Florida Department of Health (DOH) to close beaches, waterways and swimming pools.

"Health Departments like DOH can serve a valuable function, but they should not be vested with the power to supersede local jurisdictions regarding the operation of beaches," he said.

A day before the veto, former DeSantis press secretary and campaign rapid response director Christina Pushaw posted to X, in response to a post about gun control and public health, saying, "Everything is 'public health' to the left, except for actual health concerns that are harming & kiIIing Americans every day -- like obesity, substance use disorders, toxic additives in food & water, mental illness/body dysmorphia, homeless encampments that exacerbate infectious disease & environmental hazards, etc.

"The left considers all those things to be valid lifestyle choices and tries to subsidize & enable them as much as possible," she said.

What has DeSantis done for Florida's water quality?

In DeSantis' inaugural speech in 2023, he said, "We promised to usher in a new era of stewardship for Florida’s natural resources by promoting water quality and Everglades restoration efforts ― and we delivered."

The governor has made environmental issues a priority during his time in office.

Soon after becoming governor, DeSantis signed a landmark executive order that included $2.5 billion to improve the state’s water quality — the highest level of restoration funding in Florida history — and a mandate to find innovative algae-fighting technology. He also created a Blue-Green Algae Task force to identify the root causes of toxic algae blooms in Florida and named Florida's first science officer and a resiliency officer, although he named another one in 2021 after the first one left.

Only about 13% of the suggestions from the task force had been fully adopted by 2022, according to an environmental report.

DeSantis also announced a new "one-stop shopping" website in 2019 for public information on water issues, ProtectingFloridaTogether.gov, but the rollout was limited, with dated or misleading information according to a TCPalm.com investigation.

In 2020, DeSantis signed a sweeping new law to improve water quality across the state. The Clean Waterways Act transferred oversight of the state's septic systems from the DOH to the Department of Environmental Protection; created a wastewater grant program for areas especially vulnerable to nutrient pollution; required more inspections of farmers and ranchers and funded more agriculture department experts to do it; and prohibited wastewater treatment facilities from dumping untreated sewage into Indian River Lagoon, although that part won't go into effect until July of next year.

But the bill didn't require farmers to monitor or reduce the pollution running off their land, making it largely voluntary. In 2020 the Tampa Bay Times reported that "no rancher or farmer has been sanctioned for water-quality violations.”

The 2023 budget included $7.3 billion for the environment, with $1.6 billion earmarked for the Everglades and water quality projects. A program to address the Indian River Lagoon was created and funded with $100 million. The 2024 budget included $1.5 billion for environmental improvements, although when he signed it DeSantis vetoed dozens of local water, drainage and sewage projects from around the state.

However, critics say that DeSantis doesn't do enough to penalize the agricultural industry for water pollution. Democrats also accused the governor of disproportionately vetoing their projects in 2023.

"Florida’s water is dirtier and sicker than when Gov. DeSantis first took office," Cross posted to X in January 2023, after the governor's inauguration speech.

How is Florida's water?

That depends on which water you're talking about. In most areas, the tap water is in good shape, even getting the state named No. 7 in the country on U.S. News & World Report's Drinking Water Quality rankings list. And Jupiter Beach was praised as having the clearest, most Caribbean-like waters in the south by Southern Living Magazine.

But fertilizer runoff from farms and residences, sewage lines and dirty stormwater have fouled water around the state and caused toxic algae blooms or raised fecal matter levels. A report from the Environmental Integrity Project named Florida the worst in the U.S. for the total acres of lakes classified as impaired for swimming and aquatic life in 2022 (873,340 acres), and second for total listed as impaired for any use (935,808 acres). Florida also gas the second-most square miles of polluted estuaries in the U.S.

Fecal pollution in Florida: It's easy to find fecal pollution in SWFL waters; what's hard is finding how to stop it

In 2018, 2.5 million acres of water across the state were not suitable for drinking or recreation, according to a 2022 report from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. It dropped in 2020 but increased to 3.1 million acres in 2022.

According to a 2023 Water Defense report, Florida is "one of the states with the worst drinking water quality in the country" and vulnerable to a wide range of contaminants, including bacteria from leaky septic tanks, arsenic and hexavalent chromium from phosphate mining and lead and copper from aging plumbing systems. Hard water (calcium and magnesium in the tap water) are recurring problems in Jacksonville, Tampa and West Palm Beach.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: DeSantis vetoes water safety bill over control of beach closings