Three years after Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed a move to limit cruise ships from crossing shallow waters to enter the Port of Key West near increasingly imperiled reefs, state environmental regulators are poised to deal another blow by ignoring their own recommendation to set stricter limits on the plumes of sediment that can smother coral.
Despite a 2021 recommendation by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to increase limits on turbidity, draft rules remain unchanged. A public meeting on the rules is scheduled for Sept. 10.
“DEP is apparently throwing out their report and keeping the limit as it is, although they know clearly that it is a threat to an ecosystem that is the last of its kind in the country,” said Arlo Haskell, who co-founded Safer Cleaner Ships in 2020 to fight increasing cruise traffic.
READ MORE: DeSantis, state environmental regulators greenlight bigger ships at Key West harbor
The move comes at a time when the DeSantis administration is facing increasing criticism over its uneven environmental record. While it is spending billions of dollars to restore the Everglades and cobble together undeveloped land into a wildlife corridor, plans leaked by a DEP worker last month would have erected golf courses and pickleball courts on protected state parks. The DeSantis administration has also boasted spending about $114 million to protect reefs as the cruise industry surges to pre-pandemic highs.
Under the Clean Water Act, Florida is required to update its broad rules on water quality every three years to ensure the latest science is being followed. The rules cover everything from hazardous chemicals to toxic algae and are then finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency.
But Florida has repeatedly fallen behind. The state conducted its last review in 2015, after neglecting revisions for nearly 25 years. EPA finally approved those changes in 2017. A new review was initiated in 2019 and included workshops that covered the stricter rules on turbidity. But the update stalled again amid the COVID-19 pandemic and criticism that the rules failed to address growing threats from toxic algae and chemicals hazardous to humans.
As the pandemic dragged on, Key West residents enjoying an island absent the massive ships began again rallying in the decades-long battle to limit cruise traffic.
Voters approved banning big ships — which can dump up to 100,000 visitors a month on the six square-mile island — and capping the number of visitors a day to 1,500 in 2020. But DeSantis overturned the local referendums. That led the city commission to take matters into its own hands and ban cruise ships at two city-owned piers, leaving only one privately-owned dock to accommodate ships. Earlier this year, FDEP approved a 25-year lease expansion at the dock to continue to allow bigger ships. In 2021, owner Mark Walsh donated nearly $1 million to a DeSantis political committee.
While the “one ship” policy cut cruise ship dockings in half, large ships continue to churn up ocean bottom as they lumber into port.
Monitoring started by the city near the dock over the last year and conducted by College of the Florida Keys found existing EPA limits on turbidity were exceeded 20 percent of the time.
“So one out of five dockings is above the federal lawful limit for turbidity,” Haskell said. “And that's consistent with historical documentation, which the Florida Department of Environmental Protection found in the 90s and around 2000.”
It’s also consistent with that 2021 report prepared by FDEP to better protect coastal waters around reefs and inshore hard bottom areas inhabited by algae, sponges, stony corals and other sea life where fish, queen conches and other critters come to feed. The report concluded that existing limits failed to protect the areas, especially reefs that have been hammered by disease and rising ocean temperatures.
READ MORE: A 'catastrophe' in the Lower Keys: Summer heatwave wipes out iconic elkhorn coral
In addition to ship traffic, the limits were also intended to protect areas during port dredging. Dredging at Port Miami nearly a decade ago smothered nearly 300 acres around reefs.
Despite five requests since Aug. 20, DEP officials did not respond to emails or questions. In response to an email Wednesday, a spokeswoman said she was looking into the matter, but had not responded by deadline.
“This has been a well-known problem for a really long time, that cruise ships caused these dramatic spikes in turbidity and deterioration in water quality,” said Haskell, of Safer Cleaner Ships. “The people of South Florida that care about protecting corals deserve an explanation from DEP about why they've abandoned this recommendation that they put forward not very long ago.”
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