If you like polluted rivers, you’ll love this

By Carl Hiaasen

Miami Herald

Say good-bye to the days when you dipped a toe in a lake to see if it was warm enough for a swim.

Soon that toe will be the only part of your anatomy that you’ll dare immerse in certain waters, and only then if you’re not especially worried about arsenic, cyanide or fecal bacteria.

Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection is steaming ahead with plans to reclassify state waterways for the benefit of corporate and agricultural polluters.

Rather than requiring paper mills, phosphate mines and ranches to clean up their effluent, the DEP has devised a ranking system that could forever surrender some of the most damaged rivers, lakes and canals to those who are using them as a sewer.

Florida waterways now fall into one of five classes, depending on cleanliness and safety. Class I is drinking water, followed by shellfish harvesting (Class II), recreational uses such as swimming, boating and fishing (Class III), agricultural (Class IV) and industrial (Class V), which is currently not used.

It’s noteworthy that the state has more rigorous aquatic health standards for oysters than for humans, a policy that would be creatively expanded under the DEP’s new proposal.

Under the plan, Class III recreational waters would be divided into three “Human Use” categories with escalating degrees of risk.

Waterways classified as HU-3 theoretically would be safe for all fishing and swimming activities. Full-body contact with the water would not be considered dangerous, so you could dunk all your extremities, not just a toe. However, an outing to a river rated HU-4 would be more adventurous. Fishing would be permitted, but the state would recommend only ‘limited human contact.’

By way of elaboration, the DEP says an HU-4 waterway would be considered “splashable” – meaning a splash or two won’t be toxic. You still shouldn’t go in the water, but a few random drops won’t necessarily blister your flesh.

Fun, huh? And I bet you can’t wait to reel in one of those two-headed carp and fry it up for supper.

Things could get seriously interesting on waterways rated HU-5 – “boatable,” though unswimmable and unfishable. No human contact would be advised, so forget the shoreline picnic unless you’ve got hazmat suits for the whole family.

DEP insists that a new rating system is necessary because some Florida waterways are misclassified. The agency says it’s unrealistic to expect water in an urban drainage canal, for example, to be as clean as that of an estuary or a natural spring.

But critics such as Linda Young of the Clean Water Network say the proposed Human Use categories could be a gift to polluters, allowing them to continue poisoning waterways at levels hazardous to fish, wildlife and humans.

Instead of cleaning a polluted river to make it safe for all swimming and fishing – as the rules now putatively require – heavy industry and agriculture will be able to lobby for the more lenient “splashable” or “boatable” rating.

Such an option would have been a godsend to the Buckeye pulp mill in Perry, on Florida’s northwest coast. Built in 1952 by Procter & Gamble, the mill dumps 58 million gallons of dioxin-filled waste daily into the Fenholloway River, a foul, lifeless spume that threatens the Gulf of Mexico.

For years, state and federal regulators looked the other way while Young and other conservationists tried to make Buckeye stop killing the Fenholloway and restore it to the standards of a Class III waterway.

Buckeye wants to bypass the river and pipe its filth directly into the Gulf, a ludicrous idea approved by the knuckleheads at DEP. The case remains tangled in court, but Buckeye would have prevailed a long time ago if the Fenholloway was designated anything less than fishable-swimmable.

Under DEP’s draft plan, companies will be able to flush substantially heavier loads of contaminants into HU-4 and HU-5 waterways. The limits haven’t been set, but the long list of acceptable chemicals and compounds include benzene, arsenic, methylene chloride, chloroform, mercury, lead, copper, nickel, arsenic, PCBs, pesticides, fertilizers and that yummy old favorite, fecal coliform bacteria.

At a time when pollution threatens virtually every important body of water in Florida – from the St. Johns to Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay – it’s incredible that the state wants to make life easier for the polluters.

Well, not really so incredible.

Just gaggable.

Carl Hiaasen can be contacted by e-mail at HeraldEd@aol.com.

Contact the Department of Environmental Protection at 850-245-2118 or