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Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water (washingtontimes.com) 182

Posted by BeauHD from the delicious-chemicals dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Times: Despite the objection of environmental groups, state environmental regulators voted Tuesday to approve new standards that will increase the amount of cancer-causing toxins allowed in Florida's rivers and streams under a plan the state says will protect more Floridians than current standards. The Environmental Regulation Commission voted 3-2 to approve a proposal that would increase the number of regulated chemicals from 54 to 92 allowed in rivers, streams and other sources of drinking water, news media outlets reported. The Miami Herald reports that under the proposal, acceptable levels of toxins will be increased for more than two dozen known carcinogens and decreased for 13 currently regulated chemicals. State officials back the plan because it places new rules on 39 other chemicals that are not currently regulated. The standards still must be reviewed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but the Scott administration came under withering criticism for pushing the proposal at this time. That's because there are two vacancies on the commission, including one for a commissioner who is supposed to represent the environmental community.
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Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water More

Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water

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  • Another day in paradise... SNAFU (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:11AM (#52588903) Journal

    The bottled water industry will be pleased as drinkable tap becomes more scarce all over the US. This is just part of the process. Maintaining a clean water supply is too difficult and expensive. So instead of raising the price, which is totally unjustifiable anyway, it's far easier to let the quality slip.

    • Re:Another day in paradise... SNAFU (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:20AM (#52588969)
      Bottled water is not as safe as you think it is. I was mobilized with the National Guard to help after Hurricane Katrina. One of our missions was to distribute water. We noticed that some of the water bottles would turn green sitting in the sun. Since we were the Army, we were equipped with water testing equipment. We started testing each lot of bottled water delivered to the state. An amazing number of shipments were rejected for high levels of various contaminates including biological, lead, and one with an amazing amount of dissolved iron (off the scale on our test equipment). I learned that bottled water might taste good, but it is not as safe as people think. I don't doubt much of this was caused by companies ramping up production to sell to the government and make a big profit.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by zyklone ( 8959 )

        Tap water regulations are usually very strict.
        But once you bottle the water it becomes food, and food can contain pretty much anything.

        • Regulations (Score:4, Informative)

          by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:45AM (#52589099)

          Tap water regulations are usually very strict.

          Unless you live in Flint Michigan...

          But once you bottle the water it becomes food, and food can contain pretty much anything.

          Not even remotely true [fda.gov] but thanks for trying. While there is (unfortunately) a lot of wiggle room, food production, marketing, and sales is actually pretty heavily regulated by the FDA and USDA among others.

          • No, the regulations are still strict in Flint. It's just that they aren't being met there and in many other places.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by sjbe ( 173966 )

              No, the regulations are still strict in Flint. It's just that they aren't being met there and in many other places.

              You missed the invisible sarcasm tag...

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            The issue in Flint wasn't the water coming from the plant, it was the pipes leading to/into/in the residences which contained the lead before many of the officials were even born. The release of that lead was exacerbated of course by the choice of water source, but putting all of the blame on the city/state officials is kind of like blaming a Meat packing plant for the failures of a third party trucker who's refrigeration unit failed. Their biggest failing was not investigating the complaints of residence

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by mink ( 266117 )

              Actually the issue was the water coming from the plant.

              The failure was they wanted to save a few thousand dollars during the switch so they opted not to treat the water to prevent it from attacking and leaching lead from the pipes/fixtures.

              This was not an unforeseen event or a mistake anyone could have made. They knew going in that corrosion would be an issue and that treatment would be required to prevent this and they decided not to.

          • The Food regulation regime has largely been gutted and replaced by a voluntary privately run inspection regime where the food company hires the inspector. I believe the Republicans that were instrumental in repealing these regulations called them job killing.

            There aren't enough agriculture department inspectors anymore to inspect even 1% of the food production factories in the US. There are slaughterhouses in the US that haven't had a government inspector inside them.

        • Tap water regulations are usually very strict.

          Yes, and this article shows how Florida is dealing with that very issue. They make up for tax cuts by lowering expectations.

      • Heh, nowadays it's probably just tap water from Flint...

        The thing is that as the quality of tap water goes down, people are going to buy bottled water even if it's only slightly "better". It's big business, and the industry is frequently allowed to draw millions of gallons from drought stricken areas [theguardian.com].

      • Re:Another day in paradise... SNAFU (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RabidReindeer ( 2625839 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @09:30AM (#52589451)

        Bottled water is not as safe as you think it is.

        Actually, Perrier has a bottling plant in ZephyrHills, Florida. The water bubbles up from fresh natural springs fed by the self-same aquifer that's fed from these newly-exempted water sources.

        This same spring feeds the Hillsborough River, which serves as a primary water supply for Tampa. So if you live in the Big Cigar you could be paying premium prices for the same stuff that comes out of your tap.

      • Bottled tap water - Aquafina (Pepsi), Dasani (Coca-Cola), as well as many store brands like Kirkland - is usually reverse osmosis filtered and shouldn't have these sorts of contaminants. RO is so effective you actually have to add minerals back to the water after filtering to improve the taste and prevent it from leeching minerals out of your teeth and body because it's so pure.

        Bottled spring water is from a natural source, and will have things objective test equipment considers to be contaminants, incl

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I distill my water. The setup cost me $200. Power draw is something like $0.35 per gallon of pure water.

        There is a lot of misinformation on the Internet about distilled water. Distilled water is water. It will NOT make you sick, or deplete minerals from your body, or alter your PH balance! If you are running a marathon, or fighting an illness, go for electrolyte-enhanced water. Otherwise, distilled is is the highest-quality water you can get!

    • The bottled water industry will be pleased as drinkable tap becomes more scarce all over the US. This is just part of the process. Maintaining a clean water supply is too difficult and expensive. So instead of raising the price, which is totally unjustifiable anyway, it's far easier to let the quality slip.

      Wow. That was fast. Thanks for giving me campaign funding and laundered money sources to look for on him!

      Heh

  • Really? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:14AM (#52588925)
    And I thought Florida water couldn't taste any worse than it already did....

  • missed opportuinity OP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Thud457 ( 234763 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:15AM (#52588935) Homepage Journal
    headline should read "Rick Scott's plan to POISON Floridians, you won't believe what happens next"


    another serving of GREEN SLIME [google.com], please!

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by operagost ( 62405 )
      Total garbage clickbait headline. Slashdot becomes even more tone-deaf each day. The headlines are downright political trolls. This one is copied verbatim from the linked article. It's never more obvious that the people who write articles aren't the ones who write the headlines, when you read this:

      The Miami Herald (http://hrld.us/29XQXxu ) reports that under the proposal, acceptable levels of toxins will be increased for more than two dozen known carcinogens and decreased for 13 currently regulated che

    • point of the matter is that Florida has a $677 million dollar industry [freshfromflorida.com] fucking up a 82 B illion dollar industry [freshfromflorida.com].

      And their environment.
      And their citizens health.

      That doesn't even make sense from a business standpoint, let alone the benefit of society.

      But hey, at least the right politicians are getting that sweet bribery, er, lobbying.
  • ...is how you get the never ending adventures of florida man.

  • How About Some Actual Data... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:17AM (#52588951)

    Without all of the data ("two dozen known carcinogens" in an unknown concentration), this could still be a net gain for Floridians. There are plenty of substances that the rest of the developed world believes to be inert in small doses, but that "are known to the state of California to cause cancer" at any dosage. If they are loosening the regulations on some substances using actual data to devise allowable limits, and again using actual data to further restrict those chemicals that are harmful, then perhaps this change is completely above the board, and inline with the best interest of the people. Drinkable water is a disappearing resource, so practical guidelines (do I need to mention using actual data again?), seems a prudent course of action, and this article doesn't provide enough information to determine if these changes are indeed practical or detrimental to consumers.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 )

      People would rather panic about 0.000001mg of formaldehyde in their water than admit glyphosate is less-toxic than table salt.

    • Re:How About Some Actual Data... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chelloveck ( 14643 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:26AM (#52589003)

      Without all of the data ("two dozen known carcinogens" in an unknown concentration), this could still be a net gain for Floridians. There are plenty of substances that the rest of the developed world believes to be inert in small doses, but that "are known to the state of California to cause cancer" at any dosage. If they are loosening the regulations on some substances using actual data to devise allowable limits, and again using actual data to further restrict those chemicals that are harmful, then perhaps this change is completely above the board, and inline with the best interest of the people. Drinkable water is a disappearing resource, so practical guidelines (do I need to mention using actual data again?), seems a prudent course of action, and this article doesn't provide enough information to determine if these changes are indeed practical or detrimental to consumers.

      I came here to say the same thing. Let's see the data, not just the knee-jerk "chemicals are bad" screed. Spare us the fear-mongering.

    • Re:How About Some Actual Data... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @09:00AM (#52589205) Homepage Journal

      Drinkable water is a disappearing resource

      Indeed. And the way some people waste it, you'd think it just falls out of the sky.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • So it appears Scott is peaved at Governor Synder of Michigan for his taking the lead in poisoning the waters the citizens of his state have to drink and this is his efforts to win back that worst governor in the world award. Its a real battle this year between these guys, Brownback, and Walker, LePage, and just about every other southern governor but actually making people sick looks like a winning strategy, making bankrupting your state look old school.

  • Who paid for the increases? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:20AM (#52588965)

    It is a big shame proper investigative journalism is disappearing, it would be interesting to know which companies that release the toxins whose increased concentration are allowed made contributions to the politicians involved.

    • It would be interesting to know which journalists chose to report the story in an obvious flamebait fashion, ignoring the science. Who will watch the watchers?

  • “Monte Carlo gambling with our children’s safety is unacceptable,” said Marty Baum of Indian Riverkeeper, an environmental group based in Indian River County.

    The Monte Carlo method [wikipedia.org] is an extremely widely used, proven technique for solving complex optimization and estimation problems. For an environmentalist to make fun of the method like this simply means he is a Luddite with no understanding of science.

    As for the raising of limits, without looking at the studies, it's hard to know for sur

    • Re:anti-science environmentalists (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @09:09AM (#52589285) Homepage Journal

      Did you read this bit of TFA?

      a one-of-a-kind scientific method developed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and nicknamed âoeMonte Carlo,â

      I don't think they're talking about the same thing.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cdrudge ( 68377 )

        Another article [tallahassee.com] makes it sound like it was an actual Monte Carlo method:

        But David Ludder, a Tallahassee attorney who represents the Florida Clean Water Network, said DEPâ(TM)s process for determining standards â" the so-called Monte Carlo or probabilistic method â" yields weaker limits than a competing method used by the other states and the federal government.

        The more commonly employed deterministic method uses absolute values for factors including body weight and fish and water consumption.

      • Did you read this bit of TFA?

        a one-of-a-kind scientific method developed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and nicknamed âoeMonte Carlo,â

        I don't think they're talking about the same thing

        Did you read on?

        Agency officials also defended the use of the Monte Carlo scientific method — also known as “probabilistic analysis” — saying it is more responsive to Florida variables by shielding people who consume large amounts of fish from the buildup of dangerous to

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by fnj ( 64210 )

          Why do we have to pick one or the other? Greenie weenies are both scientifically ignorant AND dishonest.

        • Unfortunately yes, and it gets worse:

          The Monte Carlo method is named after a monastery in Italy that was the sight of a famous battle in WW2. A survivor, who later went on to be Dean of Statistics at DeVry, used it as a euphemism for doing something by pure chance.

    • The Monte Carlo is also a famous casino, and not some kind of mathy casino where everyone employs the Monte Carlo method to win at gambling either. (The method was code-named after the casino, though, but being a code name it explicitly had no connection to the content of the method).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Actually, it's thoroughly impossible to tell how the new standards work based upon by the linked articles, but it sounds like in plain language that Florida is using a computer model that could allow more flexibility in discharge permitting. This can lead to better results, whether your definition of better is "more rationally defensible" or "more in line with what my donors want." Determining which way it is better requires review by a competent expert. It might be both.

      The real issue here is this phras

      • The real issue here is this phrase from TFA: "one of a kind." That's not so good.

        No, the real issue is that the environmentalist has already proven to be an anti-science moron, so nothing that he says is relevant. If you want to know what the model actually is, you have to look at it.

  • ...of course, the fact that EPA limits are still the guideline.

    Lower state requirements mean pretty much nothing if the EPA doesn't specifically allow it. And they won't, no matter how much fearmongering some people use.

  • CHEMICALS!! AAAHH! (Score:5, Informative)

    by h4x0t ( 1245872 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:26AM (#52589001) Homepage
    Adding a limit for otherwise unregulated chemicals is not increasing pollution. Raising a limit for a chemical that was regulated artificially low (and not based on toxicity) is fine.

    The linked talks about benzene a bunch. The proposed lowers the limit for Class III (recreation water) and increases it from 1.18ug/L to 2 ug/L for Class I (Drinking water). EPA limit for drinking water is 5 ug/L, for reference.

    http://www.dep.state.fl.us/water/wqssp/classes.htm
    https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/table-regulated-drinking-water-contaminants#one
    https://depnewsroom.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/hhc-criterion-comparison.pdf

  • Florida Regulators OK Plan To Increase Toxins In Water

    Under the proposal, acceptable levels of toxins will be increased for more than two dozen known carcinogens and decreased for 13 currently regulated chemicals. State officials back the plan because it places new rules on 39 other chemicals that are not currently regulated.

    I believe that Florida is our most naturally toxic state, and of course politicians are always terrible. But just based on the brief description in the linked article, I don't think that this particular policy change deserves to be characterized as "Florida officials vote to poison everyone." It sounds like it actually might be a net gain for environmental safety, though of course without exact data on the chemicals involved and their acceptable concentration before and after, it's hard to say.

    What I want to know is, when did these officials stop beating their wives?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      The State of California has determined that Florida may cause cancer.

  • Seller of the Big Burke and the Alexa Pure.

    If it gives us another Young Turks encounter it could totally be worth it...

  • CUI BONO?
    No, seriously, i want to know who lobbied for this and who will benefit from this.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • In theory I agree but that's not how those things work.

      Here's a link to the commission, note that every member represents some constituency: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/leg... [state.fl.us]

      The two missing constituencies (local government and environmental community) are the two I would think are the most important for an environmental regulatory commission.

      If you could somehow ensure that the other 6 people were selected based on their credentials then it makes perfect sense that the 7th should as well but it seems unreas

  • I was expecting that the Florida government would say this was part of their plan to control the alligator population by increasing the chances of them eating only people who have cancer.

  • So many chemicals (Score:4, Insightful)

    by m0s3m8n ( 1335861 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @09:59AM (#52589693)
    As a former geological engineer working in the environmental remediation business 16 plus years ago, I was responsible for design and construction of groundwater remediation systems at old landfills. Old landfills are notorious as many were just old gravel pits which were filled with garbage. In this garbage would be all sorts of hazardous waste from a time when nobody cared about such things. When looking at Mass Spectroscopy plots I would see hundreds of peaks representing some sort of organic chemical. Many of these could be identified as a pollutant, like benzene, but many were “unknowns”. As long as we met the Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) established by the EPA all was fine, except the water would still contain many “unknowns”. And even if we had identified all the “unknowns” since no MCL was established we were still good-to-go. The treated groundwater had to go somewhere, either re-infiltrated off-site or discharged to a nearby stream or river. Again we had to meet discharge limits, which we did. But everyone knew full well that there were pollutants still in the water. Now what will happen in the future when one of these “unknowns” or unregulated chemicals become regulated? Good question.

  • This can only be a good thing. (Score:3)

    by Lendrick ( 314723 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @10:03AM (#52589731) Homepage Journal

    We'll get an economic boost from this. I mean, yes, it'll increase the incidence of cancer, but with something like cancer, there's no real way to trace back exactly why any one individual got cancer, and even if that could be done, there's no way of knowing which company released the particular chemical that caused the cancer, because a lot of different companies will be doing it. And if everyone's responsible, no one is.

    To parahrase Nelson from the Simpsons, it's a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark!

  • The maximum allowed concentration in the table I see is 190000 microgram of 1,1,1âTrichloroethane per liter. That's 190 mg.Liter - 190 *grams* per cubic meter of water. Stay away from that water.... I hope i read that wrong or somebody bungled that. That seem way too high. Heck the PEL (although it is in gas form) is around 350 ppm, or about 1.9 mg per liter of gas (1900 mg per cubic meter). Somebody knowing the vapor pressure (100 mm Hg at 20ÂC) fancy calculating how much would go in the atmosph

  • acceptable levels of toxins will be increased for more than two dozen known carcinogens and decreased for 13 currently regulated chemicals. State officials back the plan because it places new rules on 39 other chemicals that are not currently regulated.

    I guess leaving the other ones alone and regulating those 39 was too logical of a step to take.

  • When revising a list of dozens of chemical limits, some are going to go up, and some are going to go down, and some are added. Overall, there's more chemicals being regulated. It's not clear from TFA that there is anything wrong. There is no expert analysis given in the story.

  • Get this horrible chemical out of our water!

  • They are also considering raising the sales tax 0.5% to clean the toxic waste out of the lagoons. The left hand doesn't know what the fracking right hand is doing!

  • Now we know how Florida intends to deal with it's growing population of senior citizens.
  • ... and send it down to Florida.
  • It's not already full of toxins? Have you ever BEEN to Florida? The water there smells like shit, more or less literally, shit. The first time I visited there I called the hotel's front desk to tell them there was something horribly wrong with the water in my room and they told me that no, that's just how the water is in Florida. Please feel free to buy one of the $10 bottles of water from the mini fridge. So really this doesn't amount to much since you were probably avoiding drinking the water if you live
  • to be fair, that might kill off the Zia carrying mosquitoes. http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
  • Just go hit the water supply of the very rich politicians in Tallahassee and add these same chemicals right up to the limit, in their water. Once their kids show up with Cancer and other interesting diseases, THEN they will be interested in making HONEST laws.
  • This is why I run a whole house filter, followed by water softner, followed by decent filters on drinking water.

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