What’s worse is that they’re violating a state law commanding a cleanup.
I’ve been following this strange case for several years, so I was startled last week to see a story reported by WUFT-FM that said, “State adopts revised plans to improve water quality.”
The plans for the springs “identify sources of nitrogen and phosphorus including agriculture, septic tanks and urban fertilizers and set long-term goals for reducing their impacts,” the radio station noted.
Well, I thought, it’s about time!
See, the state Department of Environmental Protection was supposed to have adopted these plans in 2017, thus starting a cleanup that would be finished 20 years from that date.
Instead, they kept putting it off and putting it off, each time announcing they were giving themselves one more year to comply with the state law commanding a springs cleanup.
Nobody ever punished the DEP for repeatedly breaking the law, so the agency just kept doing it.
That’s why, when I saw the story about these new springs regulations, I was all set to congratulate the DEP on finally achieving those long-delayed goals. But then I talked to some springs experts and found out that it’s just more foot-dragging like before.
Turns out protecting our springs is not as important as protecting the politically powerful polluters.
“DEP is not following the law in order to give polluters an out,” said Ryan Smart of the Florida Springs Council. “When we get to the 20-year mark, I’m afraid we’re going to be worse off than when we started.”
Mermaids, monkeys and the Black Lagoon
Here’s a cool Florida fact: This state contains more first-magnitude springs than anywhere else on Earth. “First magnitude” refers to how much water gushes out of them.Several of the springs are owned by us taxpayers because they’re part of the state park system. For instance, there’s Wakulla Springs, renowned as “the world’s largest and deepest freshwater spring,” where a movie crew filmed “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
There’s Silver Springs, famed for its glass-bottomed boats and its roaming monkeys.
And we can’t forget Weeki Wachee Springs, where the list of government jobs includes “mermaid.”
Early accounts of our springs are credited with inspiring Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem about Kubla Khan, which speaks of a sacred river running through “caverns measureless to man.”
Another well-known writer, Everglades doyenne Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, dubbed the springs “bowls of liquid light,” Biologist and diver Doug Stamm, in his recent book “The Springs of Florida,” calls them “wondrous blue jewels.” Both descriptions seem accurate to me.
Our springs were our earliest tourist attraction. Northern visitors poured in here because medical hucksters succeeded in pushing a sit-and-soak as a cure-all.
But the most important thing to know about our springs is that they’re windows.
When you gaze into the depths of a Florida spring, you’re looking into our underground aquifer, the source of 90% of our drinking supply. If the springs become tainted, so does the water we drink.
Right now, these windows are dirty and getting progressively dirtier.
Getting ESP
It’s not hard to figure out what’s gone wrong with our springs.Too much pumping from the aquifer — to irrigate golf courses, boost crops, and provide lush suburban lawns — has lowered the pressure pushing these ancient fountains out of the “caverns measureless to man.”
Meanwhile, excess fertilizer, leaky sewage pipes, and malfunctioning septic tanks keep dumping nitrates into the mix, spurring the growth of toxic algae that resembles — but does not taste like — guacamole.
Alarmed by the trend, in 2016 some very persistent springs supporters persuaded the Legislature to pass a law called “The Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act.” The law designated 30 of the state’s springs as “Outstanding Florida Springs,” which means they are such Florida treasures that they deserve ESP — extra special protection.
If any of those 30 springs become impaired by pollution, the law said, then the DEP had to get them cleaned up within 20 years. Turned out, 24 of the 30 made the polluted list.
The law gave the DEP until 2017 to figure out how to start cleaning them up. Instead, in 2017, the agency granted itself more time to come up with new rules. Then they did it again in 2018. And 2019. And 2020. And … you get the idea.
Meanwhile, year after year, the springs’ conditions got worse and worse.
“Instead of shrinking, contaminants grew,” the WUFT-FM story reported. “Between 2016 and 2024, nitrogen increased by about 1.5 million pounds per year on average in impaired outstanding springs.”
In fact, Smart told me, not only has the DEP not cleaned up the 24, but the list of contaminated waterways now includes a 25th spring.
Plans to do nothing
The big issue, once again, is what the DEP calls Basin Management Action Plans. Each is supposed to address the pollution in a specific water body, reducing it until it’s no longer a problem. But when the Florida Springs Council studied the first set of springs plans that the DEP produced, it found that they would reduce, at best, only a tiny bit of pollution.The plans also failed to include any consideration for Florida’s growing population, instead acting like the population would simply freeze. Plus, their provisions were entirely voluntary. Polluters could follow them or not — it was up to them.
There was another problem, too. DEP was supposed to use the plans to spell out exactly how much nitrogen pollution should be reduced from which sources.
But the DEP chose to not include any such specifics. Instead, the agency inserted a pie-chart of pollution sources that didn’t name any names. It was as if they had guaranteed the polluters anonymity.
The springs council partnered with the Save the Manatee Club, the Sierra Club, and several other environmental groups and sued. They lost at the trial court level, but then, in 2023, four years after the suit was filed, an appeals court ruled in their favor.
“To be effective and have any teeth, BMAPs have to show who’s causing the most pollution, where polluters or the state need to do more, and how much reduction is needed,” their attorney, John Thomas, said in a press release at the time. “That’s what the ruling requires.”
So here we are two years after that ruling and six years after the suit was first filed, and the DEP has now announced its new plans with all the verve of P.T. Barnum unveiling his next act.
In a press release, the agency called the new plans “a science-driven, adaptive framework for reducing nutrient pollution in Florida’s rivers, lakes, estuaries, springs and aquifers” that were “developed in collaboration with local governments, state agencies, utilities and other key stakeholders.”
And the DEP’s recently appointed secretary, Alexis Lambert, called this “a significant milestone made possible through input, collaboration and dedication.”
Bob Knight has been studying Florida’s springs longer than any other scientist alive. Not long ago, he retired as the head of the Howard T. Odom Florida Springs Institute.
I called him to see what he thought about these new plans. The answer was: Not much.
“A lot of staff time and resources goes into BMAPs to give the appearance of thorough science,” Knight told me. “But otherwise, they’re just a smokescreen to let big ag and urban development continue their polluting enterprises.”
As with the earlier plans that led to the lawsuit, he said, everything is “pretty much voluntary instead of required. That means there’s no chance of the BMAPs helping.”
For instance, Knight said, the dairies in North Florida are a major source of pollution flowing into the springs. “What are the BMAPs requiring the dairies to do? Nothing.”
Keep hope alive
In a way, I suppose none of this should be a surprise.Since 2019, the DEP has been under the control of Gov. Ron DeSantis. You know, the guy who thinks state parks are a good place to build golf courses and the Everglades is the perfect spot to put a concentration camp.
Remember back when he was first elected? He’d promised to do something about our growing problem of toxic algae blooms. He got off to a good start, appointing a panel of scientists to recommend what to do.
Then he ignored most of the report’s recommendations.
Instead, he cut a secretive deal with an Israeli company to dump a hydrogen peroxide mixture on the algae. That makes it go away for a little while — but then it comes right back.
Smart told me he and his colleagues haven’t yet decided what to do about this latest DEP failure to launch. They’ve spent years fighting the state in court and meanwhile the springs just keep declining in water quality. What’s the solution?
Maybe the springs advocates should publicly announce that they’re applying for aid from First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida charity.
Sure, the charity is mired in scandal and it’s even facing a criminal investigation. But the whole point of Hope Florida is to help people in need of government assistance, and that’s clearly what our springs need but cannot get.
Hope Florida has also shown itself to be, um, er, let’s say “resourceful” when it comes to handling millions of dollars, and I think that’s what it will take to clean up these jewels.
“When you call the Hope Line, you take the first step towards accomplishing the American Dream,” the Hope Florida website says.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
Readers and community members are always welcome to send letters to the editors Please let us know if we may consider your submission for publication.
Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | BlueSky
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2025.