How Trump environmental rollbacks could increase pollution in Florida

In a sweeping announcement, Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Lee Zeldin last week proclaimed that the federal government would roll back 31 bedrock environmental regulations. The agency called it the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history” and said it would lower costs for American families.

If the agency follows through on this pledge, it could alter protections for fragile Florida wetlands and scale back rules that keep the state’s air and water clean. The administration is also targeting multiple regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to the climate change that Floridians have already begun to experience.

Environmental advocates said it amounted to nothing less than an unprecedented abandonment of the agency’s mission to protect the natural world — and the public — from pollution.

“Florida is just bound to get hit the hardest, with the climate emergency we’re having,” said Raul Garcia, vice president of policy and legislation at the environmental law firm Earthjustice. He pointed to last year’s catastrophic hurricane season in which storms were supercharged by an unusually hot Gulf of Mexico, plus the state’s property insurance crisis.

“People are still thinking (climate change) is happening 10 years from now,” Garcia said. “This is happening today, and I think few people know this as well as Floridians.”

Zeldin’s announcement does not automatically rescind the rules. Rather, it’s a signal that the administration will start the process of clawing back regulations, which requires the government to prove that they were based on either flawed science or legal reasoning. That won’t be easy, environmentalists said, as some of these rules have established records of benefitting public health through reducing asthma attacks, cancer and more. Lawsuits are virtually guaranteed.

And it’s unclear whether Florida voters, who overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in last year’s election, will back this move. Across the political spectrum, polling has found that Floridians are environmentally conscious. Last year’s bipartisan backlash to plans to put golf courses and hotels in state parks added more evidence.

“I am a Trump supporter — but only to a point,” said Don Brugman, a St. Petersburg resident disappointed by the rollbacks. “Why go backwards? We’ve gained so much — so why lose it now?”

Here’s how some of the rollbacks could impact Florida:

Wetlands

For years, the legal definition of a wetland has sparked disputes over who has authority over Florida’s network of marshes and swamps — and who decides whether they can be filled in for development.

Now, with the nation’s foundational clean water law targeted by the new federal leadership, some Florida environmental experts worry the state’s wetlands could be increasingly at risk.

The Trump administration this month signaled it aims to implement a 2023 Supreme Court ruling to further limit protections by determining where a wetland begins and ends. It comes down, in part, to how the Trump administration defines a “discrete feature,” like a pipe, ditch or culvert that connects federally managed waters to a nearby wetland.

A core argument at stake is whether wetlands are a part of — not separate from — federal waters.

Thomas Mullin, who represents homebuilders and developers for the South Florida law firm Bilzin Sumberg, said the presence of a pipe or a culvert on a property could define the area as a wetland and warrant a lengthy oversight process.

But with the new guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency, what Mullin considers a “major hang-up” in the permitting process could now be cleared up.

“This is much-needed clarification,” Mullin said. “It brings certainty to the federal permitting process.”

Other lawyers argue that if a wetland isn’t considered connected to a federal waterbody and thus not eligible for protections, developers would be able to bypass guardrails designed to save endangered species and curb pollution.

“I think this has the potential to remove a large number of wetlands from federal jurisdictions, which places a lot of water bodies and endangered species and tribal resources in jeopardy,” said Jaclyn Lopez, director of the Jacobs Public Interest Law Clinic for Democracy and the Environment at Stetson’s College of Law.

This latest rollback comes as a larger conversation among top Florida government officials has grown in recent months about further limiting federal reach in state ecosystem restoration. Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example, has launched a push to take over Everglades restoration from the feds.

Last year, a judge said federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, violated the law in 2020 when they allowed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to assume control of wetlands permitting.

On Monday, however, U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody introduced a bill to reverse the judge’s ruling by putting permitting power back in state hands.

Federal estimates show that before rampant development swept across the marshy state, wetlands spread more than 20 million acres across Florida. While that number has been reduced by roughly half in the modern era, Florida still has more wetlands than any of the nation’s other 47 contiguous states.

Power plants

Earlier this year, in a letter first reported by the Tampa Bay Times, Duke Energy and other utilities asked Zeldin to rescind rules requiring power plants to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and better clean up coal ash that can leach dangerous chemicals into groundwater.

This latest announcement grants those wishes.

One set of rules likely to be rolled back essentially requires coal-fired plants to capture smokestack emissions or shut down by 2032, while many new natural gas-fired power plants must eliminate 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions.

To do this, utilities would have to use expensive carbon-capture technology, likely making renewable options like solar more attractive. Utilities previously said carbon-capture technology was impossible to implement by the deadline, and observers expected the rules to hasten the retirement of coal plants throughout the country.

In their letter to Zeldin, utility companies wrote that if left in place, the greenhouse gas rule would have “grave consequences for the reliability of the nation’s power system and the cost of electricity.”

Duke Energy burns coal at its power plant in Crystal River. In Hillsborough County, Tampa Electric’s Big Bend power plant also burns coal some of the time.

When asked whether rollbacks would change their plant operations, neither Duke nor Tampa Electric provided specifics. Both emphasized steps they’re already taking to burn less coal and build solar farms.

“We will continue maintaining our high standards,” said Tampa Electric spokesperson Jennifer Hall. “We are already exceeding emission reduction targets.”

In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, the rules targeted by the rollbacks also curb mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants, especially those that burn coal.

Garcia, the Earthjustice lawyer, said the mercury rule has been in place for at least a decade.

“It’s hard to find another rule that does more to save lives and it’s so easy to comply with than mercury,” he said. “Why? Because everybody understands mercury is toxic — you don’t even want to touch it — and these plants are emitting it into the air.”

Susannah Randolph, director of Sierra Club Florida, said axing the mercury rule would amount to a “five-alarm fire.” When the Biden administration strengthened the rule last year, officials estimated it would prevent 1,000 pounds of mercury from entering the air over four years.

Hillsborough resident Paul C. Prose, Jr. read about all the potential changes to power plant rules with concern. He lives about 5 miles from the Big Bend plant, he said.

“I used to get a lot of black soot on my lanai from the coal,” he said. “Finally it got better. Now I’m afraid that I’ll have the same problem again with the change in the laws.”

Car emissions and electric vehicles

Florida drivers were initially slower to adopt EVs than those in other states, but in recent years have embraced electric vehicles at a rapid pace — registering a greater share of EVs last year than most of the country.

Some of the rules now on the chopping block, though, could impact that momentum. Zeldin wants to slash car tailpipe emission standards implemented by the Biden Administration designed to target the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases and hasten the development of EVs.

Kenneth Hernandez, chairperson of the pro-EV nonprofit Drive Electric Florida whose members include utility companies, said that so far, much of Florida’s progress on EVs has been driven by consumer demand rather than by any government support. Florida’s state government has been cooler to EVs than others and has lagged behind implementing a federally funded program to build more chargers near highways.

That means that a scaling back of government EV support might not hit Florida as hard as other places, Hernandez said. But if the rollbacks start causing car-makers to hesitate before launching new models, that could be a different story.

“If consumers have fewer choices, that’s going to have an impact,” he said. “Consumers are still wanting to buy electric vehicles — the market in Florida is saying that. ... As long as when they choose to buy them they actually can, I would think the consumer sentiment would remain the same.”