'Huge win for Florida's wetlands': Green groups cheer order undoing Florida's permit control

A federal judge in Washington has canceled a decision under former President Donald Trump’s administration that let Florida handle permitting for development in wetlands normally regulated by the federal government.

The ruling vacated a handover of permitting power that made Florida one of just three states in the country, along with Michigan and New Jersey, responsible for enforcing wetlands protections spelled out under a section of the federal Clean Water Act.

The order returns that permitting power to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had handled the decisions until December 2020. U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss gave the state 10 days to seek a stay to delay his order.

Environmental activists worried that state-level permitting could be swayed too much by development interests’ political influence and said ordinary Floridians risked losing protections that were built into the federal system.

Parts of the lawsuit remain unresolved, but activists celebrated the ruling Moss signed Thursday.

“This is a huge win for Florida’s wetlands,” said St. Johns Riverkeeper Lisa Rinaman, whose organization was one of seven environmental groups that sued EPA in 2021 to return federal oversight. “The bottom line is, if we’re really going to defend and protect the St. Johns River, it starts with the St. Johns River wetlands.”

A State of the River Report underwritten yearly by the city of Jacksonville has repeatedly listed damage to wetlands by development as a continuing challenge to the health of the St. Johns and the creeks and rivers that feed it.

Environmental groups argued a range of reasons they said the state program wasn’t done legally and the ruling was based only on issues involving plants and animals protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Other questions about whether the state program complied with requirements of the Clean Water Act still have to be decided.

But Moss’s order vacated EPA’s entire decision to turn over wetlands permitting to Florida and advocates saw in that an acknowledgment of the reach of species protections in wetlands permitting.

“Today’s ruling sends a clear signal that Congress meant what it said when it passed the Endangered Species Act," Christina I. Reichert, an attorney for the activist law firm Earthjustice, said in a release about Moss’s ruling. “No state can be allowed to take over a federal program as important as the Clean Water Act’s wetlands permitting program by making an end-run around the Endangered Species Act.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Florida's control over wetland permits vacated in federal lawsuit