The “summer slime” season is starting in Florida. Over and over, we’ll be forced to watch the places where we love to boat, swim and fish get covered with nauseating algae that can make us, our pets, and wildlife sick.

In Tallahassee and in Washington, polluter lobbyists are getting their politician friends to push for ineffective standards on the pollution that’s sparking these nasty toxic algae outbreaks all over the state. We’re talking about phosphorus and nitrogen, the so-called “nutrients,” which come from the sewage, manure and fertilizer that runs into our water.

Polluters basically wrote the Florida Department of  Environmental Protection’s ineffective rules on this pollution, and they desperately want the state to substitute their loophole-ridden bureaucratic mumbo jumbo for the clear, enforceable standards developed by  the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Gov. Rick Scott is doing his best to give the polluters what they want – these weak, substitute rules.

We need the EPA’s strong rules, because they set enforceable numeric limits on the amount of phosphorus and nitrogen allowed in our waters. The EPA’s rules are easy-to-read speed limit signs. The rules Gov. Scott is pushing are ridiculous — they would only require pollution control after waters have been already slimed – and that means the damage is done and taxpayers will be forced to pay for expensive clean-up.

Now it’s up to President Obama:  will he back Rick Scott’s proposal, or support EPA’s?

So far, environmental activists have sent more than 34,000 letters to the White House, urging Obama to enforce the EPA’s standards. We have to keep the pressure up.

This heartbreaking pollution is a public health threat that hurts tourism and the most important resource we have — our drinking water.

When the EPA standards go into effect, they will spur important changes to control pollution at its source: More sustainable agriculture practices for fertilizer and pesticide use, upgrades to outdated  sewage systems, and  modern manure management, to name a few.

We have to fight back against the polluters – it is just not fair for them to keep using our public waters as their private sewers. We have formed a citizen’s group to fight back. It is called the Florida Water Coalition, and you can learn more – and send an alert to the White House — by visiting floridawatercoalition.org.

It doesn’t have to be this way. This is not the inevitable price of progress – this pollution is preventable. New limits on sewage, manure and fertilizer pollution will stop the problem at its source. Everyone knows it is cheaper to prevent pollution in the first place than it is to clean it up later.

It’s pretty simple: We need to upgrade some outdated sewer plants, modernize agricultural methods, and apply fertilizer smarter so it doesn’t get wasted by running off in the rain and fueling toxic algae.

This is common sense.  But it’s taken us over 10 years to get the government to agree to set limits on sewage, manure and fertilizer. What’s lacking right now is political will on the part of Florida leaders. That’s why we citizens have to keep standing up and demanding that our leaders stop doing favors for polluters and instead protect the waters that belong to us, the public.

The opponents of new pollution limits keep saying that putting limits on sewage, fertilizer and manure in the water will cost jobs. That doesn’t make any sense at all. What hurts Florida jobs is green, stinking water and massive fish kills that scare tourists and snowbirds away for good.

We’ll be keeping you updated on the latest developments in the battle to prevent toxic algae, and letting you know some easy ways you can pitch in – writing letters to your leaders, letters to the media, documenting algae outbreaks, and attending meetings so our voices are heard. And when you feel discouraged, just remember – those of us who support clean water outnumber the misguided polluters who think they have a right to use our public resources as their private sewers. It’s just not right, and we don’t have to stand for it.

by David Guest

At the end of August, a large, disgusting algae outbreak slimed Old Tampa Bay. Two months earlier, an algae outbreak in the Caloosahatchee River near Fort Myers turned the river bright green, smelled like raw sewage, and made thousands of fish go belly up. Water with algae outbreaks like this is so toxic that health authorities say you shouldn’t touch it, much less drink it or swim in it. It can give you rashes, respiratory problems, and even kill you.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., found that out the hard way. He swam in the same type of toxic algae outbreak in Grand Lake, Okla., in June and said he became “deathly sick” that night with an upper respiratory illness. “There is no question,” Inhofe told the Tulsa World, that his illness came from the toxic algae in the lake. Oklahoma health officials had warned people not to touch the water, swim in the popular lake, or eat fish from it. Like Florida’s outbreaks, the one in Grand Lake was fueled by the so-called nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, which come from inadequately treated sewage, fertilizer and manure.

After years of seeing nauseating algae outbreaks on popular Florida tourist beaches like Sanibel Island and at fishing meccas like the St. Johns River, we citizens finally got the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to start setting limits on the sewage, fertilizer and manure pollution that’s threatening our drinking water and our health.

This type of pollution is preventable. We can combat it at its source — by upgrading old sewer plants, using modern manure management on agricultural operations and being smarter about applying fertilizer.

Cleaning up our waters is a good thing, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the distortions and inflated cost estimates that highly paid polluter-lobbyists are peddling to scare people. They will spend whatever it takes to make sure they can keep using our public waters as their private sewers.

The truth is that meeting Florida’s new limits for these contaminants is likely to cost a few dollars extra per person per month phased in over many years. In Chesapeake Bay, for example, advanced wastewater treatment cut pollution at a cost of only $2.50 per household per month. Not a bad price for clean water.

The Florida DEP is in the process of setting new statewide standards for phosphorus and nitrogen pollution. Unfortunately, the rules that state regulators have proposed so far are inadequate to protect public health and clean up the waters. It is critical that the state’s polluters, now emboldened by the current anything-goes mentality in Tallahassee, don’t end up writing the DEP’s water-pollution rules. It is critical that our state regulators protect the public, not the polluters.

Tourism, fishing and boating are our economic lifeblood in Florida. When visitors come here and see dead fish and “No Swimming” signs, they won’t come back, and that affects our state budget and our jobs.

David Guest is an attorney in the Tallahassee office of Earthjustice, a public-interest law firm.