Change in the assessment cycle

To: Interested Stakeholders

From: Julie Espy, Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Date: April 22, 2013

 

In anticipation of numeric nutrient criteria (NNC) for lakes, streams, and springs that the Department adopted in December 2011 becoming effective, the Department wishes to update you on the following change for the assessment cycle of the waterbodies in the Group 2 basins, which includes the Apalachicola-Chipola Rivers, Lower St. Johns River, Middle St. Johns River, Tampa Bay Tributaries, Charlotte Harbor and St. Lucie-Loxahatchee Rivers.  Based on the watershed management cycle, the Department would typically assess the waterbodies in these basins in 2013; however, we are postponing this year’s assessment cycle to align our monitoring programs with our assessment cycle under the new numeric nutrient criteria.  This change in the assessment cycle has been accepted by EPA since we will still report 303(d) assessment updates in the 2014 Integrated Report (due April 1, 2014) as part of the requirements of the Clean Water Act, which requires updates every two years, not every year. 

        In addition to allowing more time for finalization of NNC, this postponement allows the Department to plan monitoring efforts to collect the data needed to fully assess waters using the NNC.  The numeric nutrient criteria require two to three years of data to assess a waterbody rather than a single year of data under previous rules.  Therefore, we will conduct monitoring for a second year in the Group 2 basins (they were monitored in 2012) to collect additional data and to be better able to assess these waters in 2014. 

The change in the assessment cycle yields the following schedule:

Our strategic monitoring is primarily carried out by our DEP districts.  Moving forward, in most years, each district will be monitoring in two basins; however, depending on the region and workload capacity we may at times work in other basin groups.  At this time, there should be no changes in schedules for uploading data to FL STORET.  In addition to IWR assessments, your data are used for a range of purposes, including TMDL development, BMAPs, and standards development.  The Department needs timely access to these data and the current schedule provides for that.

Other important activities Watershed Assessment Section staff will carry out this year in preparation for full implementation of the NNC include:  revise our Impaired Waters database and outputs to address the implementation of the NNC; develop SOPs for new “study list” analyses and assessments (identification of a pollutant, trend test, etc.); enhance the “WBID” structure to better represent assessed waters by incorporating the National Hydrography Dataset; and finalizing several guidance documents to assist the public and stakeholders with aspects of the program (e.g. Reasonable Assurance and pollutant reduction plans).

Thank you for your continued interested and support in this important step for state’s water quality assessment program. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Julie Espy, (Julie.espy@dep.state.fl.us, 850-245-8416).  Apologies if you receive this announcement more than once due to the use of multiple stakeholder lists.

 

 

 

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