INITIATIVES
Clean Water Enforcement
WASTEWATER
We performed a survey of Northeast Florida’s municipal and industrial wastewater/sewer plants to determine which operations are the most significant violators/polluters. Once we identified these polluters, we’ve taken legal action to bring them into compliance. As a result of our actions, major polluters along the St. Johns River are now back in compliance with their permits. For example, we entered into a settlement agreement with a utility in Clay County, with whom we partnered to bring awareness to current environmental issues facing local waterways. Since then, the Public Trust has scrutinized an additional 25 facilities whose violations warranted extensive review and enforcement action.
Stormwater
In 2020 we began to expand our enforcement actions to include industrial sites violating federal and state stormwater rules. Since then, we have successfully brought Clean Water Act lawsuits against several major industrial facilities to stop polluted stormwater containing toxic metals and chemicals from entering our local waterbodies. Additionally, in order to mitigate the environmental impact of their actions, these facilities can elect to contribute to the Northeast Florida Environmental Conservation Fund housed at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida, whose funds are used to improve, protect and conserve the environment. We continue to identify the sources of stormwater pollution and take the swift action needed to prompt compliance and protect our waterways.
Waterway Blues
The goal of the “The Waterway Blues” initiatiave is to bring awareness to environmental threats to our local waterways as a result of human actions. This will be accomplished by releasing educational posts to encourage the public to engage in practices to reduce their impact and cultivate meaningful change for our waterways. The main theme of the “Waterway Blues” campaign will be to integrate music to motivate citizens to join the fight to protect our waterways. Education will be posted to the Public Trust’s social media pages and will be shared with project partners. The Public Trust will also hold “Blues” music themed events to engage the public and policy makers on the importance of waterway stewardship.
Restoration
As new threats arise daily, we must work towards repairing our previously impacted resources. We are currently working on expanding our water quality protection initiatives to include restoration projects. We have been working diligently on identifying some of the most impaired and threatened waterways within our watershed and are exploring restoration and wetland installation projects. Stay tuned to learn more about this exciting and important initiative!