Commissioner misled public

On July 15 Florida Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Charles Bronson convinced five of the Hillsborough County commissioners to free the fertilizer industry from all responsibility for its portion of the nutrient pollution problem in Tampa Bay.

The Environmental Protection Commission staff, responsible for making sure Hillsborough meets its state and federal clean water requirements in the most cost-efficient manner, recommended the Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP) approach to residential fertilizer management. Their mission was to save tax dollars and area water resources at the same time.

The 30 tons of nitrogen that would have been kept out of the bay by the TBEP fertilizer rule recommendation equals the amount deposited into the bay by five area wastewater treatment plants. This reduction would have made it possible to continue to meet mandated nutrient levels while at the same time allow for more growth in job-creating industry.

Why did Bronson weigh in on this? Agriculture would have been completely exempt with a strong rule, but now it may be on the hook for Tampa Bay's nutrient pollution problem. Whose bidding was Bronson doing?

The answer to that is "Big Fertilizer" - at the expense of area farmers.

His words in "Fertilizer plan goes too far" (July 15) are a verbatim representation of the remarks made over and over again by Scotts Company lobbyists over the past months. What is different about the commissioner's remarks is that he should not be allowed to lie to the public.

Bronson's claim that the summer blackout would impede the growth of healthy lawns has been disproven in both Sarasota and Lee counties over the past three years. He contradicts himself when he recognizes that turf can be fertilized during the growing-season months of May and October (outside of the summer ban period), and his intentional neglect of the use of control-release fertilizer is disingenuous.

Bronson misleads when he claims that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's model ordinance calls for no summer blackout. In section 12 the FDEP model ordinance encourages non-commercial applicators to follow the Florida Yards & Neighborhoods (FYN) program - this includes the recommendation to apply an iron source instead of nitrogen in the summer to prevent water pollution from nutrient leaching and runoff.

Bronson is incorrect when claiming that there is no scientific evidence justifying the summer ban. The TBEP recommendations are science-based, as are the FYN recommendations; to suggest otherwise is an affront to the National Estuary Program, the FDEP and the University of Florida/IFAS.

And finally, Bronson's admonition that the summer ban "could wind up triggering more nutrient runoff" is pure conjecture and without any basis in science. The Sarasota experience and scientific research have proven that fertilizer application bans keep nutrients out of watersheds.

Shame on Bronson for taking the wrong side for all the wrong reasons. I challenge the commissioner to back up his claims and hope, for the sake of Hillsborough farmers, taxpayers and coastal businesses, that the EPC soon comes to its senses when it comes to protecting the very heart of its economic engine.