BILL SUMMARY DETAILS

Florida League of Cities

Statewide Drinking Water Standards (Monitor)

SB 1546 (Stewart) and HB 1533 (Plakon) require the Department of Environmental Protection to adopt rules for a statewide maximum contaminant level for 1,4-dioxane. The rules must require a public water system, by January 2025, to test all of the system’s groundwater wells for dioxane. If dioxane is detected at levels greater than the statewide standard, the public water system must develop and submit to the Department a mitigation plan to bring the dioxane levels to state standards and comply with such standards within five years after the rules are adopted. The system must retest for dioxane at frequencies determined by the Department and make the mitigation plan and testing results available to the public. If testing does not detect levels of dioxane exceeding the state standard, a public water system must make the testing results available to the public and must retest for dioxane within five years. In addition, the bills require the Department to provide financial assistance under the drinking water state revolving loan fund to public water systems necessary to help reduce the system’s costs to update system infrastructure to meet the new standards. (O’Hara)