Prepare for more government regulations on your land!

This summer, the state of Florida plans to enact several new regulations that will greatly affect how landowners design and build their land.

But even worse are Federal requirements that will probably be passed in October that will cost the state of Florida $50 billion to implement.

The issue is cleaning up and preserving Florida's water. Currently, many studies have shown that too much nitrogen and phosphorus is being released into the waters, causing their quality to diminish significantly.

The first issue is being placed on landowners by the state Department of Environmental Protection. These new rulings will require newly developed properties to eliminate 85% of all nitrogen and phosphorus from stormwater, nearly doubling current standards.

Here's an article from Orlando Business Journal outlining the DEP's new rules: OBJ.

The Federal rules will be considerably worse. These rules assign a number to each body of water as to what they would be if they are pristine. If they are currently not at that number, anyone near the water will have to work to meet the pristine number. While is sounds like a good idea, the numbers are actually quite far off. For instance, certain rivers in Central Florida that have been determined to be pristine in other studies are coming in that they are polluted. Here's another article from the Orlando Business Journal on this issue: OBJ.

The net affect is that land owners will be forced to utilize half or more of their land for stormwater or install a costly stormwater treatment facility on their property. And for those of you who don't own land, every city and county who has a wastewater treatment facility will be forced to upgrade those plants, significantly adding to the cost of your water bill - $8,000 per household in Florida!