Everglades phosphorus pollution deadlines have finally arrived. Can Florida meet them?

By Kailey Aiken, FloridaBulldog.org

After decades of delay, Florida has reached a long-awaited milestone in Everglades restoration: the first court-ordered phosphorus pollution deadlines have arrived. But environmental advocates say the state is still falling short of producing water clean enough to protect the Everglades, while the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) argues its treatment plans are on track.

The Everglades evolved as an extremely nutrient-poor ecosystem, so it thrives when phosphorus levels are extremely low, said John Kominoski, an ecosystem ecologist and lead of Florida International University’s Florida Coastal Everglades Program.

Excess phosphorus, on the other hand, disrupts the Everglades’ natural systems, fundamentally changing native plant ecosystems. As phosphorus enters the ecosystem, native sawgrass gives way to dense stands of cattail, shifting the Everglades toward what Kominoski described as an “invaded, degraded state.”

In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that pollutants, such as phosphorus, cannot be pumped into United States waters without a Clean Water Act discharge permit, regardless of where the pollutants originate from. The decision followed a Clean Water Act lawsuit filed by Friends of the Everglades and the Miccosukee Tribe. 

This litigation prevented the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) from relying on the argument that its massive pump system and stormwater canals merely acted as conduits, rather than discharging pollutants into protected waters, when back-pumping polluted water from a 71-square-mile drainage basin in Broward County into the Everglades and Miccosukee tribal lands.

This May, the first court-ordered phosphorus pollution limits took effect after three deadline extensions. The original compliance deadline was d2006.

Friends of the Everglades published a report on the projected failure of the SFWMD’s Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs) to meet these deadlines in March 2026. 

CAN STORMWATER TREATMENT AREAS DELIVER?

The SFWMD has five STAs covering about 60,000 acres. They were built at taxpayers’ expense largely to clean up phosphorous pollution caused by fertilizer runoff from the vast sugarcane and sugar beet fields of Big Sugar, including Florida Crystals Corp. and U.S. Sugar.

According to Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, STAs act as large, manmade marshes. Instead of phosphorus-polluted water flowing directly through the Everglades and beyond from the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) and Lake Okeechobee, the water is rerouted into an STA. These wetlands are specifically designed to remove phosphorus and other nutrients from the water before it continues south. 

“It’s really hard for phosphorus to leave an ecosystem,” Kominoski said. Unlike pollutants that dissipate into the atmosphere, phosphorus remains in soils and vegetation, and can later release back into the water, making removal complicated. 

“There are legacies of long-term buildup of phosphorus pollution that we don’t fully understand,” Kominoski added.

SFWMD reports their STAs removed approximately 150,000 pounds of phosphorus in Water Year 2026, (May 1, 2025-April 30, 2026). Based on data from the last 5 years of South Florida Environmental Reports, the Friends of the Everglades’ report contends that the STAs are still not consistently producing enough clean water to satisfy the Everglades’ legal phosphorus requirements, highlighting the need for more water storage and treatment in the EAA.

“The state is on a trajectory to violate the Water Quality Based Effluent Limit (WQBEL) during the water year that begins May 1, 2026,” the Friends’ report states. 

That federal limit mandates that the average flow-weighted mean total phosphorus concentration may not exceed 19 parts per billion (ppb) in any water year for the five STAs, and that the concentration must remain at or below 13 ppb in the next three out of five years. In practical terms, the treatment areas must consistently clean the water enough to keep phosphorus below strict legal limits before it is discharged into the Everglades.

Following the Friends of the Everglades’ findings, the SWFMD released a Quarterly Report in June 2026, stating, “The phosphorus limits referenced in recent reporting took effect May 1, 2026, at the start of water year 2027, and none of Florida’s Everglades STAs are currently out of compliance with those requirements.”

The SWFMD report claims that in the last water year, 4 of the 5 Everglades STAs achieved annual phosphorus concentrations at or below 19 ppb, and 1 of the 5 STAs achieved 13 ppb. 

The Friends of the Everglades acknowledge the STAs have removed large amounts of phosphorus, but argue they are insufficient. SFWMD’s report implies that since the current compliance period runs through April 2027, it is too early to determine whether the treatment areas will meet this year’s phosphorus standards. This standard has been pushed back twenty years. 

The district’s report further claims that the completion of additional projects in the multi-billion-dollar Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan will improve STA performance.

WHY COMPLIANCE MATTERS

Why Compliance Matters

If the phosphorus limits are not met, Friends of the Everglades argues that the EAA Reservoir may not be able to operate as originally intended because of water-quality requirements governing the project.

“If they don’t meet [the limits], they will be out of compliance with their permit from the state of Florida,” Samples said, adding that the group is “looking at all of our legal options to ensure compliance.”

“There’s a need to remove [phosphorus],” said Kominoski. “And there’s a need to understand where a lot of the phosphorus hotspots are.”

Yet, despite Lake Okeechobee and the EAA being major phosphorus sources, only one of the five STAs across the area has consistently met the 13 ppb phosphorus benchmark, according to a Friends of the Everglades’ analysis of recent South Florida Environmental Reports. The SFWMD disputes that characterization, arguing the current compliance period only began in May 2026. 

“What we don’t know enough about, in my opinion, is how much phosphorus is in the canals that are traversing the entire system,” Kominoski said. He added that researchers are still trying to determine how much phosphorus is moving through the canal network and whether it remains stored in sediments or is recycled back into the ecosystem.

In a March letter to Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Alexis A. Lambert and Executive Director Drew Bartlett of the South Florida Water Management District, Eve Samples wrote, “The 2026 South Florida Environmental Report (SFER) suggests that restoration is moving swiftly. This narrative ignores 30 years of legislative and regulatory deadline-shifting.”

After more than two decades of extensions, the debate is no longer over when Florida must meet the phosphorus limits, but whether it can.