Polarizing debates grow from Orange County’s lawn-fertilizing rules

The environmentally friendly way for a Central Florida resident to care for a lawn is a subject muddied by sharp disagreement and acrimony, especially now in Orange County.

Orange staffers are backing proposed revisions of county rules also favored by the lawn-service industry that would continue the controversial practice of spreading fertilizer on lawns during the wettest time of the year.

Environmentalists say that fertilizers are flushed by summer thunderstorms into gutters and then into Florida’s waters, where they trigger destructive outbreaks of harmful algae.

Pushing back on environmental groups campaigning for Orange to adopt a complete ban on rainyseason lawn fertilizing, Mac Carraway of Lakeland, who represents landscape professionals statewide, said in an online comment that a ban “only serves the

anti-landscape agenda of many hardened activist groups.”

Next month, Orange County commissioners are to consider staff-proposed revisions to an ordinance that regulates lawn fertilizing, covering timing, techniques, formulas and buffers from lakes.

The sharp dispute between environmental groups and the lawn industry flared up last week at a meeting of a county advisory group, the Environmental Regulatory Commission.

Counties have been tweaking their fertilizer ordinances as required by a new state law aimed at restoring polluted springs. The revisions have opened a window for considering a ban on rainy-season fertilizing.

This year, Seminole opted for such a ban, a move now adding fuel to polarizing disagreement in Orange, where an updated fertilizer ordinance would apply to cities and unincorporated areas.

Orange County technically does ban lawn fertilizing during the rainy season. But residents can get an exemption to the ban by taking an online course that “probably takes you 10 minutes,” said Julie Bortles, a regulatory coordinator at the county’s Environmental Protection Division.

Although it requires minimal effort, only about 230 of Orange’s 1.3 million residents have obtained that exemption since 2009. Environmentalists say Orange’s ban as it stands today is little known and fosters confusion.

Orange County, according to the county’s Environmental Protection Division, does little to inform residents about fertilizer rules and practices either through public education or enforcement.

Lawn-industry representatives at last week’s meeting of the Environmental Protection Commission suggested that only their personnel are apt to take care of lawns in an environmentally responsible way.

Toby Gaudin, service director for Central Florida-based Heron Lawn and Pest Control, said professionals in particular should be able to fertilize during the rainy season because they are “the only people abiding by putting applications correctly and in accordance with the science.”

Gaudin added that “only about 18 percent of the folks here in Central Florida have [professional-lawn] services.”

Other industry representatives urged the commission to think of nitrogen-rich fertilizer as essential during the rainy season when lawns grow most.

“There is nothing except nitrogen that can grow turf,” said Todd Josko, a Tampa-based lobbyist for TruGreen lawn service. “That’s important, because if the turf isn’t strong enough to do its job of being a buffer against runoff — all different types of runoff — then it makes it easier for that runoff to get into our waterways.”

Environmental advocates rebut lawn science as not accounting for careless behavior.

Eric Rollins. chairman of the Orange Soil and Water Conservation District, said fertilizer applicators are pressured by schedules and contracts.

“Are they going to stop their job right then, when they see a rainstorm coming?” Rollins said. “I don’t see that happening.”

In urging the commission to support a ban on rainy-season fertilizing, environmentalists started by saying, “I’m not paid to be here.”

“This is part of the issue, that it always comes down to money,” said one of them, Maria Bolton-Joubert of Orlando. “But we all need water.”

Orange County has a wider role in the fate of fertilizer pollution. The county’s springs, wetlands, storm drains and canals — and the pollution they carry — drain north into the Wekiva, Econlockhatchee and St. Johns rivers and south through creeks into the Everglades-bound Kissimmee River.

It is in the downstream cities and counties where pollution has triggered the worst eruptions of harmful algae, beach closings because of health concerns and mass die-offs of manatees, birds and fish.

“The tourist economy is taking a hit,” Central Florida Sierra Club member Marjorie Holt said.