A nonprofit presented a clear demand in a new lawsuit against Florida’s environmental regulators: Follow the law and make your own rules to save Florida’s struggling springs.

The lawsuit, filed this month in Hernando County, comes nearly nine years after Florida lawmakers passed a measure that requires the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to create rules that would prevent commercial, agricultural and utility industries from drawing a damaging amount of water from springs.

The law was designed to protect springs like the Wekiwa and Ichetucknee, where advocates worry permits are being easily approved by water managers and the withdrawing of too much groundwater has strangled springs of the flows needed to fend off pollution and let biodiversity thrive.

But as the years have mounted without any official new state rules — what the Florida Springs Council argues is “continued inaction” from regulators — the nonprofit claims it has no choice but to sue the state’s environmental regulatory agency.

“If our state agencies don’t have to follow the law, we have no hope,” said Ryan Smart, executive director of the nonprofit suing the state. “Frankly, they should be ashamed that it takes a nonprofit group and a law clinic to sue them — not over the technical stuff — but just on following the basic mandate they were given nine years ago.”

The law from 2016 also required the state to clearly define what is considered “harmful” for Florida springs. That definition was meant to work as a guardrail for regional water managers, who are tasked with issuing the permits to draw water from springs.

Advocates say Florida’s springs, and their visitors, are paying the price as time marches on without new springs protections.

The lawsuit alleges that in 2022, six years after the law required the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to make springs rules, the agency released draft rules. But advocates argued it wasn’t sufficient to help protect Florida’s springs, and that draft was never formally adopted. In August of last year, the agency again created a draft that was never approved, and this September, the agency presented a third draft “nearly identical to the prior two.”

The back-and-forth has meant that hundreds of permits for water withdrawals at Florida springs continue to be approved, according to Smart.

“Our laws aren’t worth the paper they’re written on if our state agencies can just continue to ignore them — and do so in an intentional way,” Smart said. “There’s no effort here.”

The lawsuit comes days after the head of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Shawn Hamilton, stepped down after more than three years in the role. Earlier this year, his agency was tied up in a scandal over proposals to develop golf courses, hotels and pickleball courts on nine state parks across Florida. The new head of the agency is Alexis Lambert, chief of staff of the state’s division of bond finance since 2018.

A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Alexandra Kuchta, said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

When the Florida legislature approved the water law in 2016, they wrote into law they recognized that action to help protect Florida springs was “urgently needed.” But springs advocates say if the state truly cared about saving springs, they would have already come up with new rules.

“If you’ve ever been to a spring, you know it’s a natural wonder,” said Rachael Curran, a staff attorney at Stetson University’s Jacobs Public Interest Law Clinic, based out of Gulfport. Curran is helping the nonprofit with the lawsuit.

“If we allow our state agencies to ignore the will of the people via their represented legislators, we’re not going to have that wonderful natural resource any longer,” she said.

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