The Clean Water Act guaranteed Americans the right to clean, safe, drink-able, fish-able, swim-able waters. An attempt was made to limit pollution to what a waterbody could bear without being impaired, called the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). A year ago the Indian River Lagoon was on a Department of Environmental Protection list, along with 700 other water bodies considered to be impaired. The list was too long, so they redefined impaired and the Lagoon, along with 600 other waterbodies, is no longer impaired - at least on paper. Last July one third of all fishkills in Florida occurred in the Lagoon, 40 dolphin mysteriously died in thirty days and a fish never known to be toxic to humans has turned toxic. Our volunteers testing water quality measured the lowest levels of oxygen in the water in our eleven year history last summer and this summer we have found the lowest levels of salinity (see page 6), but the Lagoon is officially no longer impaired, it will not benefit from the pollution reduction program. Portions of the Indian River Lagoon were considered impaired due to unhealthy levels of Mercury, Silver, Lead, Cadmium, Selenium, Thallium, nutrients, coliforms and dissolved oxygen. No new data has been collected to show otherwise, but now the Lagoon is unimpaired because a new DEP rule considers waterbodies healthy until proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be impaired. For example the rule requires that a water body fail water quality health standards more than 10% of the time and infrequently tested water bodies may be unhealthy more then 20% of the time and still not be considered impaired. If a toxicity test finds a water body is toxic to fish, it is still not considered impaired unless it fails twice in five years. No where in the rule is the DEP required to test a water body for toxicity twice in five years. Mercury, one of the most toxic metals in the environment, is given a very low priority even though it is a widespread pollutant throughout Florida. Florida got involved with TMDLs after Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund sued the state into complying with the Clean Water Act. The original Federal guidelines expected polluters to bear the responsibility for reducing pollution of impaired water bodies. Polluting Industries, such as paper mills, corporate farms and large developers lobbied successfully for provisions in the Florida rule to avoid the pollution reduction requirements. EPA has been served notice that a complaint will be filed in federal court by several Florida organizations for failure to determine if the Florida rule is consistent with the Clean Water Act.