Florida Department of Environmental Protection

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) is the Florida government agency responsible for environmental protection.

By the mid-1960s, when the federal government was becoming increasingly involved in initiatives designed to protect the country's environmental interests, Florida had four agencies involved with environmental protection: the Florida Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund (state land, including shores, beaches, wetlands, and bodies of water), the Department of Health (sewage treatment, drinking water quality), Florida Department of Natural Resources (state parks and recreation areas), and Game and Freshwater Fish Commission (hunting and fishing).

In the late 1960s, the Florida Department of Air and Water Pollution Control was created under Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr. Most staff were being taken from the Bureau of Sanitary Engineering of the state Department of Health. The name of the new agency was simplified to the Florida Department of Pollution Control.^{[citation needed]}

In the mid-1970s, the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation (FDER) was created from the Department of Pollution Control and portions of the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund and the Florida Department of Natural Resources. This revised agency was entrusted with the quality of the state's air and water, and with making major land management decisions, primarily related to shorelines and wetlands.^{[citation needed]}

The FDER began supervising five water management districts that had been established in 1972 under Chapter 373 of Florida Statutes to control all freshwater located in the state: The Suwannee River Water Management District, St. Johns River Water Management District, Southwest Florida Water Management District, South Florida Water Management District, and Northwest Florida Water Management District.^{[citation needed]}

By 1992, it was the nation's third-largest such state agency, with 1,500 employees and a budget of some $650 million. In 1993, the state merged the DER with the substantially larger Department of Natural Resources, creating the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Virginia Bass Wetherell was named Secretary of the new agency.

In 2004, it started the 'Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative', 6 years after a presidential order had instructed 7 states with reefs to develop roadmaps of conservation.

During the period from 2000 to 2005, the department functioned with a staff of about 3,600 employees and its annual budget averaged $1.9 billion ($1,899,731,705).^{[citation needed]}