While experts and conservation teams urge working together to use less, Florida’s water leadership — from local government officials to water-management district leaders to the governor’s office — seems focused on sticking more straws in the fragile supply of freshwater
Unless local and state factions can come together to build a bridge, there appears to be troubled waters ahead for Florida.
What is going on behind closed doors and even under our noses regarding the fate of the state’s ecological future has everything to do with politics. The water is owned by the state, but guardianship of our aquifers, our rivers, springs and lakes – our only sources aside from rainwater of life-sustaining potable drinking water — had been entrusted to water districts. They are run by boards.
Environmentalists, conservationists and the everyday citizens are the watchdogs, but there is conflict over which direction to take.
While there is hue and cry for conservation of water, there is also still a history lesson to be learned about balance and over-tapping our aquifers. Unless we correct our mistakes about surface water, we may be creating a whole set of new problems. Desalination is on the horizon, but in these economically challenging times might make it cost prohibitive.
Now a new political twist has occurred. The directive of the boards has been reduced to five individuals. Before the unthinkable occurs we must come to terms with an ecological and political mandate. Time, like water, rushes by quickly.
The Players
The very structure of water management districts created in the 1970’s and the importance to have the board members sign off on all major water decisions has now been altered by the legislative passing of SB 2080. It may be possible for one person to sway the most critical water decisions for our future.
Florida’s five water management districts were created in 1972, through the Florida Water Resources Act (Chapter 373) with expanded responsibilities for the duel role of regional water resource management and environmental protection.
The Florida Legislature established the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District (C&SF FCD) in 1949, the predecessor to the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) to manage the enormous project designed and built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In 1976, voters approved a constitutional amendment granting the districts the absolute authority to levy property taxes without impunity to help fund these activities.
According to water conservation expert and author of the critically acclaimed book, “Mirage,” Cynthia Barnett, the purpose of forming the districts was to grant permits for water while protecting the resource. They reasoned back then that the boards should be appointed so the governor will always be accountable for water decisions. The governor appoints the board which then hires the executive director. They look at water quantity and quality.
“The balance thought to be achieved from my perspective” said Commissioner Barbara Fitos “is that the boards must represent a diverse set of interests –environmental through development – and the constituents throughout the area they represent.”
To do so, they must have a valid snapshot where we are today and where our best efforts are going to be and overcome the conundrum of protecting resources while providing water permits.
Water decisions were considered so important that the governor would always be held accountable says Barnett.
The Power
Whether or not the water boards have too much power is debatable. They are able to grant water permits with absolute power and, without impunity, can even tax for it. Much of the control is in the hands of an appointed administrator, a Water Czar, which could tip the balance between “reasonable and beneficial use” and the protection of the eco-system toward the development side.
Executive directors are permitted to levy ad valorem taxes due to special districts laws — a unit of special-purpose government similar to municipalities. The five water management districts are just five of 1,631 special districts throughout Florida that can tax us without representative government.
More importantly, the water management districts gave away too many consumptive use permits (CUPS) for groundwater. “They are responsible for permitting our consumptive use of ground water carried out in a sustainable way and that didn’t happen” says Barnett. “The problem was they gave ground water permits to anyone who asked for one and now we are in this water crisis.”
This includes bottled water companies like Zephyrhills says environmental expert Guy Marwick, granted CUPS to build a plant and transport water out of the area that is supposed to belong to everyone in the state at a tremendous profit readily under the rationale they tap potable drinking water for the absolute purpose as drinking water – despite the fact that residents in the area are asked to conserve and that the proceeds earned are not used for Florida’s beneficial use such as schools, hospitals and infrastructure. “I have a problem that they take our resource make a profit off it and the state gets nothing – not even a severance fee as done for other resources” says Representative Kurt Kelly. Marwick equates it to oil found under Marion County given to Exxon for free.
According to John Thomas, counsel for the Putnam County Environmental Council, one only need to comply with a three-prong test for a permit.
- Comply with the “reasonable beneficial use” statutorily defined in section 373.019 (4).
- Prove the use will not interfere with any presently existing legal use of water.
- Make certain the use is consistent with the public interest. (The language is broad enough making it rather easy to be approved so long as you go through the lengthy, tedious and costly procedure.)
Many local representatives such as Marion County Commissioner Barbara Fitos and Rep. Kurt Kelly question the appropriate implementation of this definition – especially when we know today things we didn’t know 10 years ago whereby the water districts set the baseline marker on conditions that existed in 1995.
The issue is sustainability; measuring future impact knowing our ground water resources is finite and finding alternative water sources economically says Fitos.
The boards suffer from what environmental expert Don Browning calls a public relations image nightmare because they are not elected and so make no effort to relate to the public. They also create a myth that we are running out of water but we really aren’t he says – we are just taking it very improperly under improper measures. “The boards regulate us but they don’t really represent us” Browning says “never having to consider the accuracy of their statements.”
It was Browning who advised Governor Crist to pass SB 2080 based on the logic it is much harder to get nine people to act than one; logic that is not supported by the majority.
When they do their studies of minimum flows, says Karen Ahlers, president of the Putnam County Environmental Council, they need to consider historic conditions (which are the statutory requirement) much further back; by 1995 a tremendous amount of damage had already been done.
We are beginning to see the same thing happen with surface water permits says Barnett.
The Controversy
On the eve of May 1, 2009 Senator J.D. Alexander, R-Lakeland made the eleventh-hour, highly controversial move to add section 6 addition some would call a poison pill rider to Senator Carey Baker’s SB 2080. The addition shifted authority from the board to the five executive directors – including Southwest Florida Water Management District (Swiftmud) executive director David Moore – granting absolute power on consumptive use permits (CUPS) over 500,000 gallons per day with little transparency and accountability to the public. Against massive conservationist, environmental group and average citizen opposition, Governor Crist surprised many by signing the bill into law on June 30, 2009 – even though originally reluctant to do so. On May 12, 2009 Crist announced he will not run for re-election as governor instead run for the U.S. senate even though his term as governor doesn’t end until January 2011.
The poison pill tactic is nothing new – Senator Jim King did the same in 2002 on the Everglades Restoration. Everyone was on board with the policy but at the last minute Sen. King slipped in the rider dealing with the standing of various groups to raise suits which changed the meaning of the restoration for the various environmental groups.
All of the executive directors are employees of the board approved by the senate. The problem is the law does not specify any criteria for them and they are not required to hold scheduled meetings or forums or publish agendas – so all the representation is removed from the decision-making process.
With SB 2080, the executive director does not report to the board anymore but instead to the senate, which now can exert greater influence because it only needs to persuade one person.
The Politics
To understand what is really going on with SB 2080 we need to look at and understand the close personal and business ties of those making the shots, particularly of Senator Alexander, cousin of former U.S. Representative and secretary of state Katherine Harris and the grandson and heir of the late Ben Hill Griffin Jr. – citrus and cattle tycoon and one of the most powerful Floridians before he died.
The questionable provision of SB 2080 that no one is talking about is Section 10 of SB 2080. It provides for 50-year permits by rural landowners who cooperate with some sort of alternative water supply project says Thomas. If they get a 50-year permit, even though they don’t need the water right away, it is contrary to the application and intent of current water laws. It must show the beneficial use standard.
Thomas sees a clear conflict of interest on the Alexander move and he speculated that Crist would benefit politically.
The facts seem to support his theory. The provision in SB 2080 allows it. Blue Head Ranch is a 60,000-acre property in Highlands County owned by Alexander. At some future point he plans on 54,600 housing units with 3.4 million square feet non-residential. Alexander serves District 17 – comprised of Polk, Hardee, Highlands, DeSoto, Okeechobee, Glades and St. Lucie Counties; which fall into the Swiftmud Water Management District – the very one directed by his close friend and political ally – David Moore.
As the expression goes – all water flows into the ocean or into the purse of the rich.
The Severity
Although we can’t get everyone to agree on how severe the problem in Florida is, most everyone calls for better water conservation. What is not known is how the political pie will be sliced for the apportionment of the remaining permits, which impacts how SB 2080 will be invoked. The remaining 15 per cent of the total number of permits now in the control of the executive five, says Ahlers, and those are the big ones – those over 500,000 gallons per day. This could have a major impact on Marion County, since that includes supply from sources such as the Ocklawaha and St. Johns River.
Marwick feels SB 2080 is particularly troubling when all the power goes to one individual like Kirby Green, executive director for St. Johns River Water Management District. Marwick feels Green is extremely misled in favor of using pipelines to take out surface water and favors of growth at any cost. “I think he is politically motivated and in the developer’s pocket” says Marwick.
During the 1970’s and 1980’s the water managers often said we have plenty of groundwater. Citizens would complain that it was being over-tapped leading to dried-up wells, lowered lake levels and the response typically given by the water managers was that this is not a groundwater problem. They decided that it was a natural hydrological system – and not an unsustainable use. Now we know that wasn’t true. Water managers admit groundwater has been over-tapped in some areas, including Marion County, says Barnett. Critics say we cannot rely solely on the Florida aquifer for the future.
If we continue to tap the cheapest and easiest resources, aquifers, we do so at the expense of our rivers, lakes and springs.
Barnett warns, “In the 19th century we over drained the wetlands not understanding what we were doing and in the 20th century we over-tapped the groundwater not understanding what we were doing … I think we must make sure we don’t do the same to our rivers in the 21st century.”
The most critical time to tap surface water is during drought says Marwick. “Have we learned nothing from the lessons of Lake Powell out west?” he asks. Over allocated water taken from Lake Powell where the Colorado River is dammed left the west on the verge of disaster. The Silver River produces about 300 million gallons of water per day during extreme drought instead of the average 550 million. Water management boards according to Marwick wish to take a third of that figure all year long.
Water management boards are quick to make negative projections, says Barnett. “They say population growth will be this amount and we must have this much more water – but it doesn’t have to look like that.” She argues that everything we do now takes a lot less water — manufacturing processes, growing food, even flushing our toilets.
Conserving the water that we have now will delay, or eradicate, the need for expensive alternatives in the future, such as desalination.
The Counterpoint
Like Barnett, Kirby Green, executive director and Jeff Cole, communications director of St. Johns River Water Management District says the idea that we will one day run out of potable water is a myth. The real issue is from what source do we get potable water and what is it going to cost? And sustainability of the water resource values. “We don’t want to stress a source beyond its sustainability because of the impact it has on our environment and quality of life” says Green.
In Florida, nobody owns the water, says Green; it is a resource that is held in trust for the people of the state – known as a riparian state. The way the districts were set up was based on surface water basins. The laws recognize that there are distinct geographical and ecological differences between the districts, which require the allocation of water to be addressed differently.
The issues before the board range from restoration of lands to provide treatment for surface water all the way to conservation and saving water for the future says Green. They are also responsible for the agency budget and priorities. For local governments, the goal is helping with storm-water projects; alleviate pollution loading going into water bodies; surface water withdrawals and research on impacts. The board then offers their advice to SJRWMD.
Marion County falls under the jurisdiction of two water districts. Under Local Sources First law, SJRWMD asks how much water is needed over the next planning period to ensure that water is available to those local governments first before it could be transported across county boundaries. A moratorium is needed on any outsourcing of water to prevent depletion says Marwick.
The need based on both population and industrial growth. Green says when the utility company comes to them and requests addition amounts of water for our area they look at their conservation efforts, ability to use reclaim water to offset the request, and the size of the development they are approving.
Using Ocala as an example, Green says development approved 30 years ago was mostly for small subdivision-type lots development. “Part of the argument we get from local government utilities is we are approving larger lot sizes with larger sodden areas which need more irrigation; therefore we need more water.”
For who accuse SJRWMD of attempting to take 60-130 million potable gallons from the Ocklawaha and siphon it to Sanford through a massive pipeline, Green says that is untrue. The water supply plan, he says, identifies areas that will not have enough water to meet their needs while identifying a series water supply projects that local governments get to choose which ones they think meets their needs.
“On the 2005 water supply plan, we have identified the Ocklawaha as meeting the needs of South Marion County and Northern Lake County and maybe Northern Sumter County in the Villages area” says Green. “We had a series of meetings with local government and there was no interest in doing that.”
It was Rep. Kelly who led the move against. The day before his election on June 26, 2007 headlines read St. Johns River Water Management wanted to build a pipe from the north Ocklawaha down to the Orlando area, a big issue for the county commission. “I immediately came in” said Rep. Kelly “and said wait a minute that could have a major detrimental effect on our community and to our long-term sustainability for Marion County.”
The initial project as presented to Rep. Kelly and Commissioner Fitos in 2007 according to them had an estimated price tag of $500 million to locate the water plant on the lower Ocklawaha and develop a network of pipeline necessary to transport. In a subsequent meeting held two months later the price tag rose to $832 million with Marion County’s portion at $158 million.
Green says they backed away from supporting those types of projects because local government decided they didn’t want to do it – but the information disseminated to the public got the facts wrong hurting the image of SJRWMD. Sanford in the Seminole county area uses the St. Johns River, a water supply that is closer to them.
The recent SJRWMD board decision supports Green’s contention. While approving the $284 million 2009-10 budget on July 14, 2009, the board voted to scrap the idea of setting aside money to siphon the rivers and head more toward conservation measures.
The Confusion
Too much misinformation is being disseminated publicly in order to push the agenda of choice – be it conservation, alternative sources or massive infrastructure projects such as desalination plants or pipelines. Most experts push for conservation; local politicians seem to favor desalination as the next big investment while water management districts (and Browning) think pipelines to tap surface water is best and use DEP figures to back them up.
Barnett disagrees with the DEP assumption that we must have 8.7 billion potable gallons of water per day by 2025 to meet water demands. “Our water managers tell us that we need these billions more per day to accommodate future population growth – which is wrong, and a misallocation of efforts instead of directing the population to use a lot less and restoring the resource for ecosystems.”
It also doesn’t help that politicians look for those experts that stray from the pack – willing to support their projects then rewarded with acknowledgments such as environmentalist of the year. It doesn’t matter what the majority say so long as they have the one renegade to point to for validation.
Truly the majority of environmentalists all over the state are infuriated with what they see as the ignorant misuse of information by the Czar-like water district executive directors at the detriment of Florida’s eco-systems.
Ahlers says some powerful people arrogantly think they can control water resources — that we can dry out land, making more of it available for development. She says they ignore the fact that wetlands store water and protect the resource. Some of them feel since we have water on both side of the state we can always on resort to desalination.
“There are environmental consequences for everything we do,” says Ahlers, “and those need to be weighed carefully.” It is nature’s way – and we are artificially going against nature.
The Fix
In this economic downturn, opines Fitos, we have a window of opportunity due to development and population stall to position ourselves. The 50-year projections from the Water Resource Assessment Management Study (WRAMS) in Marion County indicating we would run out of ground water by 2017 have been extended.
Agriculture is the largest user of water. Florida farmers use about half of our water and about half of them use the least efficient kind of irrigation system known as flood irrigation. Helping farmers convert to micro-irrigation practices would save an enormous amount of water.
Farmers say it is expensive for them to convert so we need to help them do so. Water management districts, including the St. Johns River and Swiftmud, do have programs in place to help farmers.
“If we could spend more money on projects like that,” says Barnett, “we could save money in the long run and stall having to build some of the larger infrastructure projects such as desalination plants and river pipelines that are being discussed.”
The desalination plant in Tampa seems to be producing the anticipated capacity but it arrived five years late and $50 million over budget. The ecological costs are unknown and it seems wiser to do the cheapest, easiest and environmentally best thing first – which is to use less.
Rainwater catchments systems (also known as storm water harvesting) are a good alternative for filling toilets, watering lawns and washing cars. Reuse is another possibility for all three.
Browning offers his suggestions. “Why don’t we use all the impure water coming from the city’s drainage (from rain) containing nitrogen loads, animal waste and fertilizer used to treat lawns and direct it using a third pipe to residents and businesses for sprinkler water?” For a sewage treatment plant, the federal, state and county guidelines holds acceptable allowance for nitrates (total nitrogen) is ten parts per million. Currently excess rain water is redirected by pipes into the springs and aquifers according to Browning – mixing “funky” water with pure creating algae. We can stop that, take something that is a problem and turn it into an asset.
The point is we don’t need to use pristine water that’s scarce and then go through the expense of treating it to meet federal drinking water standards for irrigation says Barnett.
Adding her own spin Ahlers suggests what if instead of spending tax-payer money in huge infrastructure projects, we used that money and offered a rebate to all the homeowners of property older than 1995 to put in a new toilet? “Leaks,” says Ahlers “cause the loss of a hundred gallons per day per toilet!”
Marion County residents use about 250 gallons/per capita per day. Experts feel through conservation we could help lower that to 100 gallons per day and that would free up so much water statewide that we wouldn’t have to build one more desalination plant.
Conservation first, then we can turn to building infrastructures or tapping rivers when the time comes we must do so.
For now, the focus should change from the find-at-any-means-and-cost to demand management – setting demand lower to preserve supply. To do so the public must be educated on the complex, overlapping politic, economic, social and ecological factors.
Thus it is easy to see why so many people feel that, despite ample supply for Marion County, our future remains murky. So much will depend on how the state of Florida’s resources are preserved and conserved, or how efficient the districts are run by a single Water Boss instead of multiple Water Bosses.
