Utilities aim to water down Floridan Aquifer protection rule
It took years for Florida leaders to craft a sophisticated and deeply considered plan to protect the fragile Floridan Aquifer for the benefit of both cities and the state’s watery environment.
But the region’s water utilities recently declared legal war on the plan as too restrictive on their future opportunity to drill into the aquifer as the cheapest source of water for population growth. Utilities are now at the cusp of victory.
Seminole County is scheduled Tuesday to become the first of many local governments and utilities expected to sign a legal settlement that would weaken the Floridan Aquifer protection plan — to a disastrous extent, said one environmental leader.
“Our springs and wetlands will be at great risk of drying up due to depletion of the aquifer,” said Charles Lee of Audubon Florida. “For this great effort to promote water conservation and alternative water supplies to come to this ignominious end is truly a tragedy.”
Established a decade ago, the Central Florida Water Initiative was intended as the legal, scientific and diplomatic vehicle that would finally establish — amid a contentious atmosphere and among competitive participants — rules for protecting the already and increasingly stressed Floridan Aquifer.
Deep underground, the aquifer is constantly refilled by rainwater but also is constantly leaking upward and outward — with pure water that bottled-water companies covet — to hydrate and sustain springs, wetlands, rivers and lakes, and associated fish and wildlife.
The heavy pumping from the aquifer by utilities, industry and agriculture increasingly has stolen away water from Florida’s environment.
The goal of the water initiative was to gather aquifer data, population projections, environmental indicators and other details in a publicly attended, transparent fashion to set limits on pumping from the Floridan aquifer.
The initiative concluded that the aquifer can provide about a billion gallons of water a day to utilities and other users, and the rest of the aquifer’s water must be reserved for the benefit of the region’s environment.
Last year, the Florida
ORLANDO SENTINEL FILE PHOTOS
Department of Environmental Protection announced its path to the final adoption of the water initiative’s protections for the Floridan Aquifer.
But more than a dozen utilities, as well as partners in massive development projects, Tavistock and Deseret Ranches, opted to challenge the state department’s plan to adopt the initiative. A hearing before a state judge was scheduled to start on March 29.
Earlier this month, the lead lawyer for Orlando Utilities Commission told his utility’s board members that the Central Florida Water Initiative rule would “put us in the position of being under the gun” for pursuing conservation of water or tapping other sources, such as rivers or salty portions of the aquifer. Other sources of water will be significantly more costly than Floridan Aquifer water.
“It would impact, I think, development,” Chris Browder said. “It would have economic impacts. To us as utilities, I think it would be a huge impact on rates.”
“It’s a very aggressive rule,” Browder went on to say. “We are going to try to do what we can to get it back on a more reasonable track.”
Orlando Utilities Commission is the largest of the region’s utilities backing the settlement agreement.
While the Central Florida Water Initiative held open meetings and adhered to public-records rules, the settlement agreement was hashed out largely in private between utility and state lawyers.
Lee Constantine, chairman of the Seminole County board of commissioners, said he facilitated the negotiations to avoid what likely would have been weeks of legal arguments between public agencies before the state judge.
“I did not want my tax dollars suing my tax dollars,” Constantine said.
Constantine said he trusted the St. Johns River Water Management District, a branch of the state Department of Environmental Protection, to ensure that the settlement would not result in harm to the Floridan Aquifer.
“I do not know the full extent of the agreement, but I will hear it tomorrow,” Constantine said.
Weesam Khoury, spokesperson for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said her department “would not support or put forth any rule it does not feel is protective of the environment.”
Khoury said also that all changes to the water-initiative rule would be presented back to the public for review.