News article on the future of Florida's rivers and springs

Will Jacksonville's water woes spread across North Florida?

Experts say excess demand might sap the water that now bubbles out of springs in rural North Florida.

By, Steve Patterson
For Jacksonville.com
on Saturday, September 26, 2009
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Generations of tourists in North Florida visited White Springs and the "spring house" where clear sulfur water bubbled from the ground.

That ended decades ago. Wells drilled around the speck of a town on the Suwannee River pumped so much ground water that the spring stopped flowing.

Today, people in inland North Florida are wondering whether rivers and more springs could someday face similar damage from a new generation of pumping farther away - in Jacksonville.

"White Springs kind of leads you into the whole water supply issue in North Florida," said Carlos Herd, water supply project manager for the Suwannee River Water Management District. "Right now, it doesn't look real good.

"At least in the future, there could be significant impacts. ... [With] what's happened up to this point, are we looking at the beginning of those effects?"

State agencies are taking a closer a look at that.

Herd's office and the St. Johns River Water Management District will spend the next few months analyzing how water use in Jacksonville and its suburbs will add to the demand put on levels of the Floridan Aquifer in places like Bradford, Union and Alachua counties.

Their main question is how that will affect plants and wildlife around the Santa Fe River, which starts near Keystone Heights and winds past several counties to join the Suwannee.

Early forecasts suggested that by 2030, Jacksonville-area demand could suck down aquifer levels anywhere from one to three feet near the Santa Fe's upper reaches, which get water from both rainfall and springs.

That forecast is on top of the demand that will come from people actually living in those areas, who use water for farming and mining as well as in their homes and shops.

Although Florida's sudden falloff in growth could make the earlier predictions too dire, the subject has some outdoor enthusiasts worried.

"We're getting too close to a tipping point that can radically change an ecosystem," said Rob Brinkman, chairman of the Sierra Club's Gainesville-area group.

"The water we're using is having an effect on how much water is coming out of the springs, and that affects the water quality."

On the Santa Fe, hurting the ecosystem can also mean harming a lifestyle built on hiking and paddling dark waterways that draw day-trippers from around the state.

If water agencies decide the Santa Fe can't handle more demands on the aquifer, the St. Johns and Suwannee districts will have to work out some plan to keep that from happening, said Al Canepa, assistant director of resource management at the St. Johns district.

Deciding whether that's necessary will mean finding out how sensitive different springs and sections of river are, because the same change in the aquifer can affect two places very differently, Canepa said.

A new forecast that factors water use from both districts and new estimates of slower population growth should be ready early next year, he said.

"Right now, we don't think that there's an issue," Canepa said. "But the jury is still out."

Proving what causes changes at any one spring can be complicated, and some changes have nothing to do with anyone in Jacksonville.

At Worthington Springs in Union County, for example, the flow from a tiny spring ringed by an old concrete pool slowed to a trickle years ago.

But Brinkman said the big issue is less about whether one town is affecting another than whether Floridians are taking care of their water supply.

"The problem in Florida is we don't do a very good job with conservation," he said. "Floridians use more per capita than most of the nation. There's really no good reason for that."

If people learned to conserve water better, he said, "we could get to the point where Jacksonville could increase its population and still use less water than it does now."

steve.patterson@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4263

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-09-26/story/will_jacksonvilles_water_woes_spread_across_north_florida