Water supply reactions mixed

Local residents offer opinion following Thursday meeting

By TONY BRITT
tbritt@lakecityreporter.com
Sunday, January 31, 2010

GAINESVILLE — A Thursday night meeting to address declining water levels in the Floridan Aquifer and a water supply plan to address the change is receiving mixed reviews from area residents.

The meeting, which was held at the Alachua County Health Department, was designed to give the public information about the planning process that is being utilized to formulate a water supply plan. The Upper Santa Fe River Basin is experiencing decreasing flow levels and some officials and residents believe there maybe a connection between the two problems.

The meeting, which was hosted by the Suwannee River Water and the St. Johns River Water Management districts, was held Thursday night to allow more interaction from the general public in the water supply planning process.

“In the Upper Santa Fe River Basin, we’re still in the subgroup process and looking at the modeling, conservation, alternative water supplies and all of those components are being developed right now,” said Suwannee River Water Management District senior hydrogeologist Carlos Herd.

The due date for the water supply plan is Dec. 12.

Water management district officials are evaluating whether water from the Floridan Aquifer is now going to counties east of the Columbia County area and basing their plans on projected water usage for the next 20 years.

“That would happen if all the projected demands were taken from groundwater in 2030,” Herd said of the water shift. “We’re trying to figure out when that would start happening, and if it’s happening now, we don’t have the tools that we can say that’s happening now. We have seen some declines in flows in our rivers in the Upper Santa Fe, but we’re still evaluating that data also.”

Four Rivers Audubon member and Lake City resident Frank Sedmera attended the meeting and said he was pleased to get the information that officials provided.

“I think they did as good of a job as could have been done with civilians who are not scientists who really don’t understand much about the technical part of this,” he said. “They did a wonderful job of trying to and in many cases succeeding, in getting people to better understand what we’re depending on to try to predict the future. It’s very difficult to predict the future with that many variables.”

Save Our Suwannee secretary and spokesperson Annette Long said she still has concerns about the studies.

“The concepts they presented were very complex and presented in a really short time,” she said. “I’m afraid that from the tenor of the people from the St. Johns Water Management District, that they are on the track to want to issue more permits. It sounds like there is going to be a lot of pressure from the utilities in the big cities and it’s all about money. I’m afraid it’s going to be an uphill battle and fear that if we want to protect our part of the Suwannee and Santa Fe water sheds that are starting to move toward Jacksonville already, we’re going to have to be the ones that do it. We’ll have to do without in our area and maybe move water from other parts of the Suwannee District to that part of the district. That’s my worst fear.”

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