What the State of Florida Wants You to Think
Read any of the press releases from the Governor’s Office, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), or any of the state’s water management districts (WMDs), and you’ll be impressed by the amount of money and effort being put into restoring our springs and other living systems.
What’s Really Happening?
Look below the rah-rah surface at what’s really going on, however, and you’ll find a different story. Even with millions of dollars being poured into restoration, our springs and rivers are continuing to degrade. This article will point to one example of how and why that is happening. Keep in mind, too, that there are multiple reasons for the continuing degradation; see Florida Water Sins for more information.
Beginning in 2019, the State of Florida was required to re-evaluate and, if necessary, to re-set the Minimum Flow and Level (MFL) for the Ichetucknee River System that was initially adopted in 2015.
The idea for setting MFLs was developed beginning back in the 1990s, with the goal of protecting the river by calculating how much flow could be lost without causing “significant harm” to the ecosystem, including the life forms (fish, submerged aquatic vegetation, etc.) that the river supports.
From DEP’s website1:
It is possible for consumptive use to lower the flows and levels of water bodies to a point that the resource values are significantly harmed. To prevent this harm, the districts are responsible for identifying and establishing the limit at which further withdrawals would be significantly harmful to the water resources or ecology of the area. This limit is the minimum flow or minimum level. MFLs must be established consistent with section 373.042, F.S., and Rule 62-40.473, F.A.C.
Note especially the overarching assumption about the MFL here—that State law permits the consumptive use of water by people and businesses (including agriculture) to cause harm, although supposedly not “significant” harm, to Florida’s living natural systems. Given that the natural systems do not have their own legal rights to exist and to thrive, this means that people and businesses have more rights to harm those systems than those systems have to protect themselves.
As those of us at Alliance have watched the MFL re-evaluation proceed throughout 2019-2020, we have noticed several other things that concern us.
First: According to the 2020 MFL peer reviewers, the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) is ignoring some substantive comments by the previous MFL’s peer reviewers:
Substantive comments in 2013 peer review of the current MFLs by the University of Florida were not completely addressed, these remain highly relevant today and should be addressed…2
Second: To calculate flows in the Ichetucknee River that will be used to set the MFL, SRWMD only considered flows from about 2002 to about 2015.3 According to the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute’s (FSI’s) Restoration Action Plan for the Ichetucknee Springs and River4 that cites figures by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), however, the river had already lost about 39 million gallons a day (mgd) of flow between 1900 and 1980, and another 21 mgd of flow between 1980 and 2009—meaning that SRWMD is ignoring data about flow losses that had already occurred before 2002, despite the fact that the District has data on flow in the Ichetucknee that goes back to 1917.
Third: According to an April 2012 report prepared for SRWMD by Intera Geosciences & Engineering, the Ichetucknee had lost about 10 percent of its historical flow between the mid-1970s and about 2010. Again, although figures about the amount of flow loss are different from those cited by FSI,5 Intera’s report demonstrates that SRWMD is ignoring data about flow losses that have already occurred.
Summary
Based on the original MFL set for the Ichetucknee in 2015, the river was designated by the State of Florida as needing to be “in recovery,” meaning that a plan was required to restore lost flow. Because of allowable time delays codified by rules and laws, however, a recovery plan has not yet been activated. Instead, SRWMD continues to ignore substantive comments by previous MFL peer reviewers and continues to ignore flow losses that occurred in the Ichetucknee before 2002.
We are left with questions about why the District has decided to ignore those losses and, by extension, with questions about how state agencies make other calculations that affect decisions about the quality and quantity of water in our springs and the Floridan aquifer that provides our drinking water. Such questions are not new; they were raised by Bob Palmer, a member of the Alliance’s advisory board, in “Show Your Work,” a 2017 blog entry.
Is the District cherry-picking the data they’re using in order to allow more water withdrawals that can damage the river? Is the District cherry-picking data to avoid having to make tough decisions that might hurt supporters of our current governor, who appoints the District’s board of directors? We won’t know the answers to these questions until the re-evaluated MFL is announced, but we wonder.
And if SRWMD and DEP are cherry-picking data, is this also happening in other water management districts throughout Florida?
One final note: It is not surprising that different scientists—in this case, from SRWMD, FSI, and Intera—often reach different conclusions in a process as complicated as the one required to re-evaluate the Ichetucknee’s MFL. In such a situation, rather than simply waiting for more studies and analyses, the Alliance points to the Precautionary Principle as offering the best guidance about how to proceed: Until scientists can come to agreement, choose the course of action that causes the least amount of harm to the natural system.
Sources
2 Chair’s Third Draft: Peer Review Panel Consensus Report…, page 5, at:
https://www.mysuwanneeriver.com/DocumentCenter/View/17665/Draft-Chairs-Third-Peer-Review-Panel-Consensus-Report
3 Minimum Flows and Minimum Water Levels Re-evaluation…, Figure 7, p. 13, at:
https://www.mysuwanneeriver.com/DocumentCenter/View/17402/Lower-Santa-Fe-and-Ichetucknee-MFL-Technical-Document_DRAFT
4 Ichetucknee Springs and River: A Restoration Action Plan, Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute, p. 11
5 Intera’s analysis stops at 2010 while FSI’s analysis goes through 2017, farther along the declining flow trajectory.