Florida’s layered approach to sharing precious fresh-water supplies resulted in water managers having to sign off on a faraway region's relatively small increase in future supply.
That happened last month when two water management districts with a presence in Southwest Florida were required to OK plans to allow the five-county Central Florida Water Initiative around Orlando to add about 96 million gallons a day to its water budget by the mid‑2040s.
The additional water will allow for expected population growth during the next 20 years in Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Polk, and the southern part of Lake County.
In a state like Florida, where water is nearly everywhere yet population growth can make clean H2O a precious commodity, lawmakers established five water management districts in the early 1970s to handle issues like supply, flooding, and saltwater intrusion.
Lawmakers aligned the districts with the state’s major hydrological zones, which means most are spread over large area with several counties split between two districts. Add to that the districts are misshappen, not tidy lines such as time zones or GPS cordinates normally preferred by regulators, and who regulates where can get even more confusing.
The South Florida Water Management District and the Southwest Florida Water Management District both manage users in the Fort Myers area.
The two districts, along with St. Johns River Water Management District, also regulate those who withdraw from the Upper Floridian Aquifer in the greater Orlando area. So all three had to give the plan the okay to the roughly 100 million gallons a day to ensure each was protecting supplies its districts' future residents will need.
The Central Florida Water Initiative is a planning group of state and district water managers for the five counites where the boundaries of the South Florida, Southwest Florida, and St. Johns River water management districts converge.
The districts are “working to provide a uniform approach for water management in an area where the boundaries of three districts come together and where water withdrawals in one district may impact water resources and water users throughout the area,” a committee of the Central Florida Water Initiative wrote online.
“The goal of the regional water supply plan is to ensure the protection of water resources and related natural systems and identify sustainable water supplies for all water uses in the coordination area through 2045.”
The plan calls for producing the additional water through desalination plants that treat brackish groundwater pumped up from deeper aquifers, expanded water conservation programs, and new wastewater treatment plants that turn sewage into water clean enough to irrigate lawns, parks, and sports fields. None of those sources would draw additional fresh groundwater from the shared aquifer.
Even with odd-shaped districts and advising sub-committes like the Central Florida initiative, the state’s regional water management system is crucial for a water-dependent and growing state.
And that’s because Florida’s water problems — flooding, drought, saltwater intrusion — vary from region to region so one centralized agency would struggle to manage all local issues effectively.
Reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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