At a BCC workshop today (Nov. 20, 2007) Mr. Kirby Green with the St. Johns River Water Management District made a presentation about the state of the water supply in Florida. My eyes were opened - wide, and my head was spinning. Pretty scary stuff.
Like many growth related infrastructure issues, the numbers and the details can be mind numbing, but you don't have to be an engineer or a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon or anything else to imagine turing on a faucet and nothing coming out. In the service area of the SJRWMD, the average per-person use of publicly supplied water is 150 gallons per day, or about 6.25 gallons per hour. WOW!
Several points made today stick out in my mind. No opinion, just sharing. This water issue must be studied, and resolved scientifically. As difficult as it will be, it needs to be dealt with with logic and reason, not emotion.
Desalination will be part of the future of potable water supply for Florida. Apparently, so will pumping water out of the St. Johns and Ocklawaha Rivers.
Some 'Fast Facts' from a SJRWMD newsletter: Most of the water currently used in the district comes from ground water. Fresh groundwater alone will not be able to meet all future water supply needs through 2025. About 200 million gal. per day of alternative supplies are likely to be needed in east-central Florida. Sixty alternative water supply project options have been identified to meet these needs.
As with all of the infrastructure issues, population growth is the cause of the problem. In 1995 (the base year for Water Supply Assessment projections) the District population was 3.5 million people. In 2025, projected population will be 5.9 million, a 67% increase. Water use is projected to go from 1.4 billion gpd (1995) to about 1.8 billion gpd (2025), a 30% increase.
Mr. Green stated that the #1 consideration with regard to water usage and sourcing is the environment. I found that reassuring - sort of. I couldn't help but imagine some science fiction sort of future where the millions of people in Florida are in a life and death struggle for fresh drinking water. Kind of makes crowded roads seem like a pretty minor thing.
Time to go take a shower. www.sjrwmd.com [1]