Law lets thirsty areas look far

Lawyers and water officials say growth in Central Florida may tap the Withlacoochee.

By DAN DEWITT, Times Staff Writer
Published September 25, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - Maybe, as County Commissioner David Russell thinks, the widely denounced idea of pumping millions of gallons of water from the Withlacoochee River to cities like Clermont and Leesburg is more of a vague wish than a real threat.

"There are subjects discussed by a lot of water management districts that are outlandish, and this is one of them," said Russell, comparing it to the failed Council of 100 plan to ship water from the Suwannee River to South Florida.

Still, Russell and other residents of Hernando and Citrus cannot assume that a new, eastern front in the water wars will remain quiet forever, water activists said.

In vast areas of Central Florida, demand caused by growth is outpacing the supply of groundwater, the traditional source of drinking water in the state. And one of the largest and fastest-growing developments in the region, the Villages, is quickly becoming a very thirsty neighbor.

Making matters more interesting, the communities making up the Villages lie mostly in Sumter County, which is one of the 16 counties in the Southwest Florida Water Management District, commonly known as Swiftmud. This means the state's "local sources first law," intended to prevent out-of-county water grabs, would not apply if the Villages were to look to the Withlacoochee River to meet its needs.

Even for cities outside Hernando County and the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the laws' protection is not as firm as most people think, said John Thomas. He is a lawyer for the Putnam Environmental Council, which is fighting the St. Johns River Water Management District's plans to draw water from the Lower Ocklawaha River.

"There are some sneaky little things the Legislature did in 2005," he said. "Some basic alterations allow water management districts to come raiding to feed thirsty parts of the state."

Raiding is too strong a term, said Hal Wilkening, the St. Johns district's director of resource management.

He explained that St. Johns invited officials from more than 30 Central Florida towns, counties and utilities to a meeting in Orlando on July 18 to discuss how they would supply residents with drinking water if and when groundwater supplies were exhausted.

Fourteen of the officials present identified the Withlacoochee River or Lake Rousseau, in northern Citrus, as potential sources. If all of them satisfied all their water needs from these two bodies of water - unlikely because of other sources available - the total daily withdrawals would be about 43-million gallons, Wilkening said.

St. Johns has not planned to tap the river or Lake Rousseau, which is fed by the Withlacoochee, he said. It would do so only if these sources were to be included in a regional plan created along with Swiftmud and the Withlacoochee Regional Water Supply Authority.

An alliance of Lake County cities, which identified the Withlacoochee as a potential source in a recent report partly funded by St. Johns, is taking the same approach, Wilkening said. "They are interested only if there are partners to the west that are interested," he said. "That doesn't seem to be the case."

Still, it was shocking to see the Withlacoochee River being considered as a possible source, said Jack Sullivan, executive director of the Withlacoochee Regional Water Supply Authority, which serves Hernando, Citrus and Sumter counties and Ocala.

"They were trying to line up folks to use those alternatives. ... St. Johns helped facilitate the whole thing," said Sullivan, who attended the July 18 meeting.

Sullivan declined St. Johns' request to host a meeting of Central Florida cities that want to tap the Withlacoochee. His board unanimously supported that position at a meeting last week in Brooksville.

"What St. Johns is saying may be right. Maybe they won't try to foist this on us," Sullivan said. "And if not, that's great. What we've done here is nip this in the bud."

Sullivan and a Swiftmud lawyer agreed with Thomas, the environmental lawyer, that St. Johns may have the legal power to take water from the Withlacoochee if it wants it.

The 11-year-old "local sources first law" requires that cities and towns exhaust nearby sources before they search elsewhere for water. It also says withdrawals from remote areas cannot interfere with existing uses or harm the environment.

"The protections are in place," said Nancy Argenziano, a state Public Service Commissioner who sponsored the local sources first law as a state representative and supported it as a senator.

But the law was never intended to be an absolute prohibition on water transfers, and Thomas said the law was weakened by a 2005 bill sponsored by state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland. Argenziano, a co-sponsor, said the law was meant to encourage the use of alternative sources of water, such as desalination and reuse.

Russell, co-sponsor of the bill in the state House of Representatives, said it made more than $100-million available for alternative water projects: "The intent was to promote the development of alternative sources other than surface water and groundwater."

The local sources first law has always stated that piping water over long distances can be justified if it is in the public interest. The 2005 changes said water management districts "shall presume that the alternative water supply use is consistent with the public interest."

It also broadened the definition of alternative supplies, Thomas said. This traditionally meant sources such as desalination and reuse. Under the 2005 law, it means almost anything other than fresh groundwater, including water from rivers, said Karen Lloyd, a lawyer from Swiftmud.

"This gives (water management districts) the power to make an alternative supply out of a traditional supply," Thomas said. "That's how they get to the rivers, and that's a bastardization of the process."

But the biggest threat to pumping water from the Withlacoochee is not from cities in the St. Johns district, Wilkening said, but from the Villages, which now has about 65,000 residents and is expected to grow to 100,000.

A recent Swiftmud permit that allows the Villages to pump 23.7-million gallons of groundwater per day also requires it to find an alternative source for 7-million gallons a day by 2013.

The Withlacoochee water supply authority's long-range plan, funded by Swiftmud, identified several sources for the Villages, including Lake Rousseau, which could yield more than 87-million gallons per day and the Withlacoochee River, which could provide as much as 52-million gallons.

The volume of water in the river is greater than many people think, Sullivan said.

But because the historical median annual flow fluctuates widely - from 1.1-billion gallons per day in October to 410-million in December at Holder, according to Swiftmud - the plan would require building a reservoir to catch wet-season overflow, Sullivan said.

That means the river would meet the definition of an alternative source.

Still, he does not think it will happen as soon as 2013. "We believe we have sufficient groundwater supplies for the next 20 years," Sullivan said.

Officials say that pumping from the Withlacoochee could be put off even longer if all the potential users and St. Johns did what the 2005 bill really intended - conserving water and developing true alternative sources rather than looking at tapping into rivers and lakes.

"I give them a very low grade for coming up with alternatives or reuse," Argenziano said. "I think they're taking the lazy way out."

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6116.

[Last modified September 24, 2007, 22:46:31]