Lack of collaboration shows in water plan

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published October 18, 2007

It is hard to believe that the staff members who brought the Hernando County Planning and Zoning Commission a proposal to conserve water did not consult the agency that exists solely to study and regulate water use.

What's more, according to officials at the Southwest Florida Water Management District (Swiftmud), the county's own horticulture and water conservation experts were left out of the loop as changes were written into the county's 6-year-old landscape ordinance.

The result was a one-dimensional plan that failed to adequately address the absolutely direct correlation between landscaping and irrigation, said Swiftmud's conservation projects manager.

"It's very difficult to divorce the two," Kathy Scott told the Times, who earlier had informed the planning and zoning commissioners that her agency "had little to no input."

In addition, Scott worried that two rules proposed in the revised landscape ordinance were wrongheaded.

One would decrease, from 75 percent to 50 percent, the requirement to plant lawns with grasses that require an inordinate amount of watering, such as St. Augustine or Floratam.

Another change would prohibit businesses from using drinking water to irrigate plants and grasses. Swiftmud's Scott said that requirement will force businesses to dig wells to tap the groundwater supply, which may result in increased water usage because there is no way to track how much water is being used.

The county staff correctly noted that all the requirements from the state, as well as the suggestions by Swiftmud, require increased enforcement. That is true, and the cost and added workload probably are worth it in the long run. But it is the staff's job to present the best plan to the policymakers, who then must choose the options for which they are willing to invest the public's resources.

But the "near-final draft" of this amended ordinance, as it was referred to by Swiftmud, lacked depth and failed to draw on the best information available.

In this age of instant written and oral communication, taxpayers expect the workers on their payroll to routinely pool their expertise and resources, always with the goal of bettering the public service. That did not happen in this case, and county administrator Gary Kuhl, who is a former Swiftmud director, easily should have recognized this ordinance was flawed. Fortunately, the Planning and Zoning commissioners responded accordingly by sending this proposal back to its staff for more research and revisions.

[Last modified October 17, 2007, 20:24:25]