by David Chapman
Staff Writer
One-third of one percent.
It might not sound like much, but to Riverkeeper Neil Armingeon and attorney Michael Howle, it’s cause for concern.
That percentage equates to 5.5 million gallons of St. Johns River water, the amount that Seminole County has proposed to withdraw daily from the river at a to-be-constructed Yankee Lake facility in Central Florida. The withdrawn surface water would help meet the projected water needs of the customers of Seminole County by supplementing groundwater supplies.
To the river advocates, though, it’s just the beginning.
“This looks like it is the first stop,” said Howle. “We thought the permit, at earliest, wouldn’t come up until the last quarter of 2008.”
Instead, the consumptive use permit is scheduled for consideration at the meeting of the St. Johns River Water Management District’s governing board on March 11. According to Hal Wilkening, director of resource management for the District, the permit application has been pending for almost three years and under Florida law, must be acted upon by the District by that date.
The project was predicated upon the District’s assertion that up to 255 million gallons of water a day could be safely removed from the St. Johns River and its tributaries to supplement the water needs of expanding Central Florida, which will soon tap out the limits of the traditional water source of the Floridan Aquifer.
Many local political bodies, including the Jacksonville City Council and the Duval Delegation have passed legislation opposing the withdrawal proposals.
As for the Yankee Lake project, information in published Seminole County reports and from John Cirello, director of environmental services in Seminole County, state the minimum flows and levels (MFLs) for that area of the river is 155 million gallons of water a day (mgd), well above the planned 5.5 mgd. The report quotes a state statute saying that MFLs “shall be the limit at which further withdrawals would be significantly harmful to the water resources or ecology of the area.”
The report goes on to say that any withdrawal, such as the proposed 5.5 mgd, will not harm the environment.
“It’s a very small amount of water being withdrawn,” said Cirello. “We understand and recognize it’s our job to project and preserve the river and we’re working very hard to do it.”
Information in the report supplied by Environmental Public Relations Group, which is working with Seminole County on the project, also noted that surface water is currently permitted and safely being withdrawn in five other projects, and phase one of the Yankee Lake project would be one of the smallest of the already permitted projects.
Wilkening said that the District has published a notice of intent and will recommend approval of the permit to the governing board with some limiting conditions next month. The 16 limiting conditions, he said, are technical in nature but include such measures as monitoring and reporting water use, reporting the total amount of withdrawn water a year, filing periodic reports and taking corrective actions if any harm were to occur during withdrawals.
Even before word was sent that action would be taken on the permit, Howle and Armingeon were skeptical about the actions of the District and Seminole County and the notion that this plant would only siphon the proposed 5.5 mgd.
“This is a tactic,” said Howle. “It’s not just going to be 5.5 million. I think it’s a sneaky way of getting in there and building the infrastructure and a foundation for it.”
Both Cirello and Wilkening contend that the facility will only allow for the withdrawal of 5.5 mgd, but Wilkening did note that the facility could withdraw 11 mgd on certain days. The 5.5 mgd number is a yearly average, said Wilkening.
Howle said he believes the “small” number will lead to less resistance from the public, but future permits with similar “small” withdrawal totals would eventually add up.
“They can’t go and say they want one permit for 100 million gallons a day,” he said. “But what about 20 permits for 5 million gallons a day? Who is going to fight that? It will all add up.”
Phase two of the Yankee Lake project, according to the project’s Web site at www.seminoleregionalwater.com, would increase the drinking water supply and increase the available irrigation water supply to serve Seminole County and the Central Florida region.
But according to Wilkening, the permit for phase one is the only one being considered before the District takes part in a planned in-depth two-year, $2 million study that would give the District another detailed maximum river withdrawal figure.
The river advocates said the proposed study should include the Yankee Lake project and that the original study, said Howle, “is not a detailed analysis and full of hot air.”
Howle wouldn’t comment on specifics, but he said Riverkeeper had some creative ideas on how to handle the situation, while Armingeon said it could be a first for them in the realm of St. Johns River water extraction.
“This will be the first chance we have to legally challenge the whole idea,” said Armingeon, who later on Tuesday had a chance to respond to the District’s notice of the permit hearing.
“And so it begins…” started a mass e-mail by Armingeon. “Why spend $2 million, and 24 Months, when the (District) has made up their minds?...Waste and deceit.”
A timeline of the Yankee Lake project. In phase one of the project, Seminole County officials plan to extract 5.5 million gallons of surface water a day from the St. Johns River to help with the projected needs of customers in Seminole County. Upon potential permit approval in March, construction of the facility is scheduled to begin this year.