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Fourth Addendum Amending District Water Supply Plan 2005

Updated on 1/11/2010

Fourth Addendum approved by Governing Board on May 12, 2009

• Water supply planning
• District Water Supply Plan 2005
• Fourth Addendum
• Public process
• Comments received
• Minimum flows and levels and river restoration
• Precedent

Water supply planning

• Water management districts are mandated by the state Legislature to develop water supply plans to address at least a 20-year planning period to ensure adequate water supplies are available to meet future water use needs while sustaining water resources and related natural systems.
• A water supply plan is legislatively mandated to include a water supply development component, which includes a list of water supply development project options (traditional and alternative) from which water suppliers may choose to pursue for water supply development.
• Florida law requires that sufficient project options are identified so that water supplies will exceed the need for water. Planning in this manner is required so that the needs of both water users and the environment will be protected.
• Groundwater has traditionally met most of the demands for water to supply the needs of District residents. However, it is evident through the long-term planning process that future water supplies cannot come from fresh groundwater alone. The continued reliance on groundwater alone would likely result in environmental harm to lakes and wetlands that ultimately discharge to the Ocklawaha and St. Johns Rivers. To meet projected water demands in an environmentally sustainable manner, water supply utilities in this District will need to implement additional programs and projects to ensure that adequate water supplies are available.
• Increased water conservation and use of reclaimed water are important components of meeting future demands.
• The District is firmly committed to water conservation and achieving greater water use efficiency.
• The District’s consumptive use permitting program contains comprehensive water conservation provisions.
• The District currently has the most stringent, districtwide, year-round watering restrictions of any water management district in Florida.
• The District has promoted water conservation through numerous strategic initiatives, including water conservation public awareness campaigns; the Florida Water Star^SM water efficient certification program; coordination with local governments to implement irrigation and landscape ordinances; interactive, multidisciplinary education programs that include water conservation for school children; and cost-sharing on water conservation projects with local governments, utilities and other water users.
• Conservation is a critical tool to address water supply needs and, as such, deserves significant commitment of resources. But it cannot reasonably be the only tool on which water users, suppliers and managers rely to meet increased water demand over the 20-year planning horizon and to ensure protection of water resources.
• Relying solely on further advances in water conservation to meet projected water needs is quantitatively uncertain and typically, it takes at least 10 years to plan, construct, and implement a water supply project. The time requirement for projects is such that the District cannot risk waiting to see the quantity of water that is ultimately conserved due to conservation measures before planning for water supply projects begins. Thus, relying solely on water conservation to meet water needs would put the environment — springs, wetlands, lakes, rivers and the aquifer — at risk. Both additional water conservation and alternative water supply project options are needed to achieve water supplies that continue to be reliable for the public while also being environmentally sustainable.
• As significant advances are made in water conservation, the need for and the size of alternative water supply (AWS) project options during the 20-year planning horizon can be reduced.
• Many local governments and water utilities have participated in the District’s water supply planning process since the mid 1990s, and have begun to make the difficult decisions to pursue AWS sources. They have also been required to implement conservation measures.
• AWS projects have been identified in order to protect the environment — to protect wetlands, lakes, springs and rivers that would be negatively affected by greater groundwater withdrawals from the aquifer system.
• To protect the aquifer and groundwater drinking supplies in central Florida, the District has limited groundwater withdrawals to 2013 water demand projections.
• The District cannot permit a water use that causes environmental harm to the aquifer, the St. Johns River or any other water resource.

District Water Supply Plan 2005

• The Governing Board approved its District Water Supply Plan 2005 in 2006 and subsequently approved three amendments to the DWSP 2005. The third amendment, known as the Third Addendum, was unanimously approved in May 2008.
• The Third Addendum included 24 newly identified water supply development project options, most of which involved the use of reclaimed water. One would involve the use of saltwater at a reverse osmosis plant, and several would involve the use of surface water from the St. Johns or Ocklawaha rivers.
• In June 2008, the Putnam County Environmental Council, Inc. filed a request for review with the Florida Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission (FLWAC) to appeal the District’s Governing Board decision to approve the Third Addendum. This proceeding was placed in abeyance (on hold) by FLWAC after three petitions for administrative hearing challenging the District’s Fourth Addendum to DWSP 2005 (see below) were filed. The last of these petitions was voluntarily dismissed on Nov. 29, 2010. Since the administrative cases have been concluded, PCEC has requested that FLWAC now consider its request for review regarding the Third Addendum and its request for review of the Fourth Addendum. The parties are now awaiting an order from FLWAC.
• FLWAC consists of the Governor and Cabinet and may hear appeals of certain water management district orders and rules.

Fourth Addendum

• On May 12, 2009, the Governing Board approved a Fourth Addendum to the DWSP 2005.
• The Fourth Addendum supersedes all previous addenda.
• The Fourth Addendum:
  • Adds an expanded and updated description of the role of water conservation and the use of reclaimed water to meet projected water demands
  • Removes four water supply development project options
  • Identifies 16 completed water supply development projects
  • Refines descriptions of water supply development project options
• The Fourth Addendum does not issue District permits to project options identified in the water supply plan nor does the inclusion of a project option in the Fourth Addendum guarantee that a District permit will be issued for a water use by a project that is designed and engineered based on a project option in the water supply plan. Rather, the Fourth Addendum identifies project options and serves as a starting point for utilities to determine how to meet their future needs. A detailed project proposal and design based on one of the project options would first need to be developed by one or more water utilities before permitting decisions could be made. As part of the permit application, all of the permitting criteria, including environmental impacts, would be reviewed by the District for the specific project proposal.
• On June 9, 2009, the Putnam County Environmental Council (PCEC) filed a request for review regarding the Fourth Addendum with the Florida Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission (FLWAC). In addition, the District received three petitions for administrative hearing challenging the Fourth Addendum. The last of the three petitions was voluntarily dismissed on Nov. 29, 2010. Now that the administrative cases have been concluded, PCEC has requested that FLWAC consider its request for review.

Public process

• The District has been engaging the public and local governments about the need for AWS sources since the early 1990s and has held or participated in at least 150 public meetings during the last 10 years concerning the planning and development of potential water supply projects involving the St. Johns and Ocklawaha rivers.
• Meetings were open to the public and have included workshops, presentations, work group meetings, utility manager meetings and Governing Board meetings.
• Advance notice was provided in different ways for different meetings, including legal noticing, direct mail, meeting announcements on the District’s website, news releases, etc.

Comments received

• The District received seven comment letters and five emails in response to the proposed Fourth Addendum.
• These 12 pieces of correspondence offered comments about opportunities for public participation in the process, concerns about surface water project options in the District Water Supply Plan, water conservation, minimum flows and levels (MFLs) on the St. Johns and Ocklawaha rivers and restoration projects on these rivers, and fears about setting new statewide precedents.

Minimum flows and levels and river restoration

• The District has set minimum flows and levels (MFLs) at six locations on the St. Johns River — the locations of three of these MFLs are ideal for assessing the acceptability of water supply development project options that would use water from the St. Johns River, as identified in the 2000 and 2005 District water supply plans.
• If results from the St. Johns River Water Supply Impact Study identify other reaches of the river within which MFLs should be established, the District will act accordingly.
• The adoption of MFLs is not required before identifying AWS project options in the DWSP. The Ocklawaha River Water Allocation Study is an appropriate planning-level tool to support identification and description of AWS project options on the lower Ocklawaha River.
• The establishment of MFLs for the lower Ocklawaha River is scheduled for 2011, which will allow for consideration of the additional scientific data and analysis from the St. Johns River Water Supply Impact Study (scheduled for completion in July 2011).
• River restoration and use of river water for water supply purposes need not be mutually exclusive. The currently scheduled adoption of MFLs for the Ocklawaha River will specifically address environmental protection of the river both upstream and downstream of the existing Rodman Reservoir.

Precedent

• Identifying AWS surface water project options is not precedent setting. Including such project options in a water supply plan does not issue a permit, or guarantee that a permit will be issued for projects that are designed and engineered based on a project option identified in a water supply plan.
• The Southwest Florida and South Florida water management districts have also identified AWS development project options with surface water sources within their boundaries.
• Consumptive use permits already have been issued for water withdrawals from the St. Johns River. For example, several cities have been previously permitted to withdraw water from lakes that are part of the St. Johns River: the city of Melbourne is permitted to withdraw 13.1 million gallons a day (mgd) from Lake Washington and the city of Sanford is permitted to withdraw 7.3 mgd from Lake Monroe. In northeast Florida, JEA is permitted to withdraw 827 mgd from the river in Jacksonville for once-through cooling water.
• The District has clearly demonstrated that it can and will set environmentally protective limits on groundwater supplies. It can and will do the same for surface water sources.