StreamLines home

Summer/fall 2011

• River provides multifaceted benefits
• Fighting the choke-hold of exotic plants
• Hiking trails offer backwoods adventures
• StreamLines: A source for understanding the value of water

Summer/fall 2011

River provides multifaceted benefits

Restored wetlands in St. Johns River’s headwaters provide flood protection, irrigation for crops, habitat for wildlife and endless scenic views.

The airboat winds through a serpentine corridor of swaying sawgrass, the vegetation so tall and dense that every blind curve on the watery trail promises surprise. It might be a scattering of juvenile alligators, their torsos a blur of black and yellow or an explosion of egrets taking flight at the sound of the airboat’s throbbing motor.

The reedy tangle eventually yields to a fisheye lens vista of marsh and sky. When the motor is silenced, the boat glides to a stop. The glassy water mirrors cobalt skies and shifting cumulus clouds. A cover of coots squawk an ancient language somewhere along the fringes. A pair of osprey feed their young in a nest crowning a long-dead cypress tree.

The concept of time becomes hazy in the headwaters of the St. Johns River. Hours are measured by the sun’s arc instead of clocks, seasons by temperatures instead of calendars.

Only a few decades earlier, this very marsh — now known as the Blue Cypress Water Management Area — had been drained and used to grow vegetables, primarily tomatoes. In fact, by the early 1970s, 62 percent of the entire marsh of the Upper St. Johns River Basin had been drained for agriculture. A grid of canals constructed then diverted floodwaters from the basin east to the Indian River Lagoon.

Draining off the headwaters of the 310-mile-long St. Johns River may have been a boon for agriculture, but the benefits came at a cost to the very life of the river: loss of water storage areas, diminished water quality, excessive freshwater going into the lagoon, and significant decreases in fish and wildlife populations. The marsh that remained was further degraded by hydrologic alterations and nutrients in agricultural runoff.

“Many of the people who visit this marsh to boat and fish might not realize this same area was once farmed,” says Hector Herrera, upper basin project manager for the St. Johns River Water Management District. “Although the marsh may never be exactly as it once was, our goal is to mimic the natural hydrology of the river as closely as possible.”

After 10 years of planning and almost 20 years under construction, the Upper St. Johns River Basin Project — now in the final stages of completion — balances environmental sustainability with the need for reliable flood protection in Brevard and Indian River counties.

The 247-square-mile project, extending from the Florida Turnpike in Indian River County northward to Lake Washington in central Brevard County, is one of the most ambitious wetland restoration projects of its kind in the world. The project is co-sponsored by the District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with the District purchasing vast tracts of former agricultural land for restoration and the Corps constructing levees, water control structures and related plumbing necessary to protect Indian River and Brevard counties from floods.

“The upper basin project is an innovative approach to managing water,” Herrera says. “Instead of relying heavily on structures to control water movement, we worked with the Corps toward a ‘semi-structural’ concept, balancing flood control with significant environmental habitat restoration and water quality protection benefits.”

The project is divided into marsh conservation areas and water management areas. Marsh conservation areas temporarily retain flood water, provide long-term water conservation storage, and restore and preserve floodplain wetlands.

Water management areas, by contrast, retain flood water from adjacent areas but also segregate nutrient-rich agricultural discharges from the marsh conservation areas, provide water quality improvement prior to discharge downstream and provide water for farm irrigation.

The areas’ ancillary benefits include fishing and boating. One of the basin’s most popular recreational areas is the St. Johns Water Management Area, known by locals as the Stick Marsh or Stick Marsh/Farm 13.

Constructed in 1987, the 6,500-acre water management area increased the amount of water stored in the upper basin during wet seasons while improving water quality by isolating and treating stormwater runoff from Sun-Ag Farms, a large corporate-owned citrus farm east of the river’s headwaters. The water management area acts like a filter, capturing phosphorus and other nutrients that would otherwise reach the river’s natural flow and degrade its water quality.

The north end of the Stick Marsh was formerly pasture, rife with brush and cabbage palms and lined with canals and levees. Farm 13, to the immediate south of the Stick Marsh, was former farmland used to raise row crops. A levee system was constructed around the two areas and the impoundment was allowed to fill with water. Together, they form the St. Johns Water Management Area.

As the demand for drinking water increases, the project has come to play a role in storing more water within the project area during the wet season and releasing it downstream at a steady rate during the dry season, Herrera notes.

“We also reduce the dependency on groundwater for agricultural irrigation by providing surface water as an alternative source,” he adds.

Farmers can recycle water from the water management area for irrigation during dry times or flood their citrus groves to protect the trees during hard freezes. It’s a cooperative relationship that has worked well for farmers and water managers.

But most people are interested in the Stick Marsh as a fishery. It has exceeded the expectations of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), the agency responsible for managing the impoundment’s catch-and-release program.

“The Stick Marsh is considered one of the top bass lakes in Florida,” says Bob Eisenhauer, an FWC fisheries biologist. “We’ve had a great relationship with the District in working to provide an excellent source of public recreation there.”

History

In the early 1900s, steam shovels opened Florida’s watery interior in an effort to “claim” marshlands for agricultural production and private development. The widely held theory of the time was that marshes had no intrinsic value, but the nutrient-rich marsh bottom offered prime soil for growing citrus and row crops and raising cattle.

The Fellsmere Grade and Fellsmere Main Canal were constructed across the marsh to link the hamlet of Fellsmere with the small town of Kenansville, and to provide for drainage improvements. Other private canals followed, diverting large volumes of freshwater from the St. Johns River to the Indian River Lagoon.

A series of hurricanes in the 1920s and 1940s resulted in devastating floods in the central and southern regions of Florida, prompting the establishment of modern flood control projects in 1948. By the 1950s, the Corps and the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District began designing a large flood control project in the upper basin. Construction started in 1966.

Portions of this flood control project, including Canal 54, were constructed by 1973, when project construction was halted by President Richard Nixon due to an Environmental Impact Statement that found that the project had unacceptable impacts on the environment.

During the late 1980s, this project was transformed. While “semi-structural,” the project includes more than 100 miles of flood protection levees, six major gated spillway structures and at least 15 smaller water control structures, culverts and weirs. During flood conditions, the project may contain more than 550,000 acre-feet of water — an amount that could cover an 86-square-mile area, 10 feet deep.

Project benefits recognized

While the goal of the project was to provide regional flood protection to Indian River and Brevard counties, the project provided benefits “that we didn’t count on,” says District Governing Board member Doug Bournique, who is also executive vice president of the Indian River Citrus League.

“The upper basin project has saved hundreds of jobs and protected the agricultural base here,” Bournique says. “For agriculture, this project has been phenomenal. I don’t think any of us in the citrus industry felt that the project would provide so many benefits.”
Water from nearby citrus groves and livestock pastures discharged into water management areas not only isolates agricultural runoff from water that recharges the marsh, the runoff water can be reused for farm irrigation and freeze protection. Prior to the creation of the upper basin project, Indian River County growers were as susceptible to hard freezes as growers in other counties.

The vast marshes and water management areas literally raise the air temperature in the surrounding groves.

“It’s been hard on growers,” Bournique says. “We contend with canker and freezes. The availability of water for irrigation and freeze protection gives us more assurance that our investments will pay off. Water is the game changer.”

Entering the final stretch

More than two decades after the initial project plans were laid out, the river’s headwaters are once again a broad, marshy expanse.

The last leg of the upper basin project is located just west of Palm Bay — the 13,737-acre Three Forks Marsh Conservation Area. The Corps has completed most of the work there.

Meanwhile, farther south, work continues at the Fellsmere Water Management Area where a 10,000-acre tract of former citrus groves and pastureland is being transformed to a mosaic of open water and wetlands. The project will augment dry season flows to the St. Johns River, increasing water storage in the Blue Cypress Lake watershed, and virtually eliminating the need for freshwater discharges to Canal 54 and, ultimately, the Indian River Lagoon.

“The headwaters of the St. Johns River are alive again,” Herrera says. “The upper basin project will be one of the greatest legacies of the District, the Corps and the various state environmental agencies and interest groups that worked to make this possible.”

Fighting the choke-hold of exotic plants

Invasion of exotic plants continues to plague natural areas and waterways.

Florida’s expansive waterways and rich wetlands provide recreational opportunities, economic benefits, flood protection and wildlife habitat. But nuisance, nonnative plants have invaded thousands of acres of the state’s forests and waterways, causing interruption to waterway navigation and recreation, and displacing native plants and animals.

“A single nuisance plant can ruin an entire lake. Preventing its spread is the most cost-effective way to control nuisance vegetation,” says Gary Nichols of the St. Johns River Water Management District’s Division of Land Management.

Invasive plants grow quickly, propagate easily, resist native pests and were introduced to the state without the diseases, parasites and other natural enemies they would have in their natural settings.  Approximately 30 percent of all plant species in Florida are nonindigenous (exotic), and more than 1.6 million acres of Florida’s remaining natural areas are infested by invasive, exotic plants.

Exotic plants frequently out-compete native species, causing a decline in biological diversity and a loss of native habitat. If exotic plants replace too many of Florida’s native plants, wildlife that remain dependent on native plants will move away or die.

The District’s Invasive Plant Management Program works to control nuisance upland and aquatic vegetation on approximately 400,000 acres of District-owned properties. As a contractor for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), the District also maintains control of nuisance aquatic vegetation in eight public lakes and rivers.

The program is the first line of defense in Florida’s battle to maintain control of nuisance aquatic vegetation and provide flood protection, navigation, recreation and water quality benefits, and to control nuisance upland vegetation to protect plant and animal communities. Program staff focus on bringing invasive, exotic aquatic and terrestrial weeds under “maintenance control” (a method of controlling exotic plants on a continual basis to maintain the invasive plant population at the lowest feasible level).

Nuisance aquatic plants can block navigation and recreation, disturb areas where fish and wildlife live, and cause flooding by inhibiting drainage and water flow through a water body. When aquatic weeds are allowed to spread, they can completely take over a water body.

For example, one state report shows that in a two-year period in Florida water bodies, hydrilla spread from 50,000 to 100,000 acres of plants. Hydrilla can grow an inch a day until it nears the water’s surface, then forms thick mats across the water’s surface, effectively blocking out sunlight needed by native submersed vegetation.

Other notable nonnative, invasive aquatic plants are waterhyacinths and waterlettuce, which are aggressive weeds restricted by state or federal law. As few as 10 waterhyacinth plants can reproduce and cover an acre of water during a six- to nine-month growing season.

Two invasive plants in particular pose problems on District lands: lygodium, or Old World climbing fern, and willow trees.

Lygodium, native to Asia, Australia and Africa, spreads aggressively, climbs up trees, blocking sunlight, weakening or killing native trees and their understory plants.

Willows are an especially aggressive and prolific woody species that is taking over wide areas of marshland.

Not all nonnative plants are bad — some will grow without causing severe harm to native habitats. On the other hand, some native plants, such as cattails and duckweed, can cause problems.

“Our control efforts are primarily aimed at those that replace native plants, completely block water bodies and change natural surroundings,” says Nichols, a specialist in nuisance vegetation and manager of the District’s Invasive Plant Management Program.

To control nuisance aquatic plants, options include biological control agents, machines and herbicides, Nichols says.

Biological control agents — living organisms that eat or injure plants — include alligator weed flea beetle, waterhyacinth weevil and grass carp. Mechanical controls include harvesters, dredges and rakes, while treating nuisance plants with herbicides involves spraying small amounts of herbicides directly on floating plants or injected underwater to reach the submersed plants.

Herbicides are chemicals that kill plants by affecting the growth patterns. Federal and state laws permit the use of five common herbicides on nuisance aquatic plants. Because they are applied in very small amounts and break down quickly, these herbicides are not harmful to fish and wildlife. In addition, sunlight and bacteria in the water break down the herbicides into safe chemical parts, such as hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

Lygodium drapes over tree tops. Inset, lygodium fruit.

How you can help prevent the spread of nuisance vegetation

• Remove any plants or fragments from boat trailers or engines before leaving a boat ramp, drain all water and remove all plants or fragments from live wells, and remove all water and plants from buckets.
• Do not transport any plants into Florida or from one water body to another within Florida.
• Remove nonnative invasive plants from your private property, which can eliminate a major source of invasion into natural areas.
• Report nuisance aquatic plants on District lands or waterways to the District’s Invasive Plant Management Program at gnichols@sjrwmd.com or (321) 409-2159.

Hiking trails offer backwoods adventures

In the sun-dappled shade of an ancient oak, miles from anything resembling civilization, stands a solitary marker. The mottled tombstone, enclosed within a wrought iron fence, has signified the final resting place of Kathrine Lanier since Jan. 15, 1895.

Nearby, along a ragged trail that winds through the piney scrub and decaying leaves, are scores of metal markers and silent gravestones that reach back into Florida’s history more than 150 years.

Yet, within this somber landscape, new life emerges. A Chuck-will’s-widow, alarmed by human intrusion, circles the cemetery and deftly plummets to the ground, feigning injury. The clever bird uses the ploy to draw potential predators away from her well-concealed chicks, huddled in the leaves just a few feet from Lanier’s tombstone.

The cemetery at Herky Huffman/Bull Creek Wildlife Management Area can be an unexpected delight for hikers and history buffs exploring the 23,740-acre property in Osceola County.

Bull Creek is one of several properties owned or managed by the St. Johns River Water Management District offering hikers the opportunity to trek portions of the Florida Trail, a federally designated Florida National Scenic Trail more than 1,500 miles across the state.

Nearly 14 miles of the Florida Trail pass through Bull Creek. The trail crosses scenic Crabgrass Creek, follows the abandoned Union Cypress Railroad along Bull Creek and ends at the Forever Florida crossover.

While many identify the District as an agency charged with regulating water use, part of the District’s mission has included acquiring land to protect water resources. The District owns or manages about 700,000 acres of land within its 18-county region, most of it open for public recreation. That’s great news for hikers, for much of the land offers access to some of the state’s most vibrant and pristine wetlands and uplands.

In some cases, the District has worked closely with the Florida Trail Association to improve access to places such as the Rice Creek Conservation Area just west of Palatka and the Little-Big Econ State Forest in central Florida.

“The five water management districts are probably some of our strongest supporters among land managers,” says Deb Blick, trail resource coordinator with the Florida Trail Association. “A lot of trails on St. Johns District lands were built and maintained by the Florida Trail Association, such as Canaveral Marshes Conservation Area in Brevard County.”

Canaveral Marshes offers ideal hiking conditions as the 6,741-acre property’s elevation drops a mere one foot per five miles and includes about 20 miles of the St. Johns River shoreline. The marshes of this conservation area provide habitat for wading birds, waterfowl, alligators and many species listed as endangered or threatened.

The Florida Trail Association also is developing hiking trails through the Little-Big Econ State Forest, a 5,787-acre partnership project among the District, the state Conservation and Recreation Lands Program and Seminole County. In this region, hiking conditions will improve, thanks to the District’s success in recent land exchanges between state roads 46 and 50.

The District actively pursues partnerships for land management with other state agencies, local governments and nonprofit organizations like the Florida Trail Association. In fact, the majority of District land holdings have been purchased — or are being managed — through such partnerships.

Visit floridaswater.com/recreation for additional information about hiking and other recreational opportunities on District lands.

StreamLines: A source for understanding the value of water

Welcome to the new and improved StreamLines — the St. Johns River Water Management District’s twice-a-year magazine about water resource projects and initiatives in northeast and east-central Florida.

As so many aspects of communications and how information flows have evolved in recent years, we’re working to ensure that you continue to have ready access to water resource information. For the past 21 years, StreamLines has been one of the ways in which the District has shared news and information with you, and we have recently revamped the publication to include more in-depth articles to provide a broader perspective on the District’s responsibilities and the people who serve the public to protect Florida’s water resources.

To increase accessibility, we also publish StreamLines online at floridaswater.com/streamlines.

More time-sensitive water resource news is now disseminated across electronic, social media platforms, such as Twitter, a blog, a YouTube channel, RSS feeds, and a new email communication called Water News.

Water News provides timely and pertinent information about water resource issues, upcoming key meetings, opportunities for public input and involvement, events, and decisions affecting northeast and east-central Florida.

“Social media creates additional opportunities for the District to share information about agency projects and initiatives, for the public to interact with us, and for us to disseminate information in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly format,” says Jeff Cole, director of the District’s Office of Communications and Governmental Affairs.

The District launched its Facebook presence earlier this year at facebook.com/sjrwmd, where the agency shares photos from District events, videos, interesting water resource facts, project information and other timely and relevant news.

“By ‘liking’ us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, and subscribing to our email news and information, the public, local governments, stakeholder groups and the media can stay informed, and, in some cases, interact directly with us. We continue to identify effective web-based technologies and forums that we can use to make information about the District and water resources more accessible and easier to find,” Cole says.