Water democracy: Even as supply threatens to run out, public shows little interest

6:14 p.m. EST, July 3, 2012|By Kevin Spear, Orlando Sentinel

ST. CLOUD — The keepers of Central Florida’s water supply, mostly technocrats and utility bosses, have labored for more than a year to identify and divide among themselves the region’s last precious drops.

Last week, they put their work on public display during an open house that, according to a sign-in sheet, was attended by several dozen people representing various businesses, government agencies and environmental-advocacy groups. Only about a half dozen of those present were simply interested members of the general public.
Such is democracy when it comes to water in Florida, even as the supply threatens to run dry.

Various public-affairs experts and advocates say they worry that people’s participation in local or statewide water-policy debates is often muted by complex science, specialized regulations and lack of involvement by elected officials.

“Water will never catch the public eye until it stops running out of the faucet,” said Bill Segal, a former Orange County commissioner and a former St. Johns River Water Management District board member.

Some water watchers think a tipping point might have been reached a little more than a week ago, however, when nearly 1,750 people turned out for a rally at Silver River State Park in Marion County.

The event had been organized in response to a ranch owner’s quest to pump 13 million gallons of water a day from the state’s heavily stressed Floridan Aquifer. Most of that water — as much as the nearby city of Ocala uses each day — would irrigate pastures for high-intensity cattle production at Adena Springs Ranch.

The unusually strong backlash to the ranch’s water-permit request stems largely from fears that it would reduce and pollute the water flowing from the area’s already-ailing Silver Springs, a well-known and popular natural attraction and tourist destination since the 1800s. Backers of the cattle ranch deny that any harm would occur to the springs or the river they create.

Where a tipping point might lead is unclear in a state where the options for public involvement in water issues are limited or daunting.

A speaker at the June 23 rally — Lee Constantine, a former Republican state senator from Altamonte Springs who’s now a candidate for Seminole County commissioner — said he encourages individuals and groups to join the Florida Conservation Coalition, one of the rally’s organizers, as a way to have their voices heard.

 

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Constantine, who as a state lawmaker was among only a few in the Legislature to concentrate on water issues, said turning to a local elected official to talk about water — as routinely happens when people have concerns about schools, taxes or crime — “isn’t going to do any good. They can’t look at the big picture of water.”

In this part of the state, most of the people capable of seeing the big picture are part of the Central Florida Water Initiative.
CFWI members are drawn from the three state agencies, known as water-management districts, that control the region’s water supply, and from the city and county utilities that must share the dwindling amount of water left to meet the demands of population growth.

The invitation-only group’s inaugural open house Thursday was in St. Cloud, on the edge of the Orlando metropolitan area, overlooking the Osceola County city’s scenic waterfront park on East Lake Tohopekaliga. Having done most of their work so far in obscurity, its members enthusiastically described tasks that, they admitted, involve cutting-edge science that often defies easy explanation.

They said they are attempting to: determine how much harm has already been caused to the region’s wetlands and waterways by heavy pumping from the Floridan Aquifer; establish whether that harm is of an acceptable degree; and set a limit for how much more water, if any, can be pumped from the aquifer.

Deirdre Macnab, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, said it’s difficult for the average citizen to understand such a discussion, much less respond to it.

This is one of our most precious resources, and we don’t really know what’s happening below the surface,” said Macnab, who didn’t attend the open house. “We need an annual, reliable and understandable report on our water.”

Robert Knight shares her frustration. Knight, a springs scientist in Gainesville and an opponent of the Adena Springs Ranch proposal, said the state’s water-management districts seem intent on blunting public involvement.

“They are usually talking down to people. They give presentations that are frequently unintelligible. They go over things too fast and try to cover too much,” Knight said of the districts’ regular meetings. “I don’t care to go to them myself.”

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Bonito Lake ‘ruined’

Flooding dumps ash, silt into water source

Dianne Stallings dstallings@ruidosonews.com Posted: 07/10/2012

Once a fishing and camping retreat among cool Ponderosa pines, Bonito Lake today is filled with silt and ash from the Little Bear Fire and is no longer viable as a drinking water source for the city of Alamogordo.

The odor of charred trees and rotting fish permeates the air.

“The lake is ruined,” Justin King said. “It will take several years of major dredging to correct this. It’s holding more than 40 feet of silt.”

Crews working around the lake are focusing on keeping the level below the spillway to prevent more damage downstream, he said Tuesday during a multiple agency morning briefing.

“We have three pumps working the lake now, moving 10,000 gallons per minute, but we’re unable to keep up with the inflow,” King said. Two more pumps will be installed by Wednesday to increase the pumpage to 20,000 gpm, he said.

“We had the lake down 18 feet below the spillway, but with the three rain events, it’s up to 5 feet, 6 inches below today. Yesterday alone, it went up 18 inches,” King said. “The goal is to maintain the water below the spillway, so all we have to be concerned about are the lower reaches of the Bonito (River). If for some reason it does come over the spillway, it’s, ‘Katy, bar the door,’ because there is no way we can handle those flows down the stream. We’re really trying to keep take level down so we can continue to capture everything coming from North Fork and South Fork.”

Pipelines removing the water, silt and ash are being run down the spillway and along the roadsides. While the fire that approached the lake stayed mostly on the ground, reaching only one area of the canopy, it devastated the drainages and canyons leading into the lake. Wherever the funding originates, “We’re not going to stop pumping,” said Don Scott with the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Response. If one source runs out, the dollars will come from either the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the city of Alamogordo until new contracts are in place.

Possible contamination of drinking water from fracking operations

Can fracking operations contaminate drinking water? Findings of recent geological studies generate many disputes on the safety claims of the hydraulic fracturing industry.

Source: The Green Optimistic / by Maria Reyes on July 13, 2012

Hydraulic fracturing involves directing pressurized fluid onto deep shale of rocks to break them open in order to release the trapped methane gas inside. Geologists guauuuurantee this process will not contaminate the shallow aquifers that supply drinking water because there are several kilometers of rock that separates the fracking sites from the aquifers.

Avner Vengosh, from Duke University, says there is danger from another source. This source is a possible methane leak that poses a grave explosion risk.

Last year, his team claimed that drinking wells in Pennsylvania were contaminated with methane, possibly from nearby fracking operations. These claims were loudly criticized.

However, Vengosh reports new evidence of possible water contamination. Some 40 of 158 Pennsylvania aquifers analyzed by his team contained unusually high levels of salt.

These aquifers were contaminated with brine coming from salt aquifers at the same depth as fracking sites. Cracks in the rocks could have allowed the brine to travel hundreds of meters upwards. Methane gas could potentially travel the same way.

Mike Stephenson of the British Geological Survey says this process could take millions of years and does not present a serious problem.

Vengosh asserts, however, that the brine must be travelling upwards quite rapidly else the Pennsylvania heavy rainfall would wash it out of the shallow aquifers. He further asserts that a gas could move faster.

Richard Davies of Durham University proposes more possible ways for fracking to cause gas leaks. Boreholes that were not properly sealed can result to gas leaks. This could explain what happened in Dimock Pennsylvania, where residents are suing Calbot Oil & Gas Corporations for contaminating their drinking water. However, Calbot asserts that their test shows no water contamination in the area.

Davies argues that around 184,000 wells were drilled in Pennsylvania before records were kept. The locations of these wells are not known. If somebody operates near one of these sites, it could cause a gas leak.

A commercially funded study last December claimed that methane discovered in Pennsylvania aquifers had a different chemical signature from those released in the shale from hydraulic fracturing.

Source: The Green Optimistic (http://s.tt/1hKq0)