Our Drinking Water

The survey of IRC residents done by the Trust for Public Lands indicated that 91% are most concerned about our water. How can we continue to have clean, uncontaminated water to drink and for our children to play in?

Where does our drinking water come from?

Our county provides water to the public from wells 800 feet deep from an underground source called the Floridan Aquifer. This aquifer, the largest in the southeastern United States, is a vast underground layer of porous rocks that hold water under pressure. In some areas this water is not suitable for drinking without going through a process, which in Indian River County is done by reverse osmosis. Our well water is forced under high pressure through a series of fine membranes to remove the salts, which until this fall have been released into the Indian River Lagoon. However, St. Johns River Water Management District, one state agency looking after the Lagoon and our water supply, has asked the county to stop doing this as these concentrated salts are not identical to those found in the Lagoon, thus changing its ecology. The county in the future will be mixing this concentrated salt with stormwater, which will be reused, for example, by our golf courses. This in the long run may also have negative consequences.

How much water is available in the Floridan Aquifer is not known for sure. Many municipalities are sticking their straws into the Floridan as it is becoming the principal source for drinking water in Central (including Orlando) and South Florida. The aquifer is replenished or recharged by rainfall in north Florida and south Georgia, but of 50 inches of annual rainfall, 37 inches evaporates or runs off into our lakes, rivers, and ocean leaving only 13 inches for soaking into the ground. This recharge takes time, as scientists have estimated that the age of our water is up to 26,000 years old- a long time to wait for 13 inches of water! Actually, nobody knows how long it will take to appear in the Floridan some years later either by percolating down or through natural fissures. In Florida, ground and surface waters are sometimes connected in strange ways with, for example, lakes and ponds disappearing into sinkholes.

In Indian River County, some proposed major developments are even considering producing “waterway villages.” Water in these waterways evaporates at about 1/4 inch per day. During a drought which is fairly common here, there may be even more calls to put even more water from our aquifer into these human made waterways and ponds as is being done in Lakewood Park.

Moreover, this13 inches each year is finding it ever more difficult to seep into the ground as paved roads, parking lots, shopping centers, housing developments and other buildings block the seepage and direct rainwater rapidly to the ocean unless it is stored. In addition, the aquifer’s water quality is increasingly vulnerable to pollutants, such as lawn fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals, animal wastes, and septic tanks that run off our own backyards and other developed areas and seep into the ground with the 13 inches

How can we prevent this kind of crisis in Indian River County (and all of Florida) before it’s too late? While we need more aggressive enforcement of our existing water consumption regulations and setting of incentives, government cannot simply mandate solutions to this problem. Each of us must take personal responsibility so we can solve this together. We must encourage neighborhood associations and homeowners to:
1. install rain gauge shut off controls on sprinkler units
2. water lawns only between 4 pm and 10 am to reduce evaporation
3. use cost effective native plantings in order to reduce commitment to acres of very costly and hard to control grass (which also require pesticides and herbicides)
4. attend planning and zoning and county commission meetings to encourage sensible water use

Water consumption is an enormous potential problem for our country. In Indian River County we still have the chance to save our natural environment (why the $50 million dollar referendum is important) to help protect our water by controlling growth and water consumption. We want to avoid ending up like parts of Florida facing the prospect of importing or producing very costly desalinated water from our ocean to make up for problems created by irresponsible growth and lack of awareness and self-discipline in using our present sources of water.

Richard H. Baker, President of Pelican Island Audubon Society, PIAS Newsletter, August 2004.

Political Advertisement Paid for and Approved by Richard Baker, Democrat for Indian River County Commission District 1