The main problem outlined in this excellent article is the lack of sustainability of our resources. The answers to the questions that Mr. Thomas poses below will not be found with the Department of Environmental Protection or the water management districts. These “protective” and “management” agencies are the very source of Florida’s water problems.
The answers can be found in the writings of many of the grass roots environmental groups in Florida, but a quicker and easier way is to read the works of Dr. Robert Knight of the Florida Springs Institute. This is an objective, independent agency with no vested interest or commitments to political forces.
Knight’s main volumes are Silenced Springs: Moving From Tragedy to Hope, Gainesville, Alta Press, 2015; Death by a Thousand Cuts: An Anthology of Springs Opinions, Gainesville, Alta Press, 2020; and Saving Florida’s Springs: A Prescription for Springs Health, Gainesville, Alta Systems, 2021.
The answers are all there. The scientists at the state agencies are not stupid — they know the answers too– but for political reasons they do not act on them.
The Gainesville Sun does not provide a link to this article.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
Impoverished North Florida needs to safeguard natural resources
Joon Thomas
Special to Gainesville Sun USA TODAY NETWORK
May 29, 2022
Turpentine, phosphate, fish, timber, water: These are natural resources of North Florida, and they have all either been decimated or are declining in quality and abundance. These decimations and declines are the results of an extractive economy, and those results have not been beneficial for the area’s people.
The residents of over 80% of all counties in the United States earn more money per year than people in the 10 counties that hug the banks of the Suwannee, Santa Fe and Ichetucknee rivers. That figure rises to 85% of all counties if Alachua County, home to the University of Florida, is omitted from the list.
The effects of this impoverishment are even more pronounced than these figures suggest, because earnings from the extraction of resources were not invested into institutions that would continue to benefit the region into the future. The area surrounding the Ichetucknee, for example, has no well-funded foundations and no sovereign wealth fund; instead, we have a cluster of impoverished rural counties.
Such is the consequence of over a century-and-a-half of extracting resources from North Florida without any reinvestment. This situation is akin to living off the principal of a trust fund; eventually, the original vast sum is depleted.
An even better analogy may be the goose that laid the golden egg. In the fable, the goose could only lay one egg per day. Impatient to get the eggs faster, the owner cut the goose open. Such was the end of the harvest of golden eggs.
There is an alternative to extracting our way into impoverishment. The creative economy depends upon the innovative abilities of human beings rather than on the base value of raw commodities. A flourishing creative economy is embedded in a particular place and is integrated with the creative, regenerative forces of nature itself.
The largest potential sources of wealth in North Florida continue to be land, water and the creative abilities of the people who live here. Since the 1940s and 1950s and continuing to the present time, those who make the most money from Florida’s land are those who convert it for the first time from natural wilderness or farmland into residential or commercial use.
Thereafter, the increase in value is incremental as the buildings are sold or leased. The principle of first-time use continues to motivate the conversion of Florida’s land into buildings.
The effect on Florida’s water resources is less visible. The counties of North Florida are blessed with the Floridan Aquifer, a vast underground reserve of freshwater. But in our greed to extract that water faster than it can be replenished, we are cutting open the fabled goose in slow motion.
The aquifer has been on a steady path of decline since the 1930s, yet that aquifer provides for agriculture, drinking water, household use and industrial consumption — and it sustains our world-famous springs and Florida’s rivers and wetlands. As unimaginable as it might seem, we are consuming water at a faster rate than Florida’s heavy rainfall can replenish. Without sufficient water, Florida’s ecology plunges into dysfunction, failing to support both the natural environment and human needs.
In all locales, but especially in rural areas such as North Florida, it is imperative that the creative economy be considered as the totality of three elements: 1) the regenerative capacity of natural systems, 2) the needs of those who live within the region, and 3) the ingenuity and creativity of people as applied to every economic sector.
A creative economy approach to North Florida would provide a basis for making sound economic decisions. Implementing this approach can start with some key questions and assessments: What are North Florida’s key resource assets?
What decision-making systems are needed to safeguard North Florida’s natural resources and allocate their use?
What are some creative solutions to using those assets in a manner that brings in long-term value-added revenue?
How can we raise our children so that they have a deep understanding of the North Florida environment and the creative abilities to live in it wisely?
These are vital questions that can start us on the path from the extractive economy that has dominated and impoverished North Florida, toward a creative economy that will restore and safeguard our natural resources and improve the health and financial wellbeing of our people.
In this vision, North Florida retains its natural resources and uses them in harmony with the environment’s own regenerative capabilities while supporting the long-term health and economic vitality of rural, small town and urban communities.
Joon Thomas is an artist and longtime resident of North Florida with a particular interest in education and water resources.
