On Friday, November 1, 2019, GeoSyntec Consultants, hired by Seven Springs water company (and possibly Nestle) submitted these answers for a Request for Additional Information to the Suwannee River Water Management District.
In these documents, you will see answers to questions requested from the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) that are intended to assist the staff as to why this water bottling permit is needed or necessary.
The District staff will review the material and make their final decision very soon.
We the citizens have an opportunity to also review the material and make our comments, suggestions and concerns known to the water management district through the district portal or by writing emails directly to the staff that are reviewing the documents.
Now is our time and chance to be a part of a process in which the public participation matters. If you also know scientists and experts that have opinions about this information please have them contact Our Santa Fe River directly for context or encourage them to make a comment now.
Here is the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) permit portal for anyone who wants to make a comment on what they have read in this report. https://permitting.sjrwmd.com/srepermitting/jsp/supportAction.do?command=sb2080&prmtNo=2-041-218202-3&projNm=7-Springs+Water&ntc_sent=false
To see the latest on the permit renewal process, go to district permitting portal in the paragraph above. Then go the RAI link for November. When you click on the link, the document link may appear at the bottom of your page. Click on it and you will be taken to the document. Please be patient as the files are large and may take some time to download.
To make it easier, we have extracted the latest links for you and added them below. If you want to see all of the procedure, you may open the other links on the portal page.
11/01/2019 610KB RAI response (last Request for Additional Information)
11/01/2019 1MB Revised Application
11/01/2019 1MB Hydro-Wetlands Report
11/01/2019 3MB Figures
11/01/2019 462KB APT data
If you want to make a lengthy comment, please email Warren Zwanka, Resource Management Division Director, warren.zwanka@srwmd.org and Hugh Thomas, Executive Director, hugh.thomas@srwmd.org; both are water resource staff in charge of reviewing water use permits at SRWMD. If you want additional help, contact Mike Roth, President of Our Santa Fe River, michael.roth@oursantaferiver.org .
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
-A river is like a life: once taken, it cannot be brought back-
One huge fallacy I see Seven Springs/Nestle pushing in these papers is the laughable claim that since the amount of water allocated to this permit will technically remain the same, there won’t be any environmental impact, even though Nestle plans to extract more than four times more water than has ever been used by Seven Springs before.
They completely gloss over the critical fact that this permit has NEVER been used to its full allowance, so the effects of extracting that much water are unknown. Not that Nestle has ever been shown to care about the ecosystems they exploit. Their known business model is to exploit outdated legislation and understaffed water boards to snap up permits for next to nothing, fabricate science to placate concerns, then suck the rivers dry before moving on to the next gullible community that will fall for their empty promises. Hopefully the SRWMD is smart enough to see through this scheme and keep their water where it belongs.