The petitioners for the Santa Fe River basin are Our Santa Fe River, the Ichetucknee Alliance, Ginnie Springs Outdoors, and Jim Tatum.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
-A river is like a life: once taken, it cannot be brought back-
See the original article here in the Gainesville Sun.
EDITORIAL
Springs plans don’t go far enough
If Florida is going to save its spectacular springs, state environmental regulators are going to have to rewrite their long-term plans for restoring these unique waters.
To try to force that to happen, seven environmental groups have filed administrative challenges to the state’s Basin Management Action Plans that were mandated by the Legislature in its Springs and Aquifer Protection Act of 2016. The act identified 30 “outstanding Florida springs” that the state Department of Environmental Protection must target for conservation and restoration, largely by reducing nitrogen pollution and stemming the reduction in springs flows.
All of the seven complainants are members of the Florida Springs Council, a statewide coalition of springs advocacy groups. The groups contend the DEP-drafted BMAPs have inadequate plans for clean-up of septic tanks, fail to factor in new growth, are based on poor scientific modeling and lack details about future projects to correct springs-related issues. But Springs Council Executive Director Ryan Smart was more specific: “We’re still at the point where we can solve this within a decade. It’s nitrates in, nitrates out.”
Exactly. It’s about the nitrates. The BMAPs do not go far enough to eliminate nitrates reaching the aquifer and then the springs. Study after study, many of which DEP has participated in, have shown the culprits in springs deterioration are an overabundance of septic tanks, poorly managed agriculture waste and fertilizer runoff from both farms and homes, along with overpumping.
While the BMAPs address these issues, they do so timidly. Septic tank removals and upgrades are in the works, but so far only a few hundred have been converted in Marion County, where there are an estimated 100,000 septic tanks. Reducing agriculture waste is left to “best practices” with the farmers policing themselves. As for fertilizer, there is no program or legislation limiting the use of phosphate-based fertilizers — and we keep adding homes.
As for spring flow, the water management districts overseeing Rainbow and Silver springs just last year voted to allow their flow levels to fall even more as part of the agencies’ Minimum Florida and Levels studies, also legislatively mandated.
DEP is being asked to undo decades of damage. To be truly aggressive in cleaning up our springs will require substantial investment in septic tank conversion and agriculture waste disposal improvements, not to mention wastewater treatment and public utility expansion.
In addition to Rainbow and Silver, other springs and rivers that are part of the administrative challenge are Ichetucknee and the Santa Fe River, the Suwannee River Basin, Volusia Blue, Wekiwa and Rock springs. These are state and local treasures. They are iconic. They also are fed from the same source from which we get our drinking water.
The springs groups are right: the BMAPs are not going to be effective because they do not go far enough. DEP, however, has to be given the resources to make serious strides toward the stated — and ambitious — goal of springs restoration within 20 years.
Otherwise the demise of springs is only starting.
The Ocala Star-Banner
I am sorry to disagree but I don’t believe the septic tank is the real problem. They have a concert box that the waste goes into the water over flows into a filter system then the water filters down threw the sand and rocks which filters that water. Now if you look at the chicken house on Wilson springs road it has a Huge hole that enters into the basin that runs right into the river and she piles her waste on the ground which is right up a hill from this hole that goes into the basin ever time it rains. So right around the corner on the dirt road side of Wilson springs road you have a ranch that has loads of cattle on the river that flows into the river. Then you have down on 41 you have a huge cattle company that has 100rds of cattle that the river Santa Fe catch’s all there run off and I don’t know how many large company’s you got up and down those rivers that is hurting more then septic tanks ever could. You get that stoped then you would help this rivers 1000 times more then worry about tanks.