Florida's water future: a legislative proposal for the distribution of water resources in Florida.

• Author: Christaldi, Ronald A.

Florida has a seeming abundance of water,(1) receiving an average of 175 billion gallons per day.(2) In addition, Florida's aquifers(3) contain more than a quadrillion gallons of water, which is 30,000 times the average daily discharge of Florida's 13 largest rivers.(4) Florida has 1,700 streams and rivers and 7,800 freshwater lakes.(5) Florida withdraws only 18 billion gallons of water per day,(6) only 7.5 billion gallons of which is fresh water.(7)

The apparent abundance of water in Florida is misleading. The water in Florida is generally located at a significant distance from densely populated areas. The population in Florida is mainly concentrated along its coastline. Of Florida's 50 most populous cities, 22 are located in the three southeastern coastal counties of Palm Beach, Dade, and Broward alone.(8) Additionally, the third and fourth largest cities in the state, Tampa and St. Petersburg, are located adjacent to each other on the western coast of Florida.(9) Unlike the middle and northern regions of the state, these coastal regions have direct access to only a limited amount of fresh water.(10) Concomitantly, aquifers in the coastal areas are more susceptible to saltwater intrusion.(11) Hence, the challenge Florida faces in managing water resources "is not the allocation of a finite depleting supply, as it is with oil and gas, but rather a geographic and temporal mismatch of supply and demand."(12)

Florida is currently divided into five water management districts that fall under the supervision of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). These districts were created by the Florida Water Resources Act of 1972(13) (Water Resources Act) to "Provide for the management of water and related land resources."(14) The Water Resources Act was patterned after the legislative proposal known as the Model Water Code,(15) which was drafted at the University of Florida between 1967 and 1972.(16) The purpose of this article is to examine the current system of water management and distribution in Florida, especially in the context of consumptive use, and to recommend policy revisions that will benefit the citizens of the state as a whole. Because the dilemma facing Florida is not one of allocating a finite resource but rather one of distributing an ample, but unevenly distributed, resource, a state-level distribution program is necessary. The current system allocates an excess of authority to the individual water management districts and thus regionalizes the use of Florida's water resources. The result is not only an inefficient use of these water resources but also one with potentially damaging ecological consequences.

The first part of this article reviews alternative approaches to consumptive use regulation, distribution, and management. The second part proposes a policy change in the regulation, distribution, and management of water for consumptive purposes in Florida. This part suggests a shift to state-level water regulation, distribution, and management and argues that if the water management districts should remain, their roles must be relegated to that of administrators rather than of policymakers.

Water Management and Consumptive Use Regulation

Several problems arise in the regulation of the consumptive use of water. On one level, a number of competing interests seek permits for the consumptive use of water.(17) In areas where local water is plentiful, these distinctions may be considered trivial. This belies the underlying problem facing coastal areas. In these areas where the supply of local water is limited, competing interests are overtly adverse to one another and constantly competing for what each considers its fair portion of the water supply.(18) For instance, in West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority v. Southwest Florida Water Management District, DOAH Case Nos. 951520-95-1528, several west-central Florida counties are presently embroiled in a battle over the permitting of four public supply wellfields.

Limited water supply alone might not cause a crisis situation if the consumptive use of that water were tightly regulated through careful permitting procedures. Water management districts, however, continue, somewhat recklessly, to issue consumptive use permits while they are failing to determine the limits of the water resources in their districts. As a result, concerns have arisen as to whether the resources are being overused and over-permitted.(19) Although debate continues as to whether overpumping is the sole cause, or even a partial cause, of phenomena such as the water level reduction of lakes(20) and saltwater intrusion into aquifers, such environmentally destructive activities are occurring daily.

* Solutions Proposed Under the Current System

Several solutions to the problem of inefficient water distribution have been proposed within the confines of the current system. The problem, simply stated, is that Florida has an ample supply of water, but the state's water resources are not evenly distributed temporally and geographically. This causes "artificial shortages" in many of the coastal areas where Florida's largest cities are located. Several solutions to this problem have been proposed.(21)

1) Salt Water Desalination

One proposed remedy is the development of desalination, which is the process by which salt or brackish water is processed to remove minerals, leaving fresh, potable water.(22) Brackish water desalination is used extensively in Florida.(23) Because of the comparative abundance of saltwater, turning seawater into drinking water has caused excitement and enthusiasm in water-rich areas concerned about invasion by the water-poor locales of the state.(24) This enthusiasm relates to the public's perception of the existence of an abundant supply of seawater that can be converted to drinking water, at a reasonable expense and without environmental impact.(25) This faith in technology and hasty enthusiasm, however, overlook certain realities of the situation.

Seawater desalination plants are impractical and unreasonable for several reasons. (For a discussion of desalination and the problems and shortcomings associated with it, see Charlotte County et al. v. Southwest Florida Water Management District, DOAH Case No. 94-5742RP, at 401-410 (Final Order, Mar. 26, 1997)). First, seawater desalination is very expensive. For example, a proposed Tampa Bay area desalination plant, capable of producing 20-50 million gallons per day (mgd) would cost about $200 million just to construct.(26) Although 20-50 mgd may sound like a large amount, the estimated 1993 use in the Southwest Florida Water Management District alone was 1281.5 mgd.(27) Furthermore, the projected use in that district for the year 2020 is 2369.5 mgd.(28) The $200 million price tag will likely be passed directly to the users of the water.(29) Clearly this large expense, which goes only to the construction of the plant and not the high operational costs,(30) would provide a tiny fraction of the actual water needs of the region.

In addition, the operation of a...