Flow levels on Lower Santa Fe, Ichetucknee challenged
Still, administrator of the Bradford Soil & Water Conservation District and an agricultural landowner in the Suwannee district, and the area environmental group Ichetucknee Alliance previously challenged the MFLs on the grounds that they did too little to protect the two rivers and the springs.
One major concern was that the state, despite saying that both rivers were already below their MFLs, grandfathered in all existing permit holders who might be impacting the rivers and springs with their groundwater pumping.
The MFLs set a point where any more pumping of the rivers will lead to “significant” environmental harm.
The state's proposed rule says that any existing groundwater pumping permit that comes up for renewal without a requested increase to allowable withdrawal levels “shall be” approved for up to 20 years, with the caveat that it will be revisited after a new computer groundwater flow model for North Florida and South Georgia is in place.
This is the first time that the DEP - and not a water management district - has set the MFLs for rivers in the state. The state agency is handling the process because of the cross-boundary impacts groundwater pumping in the jurisdiction of the St. Johns River Water Management has on water bodies in the Suwannee River Water Management District and because the regulations may impact permit holders in the St. Johns district.
In September, an administrative law judge ruled against the bulk of the issues raised in the challenges against the MFLs. But Administrative Law Judge Bram D.E. Canter did side with Still on one argument, that the MFLs rule was vague because the Florida Department of Environmental Protection did not include all required supporting technical information.
Canter said the DEP left out the period of record, or the time span covered, for the flow duration curve of the rivers. That curve shows the time that the flow in a river, as measured in cubic feet per second, equals or exceeds a specific level.
In early November, the DEP added that missing information.
The DEP set the period of record for the flows in the Ichetucknee at U.S. 27 and the Lower Santa Fe near Fort White as from Oct. 1, 1932, to Sept. 30, 1990 and planned to push ahead with establishing the MFLs.
Still filed another challenge against the DEP on Nov. 26 alleging that measuring the flow of the Lower Santa Fe at Fort White does not reflect the impact of groundwater pumping in Alachua County, specifically the Gainesville Regional Utilities well field, on Poe and Rum Island springs.
In a Dec. 3 email Still sent to members of the County Commission announcing his challenge, he also alluded to the grandfathering of current permits.
“The other significant problem with the rule is that it exempts all current permit holds from taking any action for the next 4 or 5 years even if the springs or rivers are being impacted by withdrawals being made by current permit holders,” he said.
A public hearing that Still requested on the MFLs is set for Dec. 18 at the DEP headquarters. The hearing on the administrative challenge is set for Dec. 29 in Tallahassee.
The Suwannee River and St. Johns River districts and the North Florida Utility Coordinating Group, a coalition of public water utilities that includes GRU and Jacksonville's utility, have all filed petitions to intervene.
GRU and some of the other utilities that formed the coordinating group had considered challenging a previous version of the MFLs until the DEP decided to put off a requirement for any existing permit holders to take part in a recovery plan and mitigate the impact of their pumping on the rivers and their springs.
Those requirements will not be put in place until a new computer model is in place that shows groundwater flow and projected pumping impacts in areas of north Florida in both the Suwannee and St. Johns districts and south Georgia.
That model is intended to show how pumping in one district or state impacts water bodies and the aquifer in other areas.
With that model not yet in place, the Suwannee district Governing Board voted on Tuesday to delay the process of setting MFLs for water bodies in the eastern part of the district.
“We need the groundwater model in place to see if there are any impacts from pumping outside the district,” said Carlos Herd, the director of the Suwannee district's Water Supply Division.
Herd said the district should be able to start using the new groundwater model in early 2015 but it will still have to go through peer review to become final. He expects that process to take a year.
http://www.gainesville.com/article/2...ws04?p=3&tc=pg
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