High Springs Water Plant and the Santa Fe

Yesterday i was told by a real estate agent in high springs that the water plant on the way to ginnie has been purchased and Pepsi was mentioned. Anyone have any additional info on that?

The Santa Fe is sure low in spots, at the 441 (west side) bridge you can walk across and stay dry water was flowing west from the Hornsby and river rise. At the 27 bridge there was water and the flow was away from Ginnie (east) and towards the 441 bridge. Did a hike in the river rise park area between the 27 and 441 bridges (horse area) and found the point where the differential river flows met...looked for a swallet but did not see one, guess the river bed is just shallow in the area. It was pretty much dry and the deer were in the middle of the river bottom munching on the new growth, you would definitely have to portage canoes or kayaks a ways. I would also think if you want to canoe or kayak the Santa Fe the best place to put in is the 27 bridge launch and head west. Bill

http://www.gainesville.com/article/2...CLES/120509772

So the question is, on whose payroll are the commissioners?

Dale

The problem it's easier to be an environmentalist if your employed. If your kids are doing without, then what's a little water being pumped from the ground if it gives you a job?

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Originally Posted by a64pilot

The problem it's easier to be an environmentalist if your employed. If your kids are doing without, then what's a little water being pumped from the ground if it gives you a job?

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And then tomorrow, what about your kids? The guys making the decisions are fat and happy and are looking for rather short term gains and ways to line their pockets with cash or votes. They spend the same, and our children will pay with interest. Oh, you can take that to the bank, whatever good that will do you...

I am not a true environmentalist but, we have not been good stuarts, nor have we been making good decisions.

Dale

You worked for Coca-Cola; they closed the doors. Someone else plans to open the doors again. You can't blame folks for wanting to get back to work. What is the alternative? What other jobs or business could be created in Gilchrist County? It's easy to decry the loss of water (and it should be our most pressing concern no doubt), but solutions are needed, not simply protests. Maybe someone could convince Apple to come to Gilchrist County? I heard they are looking for a place in the USA to manufacture Ipads.

skip

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Originally Posted by skip

I heard they are looking for a place in the USA to manufacture Ipads.

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Yes, but you could not get a redneck to work for $3.00 a day and a bowl of fish heads and rice.

This is drinking water? It's not some kind of water used for an industrial process by the millions of gallons and then once it's polluted, dumped back into the environment like water used in a paper mill?
Your right, we have to conserve water, because there is only just so much and we are apparently using it faster than it is being replenished, but are we supposed to tell people to drink less water? I'm more against bottled water because of the plastic bottles than I am against the water use.
Watering lawns and golf courses, I think we can do without, and maybe find out which Industrial users are the biggest and find ways to cut back on that, but I think you beating your head against the wall going after water bottlers, but that's just my opinion.

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Originally Posted by a64pilot

This is drinking water? It's not some kind of water used for an industrial process by the millions of gallons and then once it's polluted, dumped back into the environment like water used in a paper mill?
Your right, we have to conserve water, because there is only just so much and we are apparently using it faster than it is being replenished, but are we supposed to tell people to drink less water? I'm more against bottled water because of the plastic bottles than I am against the water use.
Watering lawns and golf courses, I think we can do without, and maybe find out which Industrial users are the biggest and find ways to cut back on that, but I think you beating your head against the wall going after water bottlers, but that's just my opinion.

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It would be fine, if the water bottled in Florida stayed in Florida. A LOT of it is shipped out of the state, thus lowering the aquifer.

Exactly. If it stayed in FL it would essentially be borrowed and returned.

You could make the argument that millions of gallons an hour flow into the Gulf, and are therefore "wasted" too.
Now before the torches come out, I am for water conservation, I'd like to see what the water useage actually is so we can go after the biggest users.
Anyone that has lived in Germany can see how easy and relatively painless it is to conserve water.
I wonder how much water you could actually truck?
Water weighs 8.3 lbs per Gl, I think the max weight of a truck is 80,000lbs? So a truck could carry max 9,000 gl of water? I think one magnitude one spring flows 166,666 gl of water a min.? So you could fill a truck every three sec or so?
I have no idea how much water an average center pivot uses an hour, does anybody? Or how much water a paper mill uses, or a golf course for that matter.
I'd bet one center pivot uses more water than is trucked out of Fl daily, but have no idea how to find out either.

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Originally Posted by FW

It would be fine, if the water bottled in Florida stayed in Florida. A LOT of it is shipped out of the state, thus lowering the aquifer.

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Toll barriers at the state exit points with Porta-Potties? Force people to "leave behind" the Florida water they drank during their stay?

Let you gear drain into a sink rather than air dry and be wasted.

dairy farms are the largest water users. somethinglike 10 gal per gal of milk. and its polluted when returned. that 30,000 head ofcows recently approved will take out more water than bottling, add far fewer jobs, and pollutr way more too. 110,000 gallons daily for 2000 cows. some drinking, some washing equip, some hosing manure....


skip

Where's a site for this information regarding usage by different sources. Data, data , data!

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Originally Posted by Puttzer

Where's a site for this information regarding usage by different sources. Data, data , data!

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Some data here: http://fl.water.usgs.gov/WaterUse/index.htm but my guess is you have to get to the water management districts.

Obviously the solution is piplines from the river mouths back to the recharge areas.

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Originally Posted by bletso

I am not a true environmentalist but, we have not been good stuarts, nor have we been making good decisions.

Dale

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I'm certainly not a good Stuart. I'm a good Peter though. OH!!! You meant "steward". I get it.

Here is a link to FE207. It may be dated but the data indicates the water plant is the least of the springs problems. I would have cut and pasted a bunch of the facts here but it became too time consuming. A good, educational read anyway....

Regards, Frank Ohidy.


http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fe207

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Where's a site for this information regarding usage by different sources.

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http://www.srwmd.state.fl.us/Documen...Home/View/1759
Suwannee River Water Management water supply assessment. Large PDF - don't try this on dialup.
Lots of information here, but consumptive use by category is on page 28. The numbers you see are in millions of gallons per day.

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Originally Posted by Superlyte27

I'm certainly not a good Stuart. I'm a good Peter though. OH!!! You meant "steward". I get it.

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Sorry about that. Certainly my bad.

As others have pointed out, it is not the Coke's and Nestle's that are the worst. It is indeed agriculture. But don't forget all the water and impact the plastic bottles have. It is rare to see me drinking from a plastic bottle. I can nurse a Poweraid bottle for days as I keep filling it up. I know when I first started diving caves they didn't seem so polluted. There are some now I really hesitate about entering, especially in a period drought.

Dale

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Originally Posted by bletso

Sorry about that. Certainly my bad.

As others have pointed out, it is not the Coke's and Nestle's that are the worst. It is indeed agriculture. But don't forget all the water and impact the plastic bottles have. It is rare to see me drinking from a plastic bottle. I can nurse a Poweraid bottle for days as I keep filling it up. I know when I first started diving caves they didn't seem so polluted. There are some now I really hesitate about entering, especially in a period drought.

Dale

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I use the poweraid bottles to recycle my water also ..... when I am driving!

Bottle or tap if you drink water in Florida its coming from the aquifer. How many houses do you see with cisterns on the roofs? We pick on bottled water but breweries and soda bottlers get their water from the ground too.

Too many people seems to be the common denominator.

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Originally Posted by hunabku

...Too many people seems to be the common denominator.

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That is a problem on the whole planet!

To give you an idea of how bad the drought is, I shot these photos yesterday at the Santa Fe River boat ramp on Highway 441 in High Springs. The spot I was standing should have been at least 6-8' deep.

https://fbcdn_sphotos_b-a.akamaihd.n...01836874_n.jpg

https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos...04439713_n.jpg

http://www.ted.com/talks/damian_pali..._seawater.html

That's pretty cool.

With the river that low, I am surprised that there is not a bunch of people wandering around out there looking for artifacts and fossils.

That's funny. 10 minutes ago I was talking to someone about the idea of going up there with metal detectors.

That's an interesting conversation. I just got back from CA where I was attending a computing for sustainability conference. It was quite interesting how people were unaware about the issues with the drought here in FL. A cool thing was that Californians recycle water and use it for the toilets. I had not seen this anywhere. Even at the line where I was going for the security scan, besides the plastic, cans and other recycle bins, they also had a water recycle bin. Pretty cool! Maybe we should start this over here as well..

Used to joke about going dry caving someday in places that I had gone cave diving before. Sad to say that this has now become a reality as of last night. :( Found some more virgin cave though... :) Hope it fills back up soon...

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With the river that low, I am surprised that there is not a bunch of people wandering around out there looking for artifacts and fossils.

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It's hard to believe that I have dove that area, doing the above, with the current so strong we were using screwdrivers to hold ourselves in place. If you turned your head sideways to check your buddy, the current pushed your mask off your face.
The shoals were always a good place to dive, I suspect because they have always been crossing spots for animals and those that hunt them.

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Originally Posted by a64pilot

I have no idea how much water an average center pivot uses an hour, does anybody? ...I'd bet one center pivot uses more water than is trucked out of Fl daily, but have no idea how to find out either.

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I am in banking and just talked to one of our Ag lenders. There are a lot of considerations - the horsepower of the pump, the number of pivot sections, whether the water is drawn from a well or a pond, and probably more that he did not mention. He said a 75HP pump could use 1,000 gallons a minute. So if used for 8 hours, one pivot with a 75HP pump could draw about 500,000 gallons of water.

Interesting article on the same issue, an ocean away: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/water/news...ectid=10805106