Stacie Greco has sent out the following information from the Springs Forum held last week:
Alachua County Environmental Protection Department is looking for volunteers to help monitor the manatee population this winter! Volunteers will be stationed at a spring one morning a week to count manatees using the spring for refuge. Please fill out this form: Winter Manatee Volunteers (monday.com) if interested or contact Lindsey Kelly at lrkelly@alachuacounty.us if you have any questions!
If you live in Florida you probably know that we are witnessing an unprecedented number of manatees starving to death because their food supply was depleted by green algae, so thick it prevented sunlight from reaching the underwater grass.
The algae, of course, is the result of excessive nutrients in the water, exacerbated by decreased flows in springs and rivers. The sins and negligence of the state are catching up to us in many ways. Fertilizer is being dumped into our waterways in excessive amounts, and legislators are trying to increase that. Urban fertilizer on lawns, golf courses and parks add unneeded tons each year. Way too many septic tanks put high amounts of nutrients into the aquifer. Septic tanks seldom leak — contrary to what writers think– they are designed to put nutrient-rich water into the drain field.
Even as we are seeing our fishing and tourism decline, our beaches close and our manatees die, the State of Florida continues to permit mine expansions and withdrawal pumps. The state sees its mission as to dispense water pumping permits as long as water comes up through the pipes they stick into the aquifer.
Our Administrative Law Judges continue to rule in favor of water users simply because the water is there to be taken, and our district water managers vote to give permits because the springs still look fine.
Such brilliant reasoning is astounding!
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
