Joe Floyd is one of four co-owners of Abundant Edible Landscapes. From fruit trees to rainwater collection systems, the company provides several services to homeowners who would like to develop their landscape with environmentally conscious features.
In this interview, Floyd talks what irrigations systems could cut down your water bill in the long run, why you should stay away from imported plants, and how growing your own produce cannot only save you water, but also gas and money.
Laura Reynolds
Scientists are curious people, constantly searching for answers to questions that often elude others. Laura Reynolds has found the answers she sought out, but she doesn’t think anyone is listening.
Reynolds said since moving to work in Florida as an environmental scientist and conservationist, she has seen how disconnected people are from the problems the delicate ecosystem faces.
“Part of the problem is that many people don’t think about where their water comes form or where it goes,” Reynolds said. “The fishermen in Dade County don’t even realize that the water entering Biscayne Bay affects their catch.”
Reynolds believes change is necessary now for any type of recovery to happen.
“Think about turning on the faucet on the day that no water comes out and then deciding that there’s a problem the needs to be dealt with,” Reynolds said. “We have got to get away from that kind of reactionary thinking.”
For three years, Reynolds has been the executive director of the Tropical Audubon Society, in Dade County. The group operates to conserve all natural resources, including water, and educate members and the public about the delicate relationship we all have with the planet. Years before she took the top position in the non-profit organization, Reynolds served on the Tropical Audubon Society Board of Directors as both the vice president and the chair of education.
“Really, a non-profit tries to take the science and make use of it,” Reynolds said. “If you’re just a scientist in the field and you don’t interact with some of the people that are trying to influence policy then your work just sits there.”
Born and raised in Monticello, New York at the base of the Catskill Mountains, Reynolds was always surrounded by nature, both thriving and suffering. Reynolds said her childhood turned her into an environmentally conscious scientist.
“I got to see the Long Island Sound start to come back from a very bad place,” Reynolds said.
The Sound is an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean between Connecticut, Long Island and New York City that has suffered tribulations with pollution through the years. Reynolds attributes the recovery of the Sound as evidence that restoration is possible from the brink of total pollution.
Her love for the environment spurred questions that she didn’t have the answers to. By age 9, Reynolds realized her life would be spent as a scientist finding those answers.
Laura has worked, researched and taught in Florida since she moved here in 1994. She completed her undergraduate degree in marine and environmental science at Jacksonville University. She sought more science research and her master’s degree in education at the Florida International University while also working as an adjunct professor.
After seeing a divide between people and the land, Reynolds turned her focus from research to education outreach and advocacy.
“I think that universities ought to require some kind of environmental course, whether you’re a major or not,” Reynolds said. “I think it’s so important that people understand that we live above our water supply.”
Reynolds believes a combination of political reform and an educated, conscious public is the only way to save Florida’s ecosystem.
“For the most part people are reluctant to make changes in their life because they don’t think it makes a big difference,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds said she reduces her impact on the water supply by taking shorter showers, using public transportation, Xeriscaping her yard and saving rain water for irrigation through a rain barrel system.
Reynolds believes the transient, non-native population of Florida is a large contributor the state of the water here.
“Unfortunately for Florida, a lot of people were not born here,” Reynolds said. “Their roots are not here and so their actions to protect it are not the same.”
Reynolds said there are some native Floridians trying to preserve the state’s delicate ecosystem, but not enough.
“Development rights are being transferred in the northern Everglades because [natives] don’t want their land to ever be developed,” Reynolds said. “They want to see their family’s legacy continue on. We need more of that. Those are kind of people that can save a community.”
On a grassy tract of land nestled in Lutz, Fla., alternative learning practices have become the norm at Learning Gate Community School. In 2009 Learning Gate was the first public school to be awarded the U.S. Green Building Council LEED Platinum certification. The school focuses its curriculum on energy and water conservation, and serves as a nationwide model for future innovative and educational buildings.
A grim realization has dawned a new age for water management in north Florida.
Since their inception in 1972, the Suwannee River Water Management District and the St. Johns River Water Management District have watched one another drain the lakes, rivers and springs that populate the region.
The two agencies decided to join forces to monitor and protect the region’s water supply in September 2011. The agreement came after St. Johns approved a permit that would allow a Jacksonville-based utility company to pump 155 million gallons of water per day from the ground. The district made its decision without consulting the neighboring Suwannee River Water Management District.
Once the permit was approved, water management officials realized what many water enthusiasts and environmental activists have been saying for decades: Water is vanishing, and it will continue to vanish if the finite resource is not protected.
“What we do on our side impacts their side,” Teresa Monson, spokeswoman for the St. Johns River Water Management District, said. “We know that now. We have to work together if we want to keep our water and our natural resources.”
Water management districts are required to do a water supply assessment every five years to determine if the springs, rivers and lakes within their boundaries will still be flowing in another 20 years. It is the districts’ mission to monitor and allocate usage through permits of individuals and entities pulling water from the ground.
In 2010, the Suwannee district conducted its assessment and found—for the first time—the Suwannee River basin and the Santa Fe River basin would not provide enough water to keep the rivers running after two decades, Charlie Houder, executive director of the Suwannee River Water Management District, said.
Both districts pull from the Floridan Aquifer, a body of rock below the ground harboring billions of gallons of water and a primary source of groundwater stretching into other southeastern states, to fill the river basins within their boundaries. Because both areas are dependent on the aquifer, Houder said he was happy to work with the St. Johns district to solve the looming problem.
“It just made sense to work closely with them,” Houder said. “Especially if we want to have an adequate water supply 20 years from now.”
The agreement was conceived in September 2011 and created an official partnership, called the North Florida Regional Water Supply Partnership, between the two districts and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The sole purpose of the union is to share data on the bodies of water within their boundaries and consult one another before approving water use permits, according to officials from both districts.
These permits, called consumptive use permits, allow users like farmers in need of irrigating their land to pump water stored below the ground.
Because groundwater is pumped from the Floridan Aquifer, long-term pumping in one district can affect water supply in the other.
Over the last 40 years, the permits and the pumping have taken a toll on the numerous lakes, rivers and springs in North Central Florida, according to Chris Bird, director of the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department.
The Hornsby Spring and the White Sulphur Springs, both in North Central Florida, no longer flow, according to a study conducted in 2008 by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
While Houder has cited the water supply assessment as the district’s primary reason to enter into the agreement, the consolidated consumptive use permit granted by St. Johns to a Jacksonville-based utility company served as another determining factor.
In May 2011, St. Johns approved a permit that allowed JEA, the largest water supply utility within the district’s boundaries, to withdraw 155 million gallons of water per day from the Floridan Aquifer. Environmental organizations and activists spoke out against the permit at public meetings.
Though the Suwannee River Water Management District voiced its opposition at district water supply meetings, some residents were dumbfounded as to why the district didn’t take further action to combat the permit.
“It is not my place to second guess the St. Johns governing board,” Houder said. “But, we knew the permit would affect water levels in the Suwannee.”
With the agreement in place, one-sided decisions are no longer an option.
Now that the two districts are in accordance with one another and will employ greater oversight from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, permit applications will be heavily weighed across district boundaries.
Using tools established within the partnership, scientists will work over the next few years to establish minimum flows and levels for each body of water in the region, Monson said.
These numbers, known as MFLs, will be a reference point to determine how much harm has been done to the river, lake or spring. If groundwater pumping causes the spring to drop below its minimum level, the district should abstain from withdrawing water in that area and implement recovery methods to restore the body of water to its healthy level. The agreement does not state specific punitive actions if a district finds its lakes and springs are below their minimum levels, but it places responsibility on the district to fix the problem.
Though he thought the partnership between the two districts was a positive change, Auley Rowell, former Suwannee River water district official, was weary of the state government’s involvement.
Rowell, who served as chairman of the Suwannee River Water Management District governing board from 1981 until 1988, said he hopes the Florida Department of Environmental Protection doesn’t drive decisions that are supposed to be made by the agencies.
“While I served, we never felt any pressure from the governor or the Legislature to do any specific things,” Rowell said. “Third parties can be healthy and the FDEP is appropriate, but it is the micromanaging that concerns me.”
Vivian Katz, a longtime resident of Keystone Heights and president of the Save Our Lakes Organization Inc., said she viewed the partnership as a step in the right direction.
“Districts are finally saying they want to work together,” Katz said. “Maybe this will spark everyone else to work together to help protect our water supply too.”