Letter to Green, Fisk, and Gihring of SJRWMD

Dear Mr. Green, Mr. Fisk and Ms. Gihring:

Please accept the attached letter for consideration under your suite of stakeholder strategy components.  I will also mail a hard copy to you by U.S. Mail.  Thank you once again for all of your efforts to keep the organizations and residents concerned about lake recovery informed and included in the strategy discussions.   I have encouraged Lake Area Water Alliance members to attend the meeting on June 23^rd and look forward to seeing you then.

Sincerely,  Jackie Host

DuPont Permit Request

The following is a June 15, 2011 email exchange between Jackie Host, President of LAWA, and Jennifer Gihring, Project Manager for SJRWMD.

Hello all,
During our meeting last week Friday, you requested District assistance in evaluating the proposed DuPont facility permit revision currently under consideration by FDEP. Tom Bartol has asked Carol Brown, an engineer in our Water Supply Planning Division, to assist you.

I provided Carol copies of your correspondence to-date with Kathryn Jarvis, FDEP. To help us provide better assistance, it would be very helpful if you could pull together a list of 3-5 questions or topics specific to this proposed permit revision. That would help ensure that we provide the information you need. Alternatively, we could have a conference call sometime in the next few days to clarify your needs. Please advise regarding your preference.

Please note that Carol will be out of the office from Wednesday June 22 through Wednesday July 6th.

Carol’s email is cgbrown@sjrwmd.com or you can reach her at 386-329-4816. Our offices are just a few doors apart, so you can trust that we are keeping in touch with each other on this.

Thank you,
Jennifer

___________________________________
Jennifer Gihring Project Manager
St. Johns River Water Management District
4049 Reid St, Palatka, FL 32178

_____________________________________________________________

Greetings Jennifer,

The following are all issues pertaining to the proposed DuPont DEP permit renewal currently under consideration. These are sources of additional water that could be routed to the chain of lakes.

(1)One of the things we would like to see is the consumptive use permit, accompanying TSR and the 2004(6?) modification associated with DuPont’s DEP permit that allows them to withdraw from the aquifer and discharge through D-002 from the final treatment pond via the 8 “ pipe into the SW quadrant point that gravity flows to Blue pond through the ditch system. Will you please provide that to us?

(2) The storm water runoff associated with the 2500 acres of mined area being reclaimed north of the processing facility is now all routed to Alligator West through Starke and has historically caused flooding problems in Starke. We are wondering if the excess runoff can be routed into the SW Quadrant man made lake that flows to Blue pond through the ditch system (as stated above).

(3)Long term, could runoff from the mined area being reclaimed be routed to the SW Quadrant?

Additionally, the 1995 SJRWMD permit that was never constructed should be readdressed as another source of water. Based on the TSR that is a spring fed, man made lake in the Black Creek watershed. Since a precedent has been made of permitting routing water from the Black Creek watershed to the SW Quadrant lake, and since there are other man made lakes that could be rerouted, and since Black Creek floods, why can’t more water be directed to the aquifer recharge area (chain of lakes and the Keystone Heights area).

Thank you for offering the technical expertise you have at the Management District at the last meeting. We are looking forward to hearing some proposals from your staff too. The clock is ticking and we depend on your assessment to move forward before time runs out on being able to respond to the permit application renewal.

Jackie Host
President, LAWA

Jackie,

_____________________________________________________________

Thank you for your thoughts.  I also spoke with Vivian yesterday and she followed-up with several specific questions.  Carol and I will use these questions to guide our information collection and evaluation process.

See you next week,

Jennifer

UWF - 2011 Waterfowl Summit Speaker List

Dear Friends-

UWF (United Waterfowlers of Florida) has been a real advocate for clean water, restoring the aquifers and restoring wetlands. The President, John Hitchcock, sends out a great newsletter to which I subscribe because I love to keep up with his conservation efforts. We differ mainly in that, the only thing I will shoot a duck with is my camera.

In reading this newsletter I thought, wow, that’s a great bunch of speakers he has for their summer conference. Further on down he says, “Last year about half of those that attended were from state and federal agencies. It's a chance for them to meet and greet each of us and each other. Plenty of networking time is being designed into the day to maximize interaction of all those in attendance.” Isn’t that wonderful? I’ll bet these state employees got paid to go too. I wish we could plan a similar conference on Rehabilitating the Impoverished Lakes in Florida.

Waterfowl Summit - Speaker Line-up
• Steve Rockwood (FWC) Waterfowl Food Web/AHRES 2011-12 Waterfowl Projects
• Dr. Scott Yaich (Ducks Unlimited) Clean Water Act for Wetlands Protection
• Craig Mallison (FWC) Habitat Monitoring and Assessment for Large Wetland Systems
• Bill Caton (FWC) Overview of Invasive Plant Management in Florida
• Jim Sweatman (FWC) Use of GeoTube to Reestabish Submerged Aquatic Vegetation
• Dr. Gian Basili (SJRWMD) Active Management for Wetlands and Upland Buffers
• Dr. Fred Sklar (SFWMD) The DECOMP Project: The "Heart" of Everglades Restoration
• John Marshall (Arthur R. Marshall Foundation) Everglades Restoration
• Dr. Erich Marzolf (SJRWMD) Nutrient Pollution in Surface and Ground Water

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not dissing the UWF or John. They are doing a great job…..It’s obvious, no water, no water fowl. I’ll vouch for that, there’s not ducks behind my house anymore. I’m just wondering, if we put some conference together if these same people would be paid to come to our meeting, or would want to? Perhaps it is time to expand our alliance to connect with other alliances that are concerned with fresh water lakes and streams.

Jackie

USGS Report Quoted in David Still's SRWMD Letter: Project 11-125

The following is an email first published June 9, 2011, from Peter Schreuder, hydrological consultant for LAWA:

Attached are copies of two figures in the USGS Report 2011-5031 from a section of the report starting on page 160. This section is entitled: “Analysis of Long-Term Trends in Flow from a Large Spring Complex in Northern Florida”. The data shown graphically in Figures 1 and 2 contain important hydrogeological and groundwater resources in formation. In Figure 1 it shows that the second highest ground water elevations (potentiometric surface) in Northern Florida occur in the Keystone Heights area. In 1980 the elevation of the groundwater in the Floridan Aquifer was as high as 90 ft above mean sea-level also referred to as NGVD. This is indicating a very productive recharge area from the lakes into the underlying Floridan Aquifer. From the Keystone Height the ground water flowed southward and to the St John’s and Santa Fe rivers as indicated by the arrows.

In Figure 2 you can see that ground water withdrawals in Northeast Florida area apparently changed the direction of ground water flow away from the Suwannee River area and more towards the Duval County area. The effect extended all the way to the Keystone Heights area. It resulted in a lowering of the potentiometric surface by approximately 10 feet in the Keystone Heights area. One can conclude this by looking at the map which no longer shows a contour line for the 90 ft level.

Hydrogeologically speaking the data indicate that the Keystone Heights area, in particular the lakes in this area, is a central and important feature to provide replenishment of water to the Floridan Aquifer through recharge of surface water from the lakes into the underlying Floridan Aquifer. The more surface water we can bring to the lakes, the more recharge we can deliver to the ground water system and the better the Floridan Aquifer will regionally be.

Peter

Peter Schreuder, P.G.
Schreuder Inc
www.schreuderwater.us

Letter to Mayor Hildreth

The following is an email sent to Mayor Hildreth from contracted hydrology consultant, Peter Schreuder:
Mayor Hildreth:
I have reviewed all the information which have been collected by the members of the stakeholders group. It has been very useful. I would like to make a few comments based on my focus on the technical/hydrogeological/water resources aspects.

The SRWMD David Still letter states that” This decrease (in ground water flow) is apparently a result of ground water withdrawals originating in the District , the St. John’s River Water Management District (emphasis added) and the State of Georgia”. The data for the Keystone Heights area indicates that these ground water withdrawals have also increased the vertical gradient between the lakes and the ground water causing them to “leak” more, thus losing more water than was historically the case.

I believe that it is impractical to assume that ground water withdrawals will be curtailed to such an extent that the leakance will be reduced. Thus only three avenues for action remain:
1) reduce the leakance from the lakes by reducing the permeability of the lake bottoms;
2) direct more surface water flow towards the lakes;
or 3) a combination of both.

I believe that the action 2 includes the short term solution which involves the construction of an adjustable weir at the outlet of Lake Lowery (Option 5), an intermediate term solution by withdrawing more surface water from Southwest lake to be pumped to Blue Pond, and a long-term solution by implementing Option 7, the importation of outside water to the Old Mine area.

The data on the renewal of the Dupont mining permit shows that surface water from their northern mine area flows by gravity through an unlined canal towards their southern mine area. This is where NPDES outfall D002 is located. “Negotiating” a larger diversion of that surface water towards Southwest Lake will bring more water to our lakes.

The last possible long-term option would be importing secondarily treated effluent towards the Dupont mining operation in the northern mine part and then let nature clean the water while it is flowing southward to the Old Mine area and to Southwest lake. This naturally cleaned water will be flowing into our Lakes and increasing the ground water recharge thereby increasing ground water levels in the Floridan Aquifer in the SRWMD as well as in the SJRWMD. This would be of great interest and possible benefit to both Water Management Districts and therefore also of great interest to JEA.

Peter

Peter Schreuder, P.G.
www.schreuderwater.us

Doctoring the Data

An article in the June 8, 2011 edition of the Gainesville Sun.

Doctoring the Data