Water district ready to act on Seminole water issue
County win judge's approval to withdraw water from St. Johns River
By Steve Patterson
PALATKA — Blessed by a judge’s ruling, state officials on Tuesday set a March date to decide a long-running feud over releasing St. Johns River water to a Central Florida utility.
But the decision of the St. Johns River Water Management District is already largely dictated by the conclusions the judge announced Monday.
And unlike most issues that reach the management district’s governing board, there are severe legal limits on how much board members can consider the concerns and ideas of ordinary citizens, a lawyer for the agency said Tuesday.
A weeks-long hearing that Administrative Law Judge J. Lawrence Johnston held in October spelled out all the evidence the board is supposed to consider when it acts on Seminole County’s request to take up to 5.5 million gallons daily from the river for lawn-watering and drinking water.
The St. Johns Riverkeeper group and Jacksonville City Hall and St. Johns County all challenged that request through an administrative lawsuit that ended with Johnston saying the withdrawals should be permitted.
People who weren’t part of that case legally can’t introduce new evidence now, said Stan Niego, an agency senior assistant general counsel.
They can make arguments about what the board should do, but the only arguments the board can consider would be about how the permit affects the agency’s policies, Niego said.
In effect, the lawsuit and the hearing that decided it replaced most of the hearing that would normally be done at the management district.
“We’re relying on that process in the case for the outcome to be as fair as possible” said district Chairwoman Susan Hughes, a JEA executive. “They had their day in court, so to speak. … The opportunity to present their evidence was fully vetted.”
The board is scheduled to act on the permit request March 10 during a meeting in Palatka.
Johnston’s ruling spelled out findings that board members are supposed to treat as facts provided there is evidence in the hearing records to support the findings, Niego said.
Opponents of the withdrawal plan argued Seminole County was just the first in a series of Central Florida communities who could eventually pull up to 262 million gallons daily from the St. Johns and its main tributary, the Ocklawaha River.
Critics said that downstream parts of the river, which enters the ocean at Mayport, would become saltier as fresh water was taken from the river’s mid-section. They argued the withdrawals would affect plants and animals.
Seminole County Public Works Director John Cirello released an e-mailed statement Tuesday saying Johnston’s ruling “supported science” and recognized the withdrawals wouldn’t hurt the river. He described the withdrawals as being so small as to be “immeasurable” in the river.
“Our plan is to protect the quality of life of our community and Central Florida,” Cirello added. “That means, among many other things, protecting the environment, providing affordable water of good quality and cooperating with our neighbors.”
Riverkeeper Neil Armingeon said his group was still reviewing the 66-page ruling to decide how best to respond before the Palatka meeting.
“We’re obviously going to go down there and probably will encourage people who are against the project to go down there,” he said.
steve.patterson@jacksonville.com,
(904) 359-4263
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