Tampa Bay Water has applied for and has received approval from the Southwest Florida Water Management District’s Governing Board for a permit to tap the remaining water available from the Alafia River.
Wednesday the Polk Regional Water Cooperative’s board voted to challenge the permit, though the board also agreed to allow its staff to sit down with everyone involved and try to work something out if possible.
If it isn’t possible, the legal tab for a permit challenge would come to an estimated $240,820, board members were told.
Whether this turns into a water war of simply a minor skirmish will be clearer by this fall.
This action is the latest in a series of disputes between Polk County and its coastal neighbors over future water supplies that stretches back decades.
It also highlights the lengths to which the cooperative will go to meet the water demands of future growth, no matter what the cost.
While it costs only $1.5 million to provide 1 million gallons a day from the Upper Floridan Aquifer, the traditional source of water for more than a century, it will cost an estimated $35 million to provide that same amount from surface water, board members were told.
At some point this is all going to be reflected in higher water rates for existing customers even though they did not create the demand to feed the growth machine that is behind this endeavor.
How much higher the rates will go is to be determined, but one wonders whether at some point this could lead to a debate on the limits of sustainable growth in Polk County,
So far our political leaders, many of whose campaigns rely on contributions from the development industry, have been pretty quiet on this topic.
Meanwhile, according to Eric DeHaven, the cooperative’s executive director, the goal of Wednesday’s vote was to allow PRWC to keep its options open for developing so-called alternative water supplies. That means anything besides pumping water from the pretty well tapped out Upper Floridan Aquifer.
DeHaven acknowledged Wednesday that tapping the Alafia and Peace rivers–if they can still obtain a permit by then–is decades away and would be considered only after the current projects involving tapping the salty Lower Floridan Aquifer reach their capacity.
He said since the headwaters of both rivers lie in Polk County, it only seems fair that Polk is entitled to some of the river water.
What was not discussed Wednesday because a decision is so far in the future is what it would cost to build yet another pipeline to draw water from somewhere downstream of the county line to get that water to treatment plants in Polk County and to distribute it from there.
The cooperative is already scheduled to spend millions of dollars on the already approved pipeline system that will connect the Lower Floridan wells to municipal plants.
Hold on to your wallets.

A recent guest column regarding the upcoming decision by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on bear hunting has put an interesting spin on the issue.
George Warthen, chief conservation officer for FWC, appears to argue that the hunt will save the bears from the effects of urban sprawl.
“Bears have expanded their occupied range from 17% to 51% since 1992 and while we have enough habitat to support them now, we expect that to change in the future as bear and human populations continue to grow.” he writes.
Let that sink in a minute.
Put another way, it is saying lightly controlled urban, suburban and rural sprawl is increasing encroachment into occupied bear habitat provides the justification for the hunt.
The problem with that argument is the area he cites in the eastern Panhandle that contains an estimated 26% of the state’s bear population but only 3% of the state’s human population. About half of that is in and around Tallahassee.
Florida’s population is increasing in many parts of the state, but it does not seem to be happening in bear country that much. In other parts of Florida the picture is different.
It would be great to suggest, as many have, that more compact growth patterns would save wildlife and wildlife habitat, but our so-called leaders in Tallahassee have pretty much forbidden such crazy thinking.
Just this year the Legislature passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that prohibited enactment of tougher growth regulations, the latest in a downward path that began in the Rick Scott administration to dismantle Florida’s strong growth management laws.
What’s left of the former Florida Department of Community Affairs now resides in a cubicle or some such diminished space somewhere in the Florida Department of Commerce with no enforcement authority and little staff.
The other argument Mr. Warthen makes is that culling the populations of bears or any other declared game species is simply good wildlife management to prevent overpopulation, which technically could occur if more habitat encroachment were allowed.
Besides you get a bear skin rug for your den and some bear meat for the freezer, he added.
Meanwhile, he admits that the issue of human-bear conflicts involving unsecured trash and other attractions remains unresolved and is unrelated to the hunt though those issues were raised to justify the earlier hunt and legislation that allows people to kill bears if they feel threatened.
Add to that the passage of the constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to hunt is also being used as further justification, accompanied by the right to use dogs to pursue bears in some circumstances, which was not allowed in the last hunt.
Sierra opposed the amendment because it was too open-ended and would lead to what we are witnessing now.,
We hate to say we told you so, but we told you so.

Polk County commissioners seemed poised earlier this year to get more serious about flooding in some of the most flood pone areas of the county.
Following that direction, county staffers put together a change in the county’s development regulations that would raise the standards for how homes are built (or rebuilt) in what they call stressed or closed basins.
These are places toward where the stormwater runoff from hurricanes or just heavy thunderstorms flows and hits a dead end.
There were plenty of images in the newspapers and on television since the last hurricane season to illustrate what happened.
The proposed regulations required larger retention areas and greater consideration of the impact of upstream development and other requirements. Anyone looking at the effects of substandard stormwater management rules in Polk County over the years might agree such regulations were long overdue.
Those new regulations were approved unanimously by the Polk County Planning Commission April 2 and forwarded to the County Commission.
The County Commission delayed consideration of the new regulations three times before finally agreeing to withdraw them this week.
It seems they were waiting to see whether Gov. Ron DeSantis would sign legislation that was approved during this year’s regular session that dealt with post-hurricane development actions by local governments in Florida.
Polk officials said they had lobbied against including inland counties like Polk, but were unpersuasive, it seems.
The bill, whose provisions were retroactive to last August prohibits the approval of any growth plan or development changes that are “more restrictive or burdensome” (on developers.)
DeSantis signed the bill June 26.
After the rules were withdrawn. planner Erik Peterson said it is possible the administrative reviews of new developments might deal with the problem, but if you look at the fine print in the bill, it also seems that tougher reviews by county engineers and other staff are not allowed either.
What has given local officials pause is that the bill also makes it easier for any developer or property owner who doesn’t like what local officials are requiring to deal with flooding or anything else to sue and to collect their legal fees from the taxpayers if they prevail.
Another hurricane season has begun.
Keep some dry stationery handy so if your new home floods, you can send thank you notes to your legislators and the governor.
It’s the least you can do.

For people hardy enough for summer through hikes in this part of Florida, a construction project may delay some outings.
The South Florida Water Management District announced maintenance work on the S-65A structure on the Kissimmee River will close a section of the Florida National Scenic Trail July 14 through Oct. 24.
The boat lock is located near the boundaries of Kicco Wildlife Management Area, the Avon Park Air Force Range and Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park.
The work will also affect boat access along this section of the river.

A cooperative agreement among the Department of Defense, the US Department of Agriculture and Conservation Florida has secured a conservation easement on a 1,000-acre ranch in southern Highlands County, WUSF reports.
The ranch is adjacent to Archbold Biological Station south of Lake Placid and is a location of several documented sightings of Florida panthers.
The easement will allow ranching to continue without being threatened by conversion to more intense land uses, such as development.
Florida panthers are known to disperse from their core habitat in southwest Florida along the Lake Wales Ridge and the Peace and Kissimmee River corridors.
Some find their way to the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern in northern Polk and southern Lake counties, which is a documented hub in a network of wildlife corridors in Florida.
Those travels may be expanding.
State officials recently discovered the remains of a road-killed Florida panther that was struck and killed while trying to cross Interstate 75 near Wesley Chapel in Pasco County.

Gov. Ron DeSantis had an opportunity support a measure long-sought by Sierra and other environmental advocates to restore the Ocklawaha River to a free-flowing stream.
But noooooooo! as the late John Belushi used to say.
He caved to the status quo and the dam that created a reservoir that buried active springs and barricades the last 13 miles of the historic waterway will remain.
Legislators had approved a $6.25 million appropriation to begin work to dismantle this anachronism from the days when structural water-management projects ruled the day, but DeSantis vetoed it.
I guess we will have to wait to see whether his successor is more enlightened.