The effort to secure a piece of the Alafia River’s flow someday got serious Wednesday.
The Polk Regional Water Cooperative approved a revised administrative budget that includes $204,820 to challenge a permit awarded in July to Tampa Bay Water use the remaining allowable flow in the Alafia River to meet its future water demands.
This occurred after discussions involving the cooperative, Tampa Bay Water and the Southwest Florida Water Management District did not result in an agreement.
On Sept 3, Tampa Bay Water informed PRWC officials that it was not willing to decrease its permit request.
Tampa Bay Water provides water to Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties and to the cities of New Port Richey, St. Petersburg and Tampa.
That permit approval will not be final pending the resolution of the challenge, board members were told.
The idea of tapping the Alafia River goes back decades, but PRWC’s plans did not include it until 2017 along with other so-called alternative water supply projects involving the Peace River, the Peace Creek Drainage Canal and the Lower Floridan Aquifer.
Two main tributaries of the Alafia River form in Polk County before merging in Hillsborough County to form the river’s main channel.
The existence of those tributaries is the basis for the water cooperative’s claim.
This discussion like all other discussions about tapping surface water is about how it affects minimum flows and levels. This refers to the amount of flow a river requires for fish to swim freely and for generally healthy flow.
This was a major issue for decades on the Peace River, whose riverbed had no flow for miles in Polk County at times of low rainfall because of excessive water use. within its watershed
The idea of setting minimum flows and levels is to prevent a repeat of that problem elsewhere.
The challenge approved Wednesday could involve a formal administrative hearing or could, like an earlier dispute with the Peace River Manasota Water Supply Authority. result in some kind of settlement.
Stay tuned.

Conservation Florida this week announced the completion of securing a conservation easement over a 2,317-acre ranch on Lake Kissimmee east of Lake Wales.
The deal, which has been in the works for five years, involves a cooperative effort by Arnie and Lauren Bellini, the U.S. Department of Defense Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service Agricultural Land Easement Program and Conservation Florida.
The ranch was acquired by the South Florida Water Management District in 2004 as part of the Kissimmee River restoration but was later surplussed and ended up in the hands of a private developer who proposed a golf resort.
It is adjacent to Polk County’s Coleman Landing park.
The ranch features four miles of lakefront, 200 species of plants and animals including protected species such as bald eagle and Florida scrub jay.
“This is a conservation victory for the people, wildlife, and waters of Florida,” said Traci Deen, CEO of Conservation Florida. “Eagle Haven Ranch is one of the most significant properties in the Northern Everglades I’ve encountered. Its permanent protection is a direct result of bold partnerships, visionary funding programs, and the power of the conservation community.”

The boardwalk at Mosaic-Peace River Park in Homeland is being closed permanently after the County Commission decided it did not want to spend $2.7 million to repair hurricane damage.
The boardwalk that crosses a portion of the river floodplain in Homeland was originally built in 1995 and expanded in 2008. Funds for the initial project came from a state grant, IMC-Agrico (now Mosaic) and the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
It included interpretative signs partially funded by the Friends of the Parks Foundation and the Coastal and Heartland National Estuary Partnership.
It was heavily damaged by falling trees during Hurricane Milton last year and had previously sustained damage during Hurricane Irma,
It had also received less serious damage over the years following thunderstorms.
County Manager Bill Beasley told commissioners at the July 11 agenda study session that it was likely the boardwalk would sustain additional damage as hurricanes continue to affect the area.
Gaye Sharpe, Polk’s director of parks and natural resources, said the next step was to come up with a plan to demolish enough of the boardwalk to discourage people from climbing over the barricades.
She said eventually the entire boardwalk would have to be demolished. She said she did not know how much any of that will cost.
Marian Ryan, conservation chair for Ancient Islands Sierra. said the 5,000-foot boardwalk is the only boardwalk of any size in Polk County and is popular with residents who had gone there to fish, birdwatch or just enjoy nature.
The 88 acres of wetlands the boardwalk traverses is part of the 460-acre county park located on reclaimed phosphate mined land and donated to Polk County in 1984 by IMC-Agrico.
The rest of the park’s trails and other facilities will remain open.

Polk’s legislators heard more from local officials about effects of SB 180 on local efforts to update development regulations during the Aug. 12 delegation meeting in Bartow, the Winter Haven Sun reports.
Winter Haven City Manager T. Michael Stavres said the legislation forced the City Commission to repeal a tree-protection ordinance it approved in September 2024 (SB 180 made the restrictions retroactive to Aug. 1, 2024).
That ordinance, which was the first substantial amendment to the city’s landscaping ordinance in several years, required that trees–especially heritage oaks and specimen trees–be protected during construction work of various types. This was a major setback to the city’s efforts to implement an urban forestry master plan that had been prepared by a consultant.
This is not an isolated case.
During discussion Aug. 13 of an ongoing rewrite of the county development regulations by a volunteer committee, members were told it was unclear how much of their work would be able to be implemented unless legislators repeal sections of the law.
Officials all over Florida reportedly have voiced similar concerns about seeing years of work by lay committees to complete periodic updates of their growth regulations be trashed because of this legislative mandate.
Some local governments have reportedly agreed to join lawsuits to challenge the restrictions, but so far, no such lawsuit has been field.
The restrictions were added to a bill that was originally proposed to deal with post-hurricane reconstruction issues to give property owners an opportunity to rebuild without dealing with lengthy regulatory delays.
At this point it is unknown how or whether legislators will respond to these complaints by local officials.
Stay tuned as committee meetings and bill filings begin later this year in advance of the 2026 session.

While a volunteer committee spends hours reviewing Polk’s growth plan as part of a required periodic review, it is unclear whether any of their suggestions will go anywhere.
That’s because last year the Florida Legislature passed, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill (SB 180) that included provisions that prohibits local officials from enacting tougher growth regulations or growth plans and made the ban retroactive to last year.
The Polk County Commission has already shelved proposed changes that dealt with development in perennially flood-prone areas because of this change.
During a recent work session with the county’s lobbyists. commissioners learned this is a statewide concern because some of the areas affected were poorly defined (within 100 miles of the storm track) and appears to be having perhaps unintended consequences.
As a result, the lobbyists said there is some feeling legislators may be forced to walk back or clarify the provisions.
That is because it would nullify years of work by local officials, which does not seem fair.
Nevertheless, whether legislators will relent on this pro-developer further erosion of growth management is hard to say because this is the same folks who voted to require all votes to increase impact fees, which many developers oppose, to be unanimous and not simply by a super majority.
Elections matter and what happened last year is another reminder of the need for the public who regularly complains about overdevelopment to support candidates that share their views.

Following up on an announcement last March accompanying plans for an injection well at Mosaic’s Plant City facility , Mosaic is proceeding with plans to seek permits for injection wells at its New Wales and Bartow plants, according to recently published legal notices.
The fertilizer corporation recently received a permit to conduct exploratory work for the projects.
The wells are intended as disposal sites for acidic wastewater from the fertilizer plants’ phosphogypsum stacks.
Two public meetings are planned. Both will occur from 4 to 7 p.m. at the W.H. Stuart Center, 1702 US 17 South, Bartow. The Bartow well will be the subject of the meeting on Sept. 9. The New Wales project will be the subject of the Sept.10 meeting.
The New Wales plant south of Mulberry has experienced a handful of sinkholes that sent acidic waste into the aquifer. Mosaic officials said after the incidents they were able to pump the contaminated water into treatment areas onsite. They said at the time that avoided offsite impacts that could have affected area residents’ private drinking water wells if the spills had not been mitigated.
There have been no reported sinkholes at Mosaic’s Bartow plant, though there have been a handful of incidents since 2019 that have involved spills of contaminated material that Mosaic reported was contained on its property.
Mosaic does have a permit to discharge some treated waste water into a tributary of the Peace River. which has resulted in criticism from some environmental groups representing downstream interests.

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.