The news about the potential for using the Peace River continues to look grim.\n<\/p>\n
Flow this week is about 15 percent of the long-term average at Bartow and about 20 percent of the average downstream at Fort Meade, which is near the point where the Polk Regional Water Cooperative envisions constructing a reservoir if it can obtain a permit from the Southwest Florida Water Management District.\n<\/p>\n
The latest analysis by climate scientists predicts a winter and spring drought in this part of the United States.\n<\/p>\n
That points to one of the unanswered questions about using surface waters for future water supply, which is the still unknown effects of climate change.\n<\/p>\n
The problem is that setting up a water supply project requires some assurance that there will be a dependable source of water to feed the future growth ambitions of Polk’s communities’ economic development boosters.\n<\/p>\n
There are other things going on in the river’s watershed.\n<\/p>\n
Another unknown is the effects on water quantity and quality as development has been proposed to encroach into the Peace Creek Drainage Canal, a World War I-vintage public works project that is one of the upper river’s main tributaries.\n<\/p>\n
The latest proposal, which will be the subject of a public hearing before the County Commission on April 19, involves a plan for a city-sized development along the ditch in a rural area between Bartow and Winter Haven.\n<\/p>\n
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The news about the potential for using the Peace River continues to look grim. Flow this week is about 15 percent of the long-term average at Bartow and about 20 percent of the average downstream at Fort Meade, which is near the point where the Polk Regional Water Cooperative envisions constructing a reservoir if it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1821\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}