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Florida
faces serious water supply challenges today and into the foreseeable
future. But Florida is far
from alone in this respect; the entire nation and planet face the same
challenge of providing more water to support more people at higher
standards of living. Of the
current 8 billion gallons of water withdrawn annually from Florida
surface and ground water sources, approximately half is used for
agricultural irrigation. In
our region irrigated crops include citrus, sugarcane, vegetables, sod,
and ornamentals. New water supplies are being aggressively developed to meet
the growing urban and rural demands, expected to reach over 9 billion
gallons per year by 2020. The
challenge faced by Florida is to balance the water equation between
supply and ever-growing consumption.
There are two ways to balance the equation: increase supplies by
developing new water sources and/or moderate demand through regulatory
restrictions, higher pricing or conservation efforts. On the
conservation side of the equation, farmers presently use micro-jet and
drip irrigation technologies, but even more can be done to save water on
our farms and throughout society.
The final
report of the Florida Water Conservation Initiative, published in April
of this year by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection,
compares the direct costs of addressing growing water demands by
increasing the supplies and by implementing conservation programs.
The estimated price of providing more water by building new large
surface water storage reservoirs ranges from $0.75 to $3.50 per thousand
gallons. By comparison, the
cost of saving a thousand gallons of agricultural irrigation water
ranges from $0.50 to $5.50 depending on the specific technology
employed. Furthermore, the
historical trend has been for the cost of technology and
information-based solutions to decrease over time. Non-agricultural
conservation methods would cost even less to implement, under $3.50 per
thousand gallons. On a more
local level, costs for the aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) and
surface water reservoir system proposed for western Hendry County are
estimated at $2.50 per 1000 gallons.
This was a very preliminary estimate presented by SFWMD at
meetings describing the ASR project planning process.
As the project progresses the agency is increasingly reluctant to
cite any net cost figure, given the inherent difficulties of accurately
estimating the costs of large publicly-funded reservoir and ASR
projects. The conclusion
that can be drawn from the comparisons of various conservation and water
supply options is that conservation programs are cost competitive. They
should therefore be the targets of public investment comparable to
public investments in traditional water supply enhancement projects.
Irrigation
conservation programs, more accurately called water use efficiency
programs, bring benefits that go beyond just balancing the water
demand-supply equation. First,
by building and properly managing more efficient irrigation systems, we
simultaneously address the critical issue of water quality.
When implemented in combination with overall water management
programs, advanced irrigation systems lead to reduced nutrient runoff
into our streams, lakes, estuaries and groundwater. The public value
realized from these water quality improvements could be comparable to or
even greater than the water supply values.
A second
benefit of irrigation efficiency is enhanced economic competitiveness.
In this age of free trade and shrinking distances between
nations, Florida farmers, citrus growers for example, compete with
producers throughout the world. If,
because of rising water costs, a Florida citrus grower finds that he or
she can’t deliver a gallon of orange juice to the market as cheaply as
a Brazilian producer, then the Florida producer goes out of business,
negatively affecting the local economy.
Beyond this direct economic implication, there is the collateral
ecological effect. An abandoned orange grove in Florida is more likely
to turn into a housing subdivision than into a wildlife sanctuary,
therefore introducing an entirely new set of natural resource
challenges. Furthermore, if the Florida producer is forced out of
business by high water and regulatory costs, does the public buy less
orange juice at the local supermarket?
Obviously not. Rather
the net result is a shift of production (and the associated ecological
impacts) from Florida to Brazil or other nations. This shift of citrus
production doesn’t necessarily yield any long-term net benefit to our
local ecosystem, given that the environment is affected by global
changes as well as local stresses. The bottom line conclusion is that Floridians (and everyone
on the planet) would be better served by aggressive public and private
investments towards improving our agricultural water management
technologies. Instead of exporting old-style agricultural production, we
should create and export economically and environmentally sustainable
methods of farming, while preserving our own agricultural sector and
helping to promote progressive industries abroad.
Historically,
public investment has targeted supply enhancement while farmers have had
to bear most costs associated with on-farm conservation efforts from
irrigation system improvements. Clearly,
a balanced water investment portfolio has yet to be achieved in our
governmental programs. And
not much appears to be changing if one studies planned investments that
emphasize centralized regional water supply projects.
An example of the type of alternate program that would benefit
from additional investment is the Mobile Irrigation Lab network of the
U.S.D.A Natural Resources Conservation Service.
This program represents a model for successful public-private
partnerships that could yield dramatic water conservation benefits if
its scope and vision were dramatically expanded.
By pursuing
technology and knowledge-based improvements in agricultural irrigation
and comprehensive on-farm water management systems, we can cost-
effectively balance our regional water supplies and demands, improve
local water quality, sustain our rural economy, and advance the global
environmental agenda. The
special circumstances of water issues in southwest Florida provide us
with a unique opportunity to move aggressively in this direction. The question is, do we recognize this opportunity and are we
up to the challenge?
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