North Florida’s Ichetucknee Springs. Credit: Photo by Noah Bookstein

With flows down and pollution up, Florida’s springs and waterways are in a crisis. Vital for ecosystems, tourism, and drinking water, many of them are imperiled by nitrogen pollution and overpumping.

Decades of continued inaction on Florida’s springs crisis would cause ecological collapse, decimating wildlife and degrading vital water resources. This decline would harm the environment, economy, and public health.

HB 691 is the legislature’s latest attempt to restore spring flows. Proposed by two Republicans—Rep. Bill Conerly, a Republican representing parts of Sarasota and Myakka City, and Sen. Stan McClain, who represents Marion and Levy counties, plus south Alachua County,—the bill’s cryptic language obscures a largely unspoken connection to JEA, formerly known as Jacksonville Electric Authority. (JEA changed its name after taking over water operations from the city.)

To restore Outstanding Florida Springs, HB 691 would streamline the process for certain utilities, such as JEA, to request approval from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to amend previously approved plans by including reclaimed water projects.

Lawmakers and company officials have touted this bill’s springs healing potential and JEA emphasized how “it’s bringing utilities together.”

The Florida Springs Council gave HB 691 a thumb’s up.

“The legislation allows JEA to participate in a large regional water supply project that’s intended to help the lower Santa Fe and Ichetucknee rivers’ minimum flows and levels,” said Karen McAllister, a media representative for JEA.

The proposed pipeline project is an example of a kind of strategy that favors expensive projects, which Florida Springs Council director Ryan Smart described as typical of the state’s approach to addressing water quality issues.

“This one project is more than springs have received in total in the last eight years. It’s a hefty price tag for a springs project, the kind of thing that we don’t usually see up in North Florida,” Smart said.

Estimated costs for the project are over $800 million dollars.

Rather than take adequate preventative measures, the state often greenlights costly infrastructure projects after pumping and pollution gets out of control.

“There’s significant harm happening from over pumping. One way to deal with that is to reduce consumptive use permitting, which needs to happen no matter what. But the other side of that would be projects to recharge the aquifer,” said Smart.

Consumptive use permits are issued by water management districts and are intended to regulate how much water permittees can remove from Florida’s waterways.

Oodles of money can be made through infrastructure projects, unlike prevention, where projects often double as massive pay days for engineering firms and other contractors.

The Florida legislature has been paying attention to this crisis for years.

In 2021, Florida passed a law aimed at helping springs and waterways called SB 64. The law directs all statewide utilities to change how they dispose of treated wastewater by 2032. Utilities would have to update their plans to end all ‘non-beneficial’ uses of reclaimed water.

“For some utilities, this was going to be quite expensive. One of those utilities is Jacksonville Electric Authority,” Smart said.

SB 64 requires JEA and other utilities to stop dumping treated wastewater into waterways that lead to the ocean, including the St. Johns River. Bay area utilities currently dump treated wastewater into the bay, a practice that has to stop according to this SB 64.

Creative Loafing Tampa Bay is awaiting clarifications from the St. Johns Water Management District on their involvement with the potential reclaimed water project.

Once reclaimed water reaches the ocean it’s considered non-beneficial because it isn’t specifically allocated for any use and doesn’t recharge the aquifer.

JEA currently pumps its water from the Santa Fe and Ichetucknee Rivers to the west and then dumps its treated wastewater in the St. Johns River to the east at the Buckman Wastewater Treatment Facility, across the river from Jacksonville University.

Reclaimed water has various beneficial uses such as irrigation, or if treated further, to replenish the Floridan aquifer.

The water in the aquifer comes out at springs, so if the aquifer is lowered it means springs flows will also decrease, which is what’s happening all over the state.

Dr. Robert Knight, a career wetland scientist and president of the board at the Florida Springs Institute, says some of Florida’s earliest wells were dug in Jacksonville. Once that happened it was “like putting a pin in a balloon” and pressure in the Floridan aquifer has been declining ever since. Where wells were once free flowing and didn’t require pumps, declining pressure over the last 150 years meant that pumps are now needed to extract water.

“They’re damaging the St. Johns River by discharging their partially treated wastewater into it, and they’re damaging the springs and the aquifer to the west by pumping so much groundwater,” Knight said.

This bill supposedly helps JEA work to change that.

“It basically lets JEA off of complying with a deadline that they have for removing their discharges from the St Johns River. That seems to be what it’s all about, and under the guise of restoring the Santa Fe River Springs and the Ichetucknee River Springs,” Knight said.

Knight first approached JEA a decade ago with a similar proposal, and now JEA has proposed they could dump the water back into the Sante Fe River, which could provide an estimated 35-40 million gallons a day to recharge the aquifer. It could be a gamechanger for the health of the springs system.

However, under current Florida law, the partially treated wastewater would have to undergo further treatment, or it would exacerbate pollution in the Santa Fe and Ichetucknee rivers.

So, JEA can’t dump its partially treated wastewater in the St. Johns River because it goes out to the ocean where it doesn’t do anyone any good, and they can’t dump it into any other nearby river because it isn’t clean enough. What can they do?

That brings us back to HB 691, which would allow JEA to update its previous plan and instead begin to develop and use a new treatment wetland.

A one page flyer provides limited details about the plan.

Tampa and St. Petersburg don’t use treatment wetlands in their wastewater processing because there is no land available to do so, but they are used in several places throughout Florida, including in Lake City, Gainesville, and Orlando.

Wetlands are incredibly effective ways to remove pollutants from water.

“Through the natural process of microbial activity in a wetland, you remove the nitrogen and you don’t have to pay for it. All you have to do is have some land and turn it into a wetland, and you have the plants and the bacteria that do the nitrogen removal. Basically, it’s solar powered,” Knight said.

The 1,500-1,700 acre treatment wetland would likely be in Baldwin near Brandy Branch Power Station, about 20 miles from JEA’s Buckman Wastewater Treatment Facility on the St. Johns River. Rather than releasing it in the river, they would pipe it over to Baldwin and release it there.

Moving high volumes of water over such long distances is very difficult and could become very expensive.

“If you were thinking about it from an investment perspective, you might characterize it as high risk, high reward,” said Christopher Meindl, an environmental geographer and director of the Florida Studies program at the University of South Florida. “In other words, it will almost certainly be very expensive, particularly in terms of JEA trying to move a pretty significant volume of treated wastewater a long distance.”

Smart and Meindl both note the project would provide springs with considerably more funding than the $50 million springs restoration gets every year.

“I think this demonstrates how much more money we need for springs. This is an $800 million project to deal with one issue in one system,” Smart said.

Questions abound about who will pay for it, and it remains unclear if the money will come from Florida’s budget or somewhere else.

Meindl is reminded of another complex negotiation.

“Living in the Tampa Bay area, we’ve been treated to several years of news about negotiations between the Tampa Bay Rays and City of St. Petersburg and other places in the Bay area. And there’s all this wrangling about building a new stadium. Lots of people think conceptually a new stadium would be a great thing. But then, when you come down to who pays for it, initially it’s challenging. Everybody wants the other guy to pay more, and my guess is that that will be true for this project as well,” Meindl said.

Even projects that are drafted and approved could face delays during subsequent budget negotiations.

“How often do projects of that size stay on budget?” Smart said. “It’s a very expensive project, but surely it’s a better use for that water than just adding to the St Johns to add pollution there.”

Springs advocates hope that if this project is approved and paid for, the water will be kept for the health of the system.

“If we just treat this 35 to 40 million gallons a day as a new bucket and straws right to suck out, and we’re not going to get those benefits,” Smart said. “There needs to be a way to ensure that this water is reserved for the health of the system.”

The bill has passed three Senate committees and been in two House committees.

UPDATED 04/23/25 3:16 p.m. Corrected to note that JEA is formerly known as Jacksonville Electric Authority.

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