In April of this year--ironically less than a month after I finished my "Big Trip" across the entire St. Johns--Seminole County’s utility system was given permission to take up to 5.5 million gallons of water from the St. Johns River DAILY to supply water to the surrounding areas. If this really was a sort of "last resort" to literally keep people alive, perhaps I wouldn't be so against it. But this is no last resort, not anywhere close. Any one of us can walk down the street--or perhaps not even have to walk outside of our own homes--to see how much water is being wasted on a daily basis. A large portion of our drinking water from the aquifer goes into Florida's LAWNS, not into Florida's people.
Think about this; recently the government has spent an obscene amount of money in bailouts, basically trying to keep afloat companies who, through careless business practices, should have gone under. The reasoning behind this was that these large companies represented so many jobs, and so many investments of the American people, that if they were to fall, chaos would ensue, right? I'm not saying that things wouldn't have been bad for a while if these many companies would have folded, but eventually what would happen? Smaller companies would begin to sprout up to fill the void left by these giant companies, and chances are they will promote better business strategies. Some day they might get complacent, but then they would go under too, and the process starts all over again. This system is a sort of "natural selection", which keeps companies responsible; keeps them being ASSETS to our nation instead of liabilities.
With these bailouts, however, we have essentially empowered companies who have been foolish with their resources to continue being foolish, at the taxpayers' expense. They have not been bettered by these bailouts, and we have not been bettered.
Think of this in terms of water conservation and our St. Johns River. Something like half (or close to it) of our potable drinking water goes into our LAWNS. These lawns use grasses that are not native to the area, and therefore they must have a plentiful supply of water to survive. Does that sound like good water management to you?
I'm not saying this is the sole reason why we are running low on ground water, but this is a great example of how we as Floridians are being complacent and foolish in our use of our precious water supply. Getting a "bailout" from the St. Johns River isn't going to make things better; it is only going to EMPOWER the faulty conservation practices that we already have in place. We will run into the same problem that is happening with our nation right now: because we continue this wasteful "spending" of our water, one "bailout" from the River won't be enough (a.k.a. this initial 5.5 million gallons a day). As the population grows, this amount won't be sufficient, and we'll need another, more extensive "bailout". Farther down the line, we'll need another, then another, and another.
Water is not our problem; our own lifestyles, our own perspectives are the problem. The way we currently use water is an UNSUSTAINABLE SYSTEM! We have to change how we USE the water to fix this problem. Our River should not have to suffer for the mistakes we are making today! We pooh-pooh the draining of the Everglades in the early parts of this century, saying "How could they do something like that; how could they destroy something so beautiful?" The answer is simple: they did it just like we are endangering the St. Johns today; in the name of "PROGRESS". In fifty years, what will our children say of us who lived along the largest river in our state; what kind of stewards will we be? There will always be a need for more for those who take everything, but maturity comes when one can faithfully care for what they have.
-Daniel
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