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| Ichetucknee Head Spring |
July 23, 2023
What if I told you that agriculturalists and foresters, state agency and public policy people, and springs and environmental defenders all agree that there are serious problems with groundwater in the Floridan aquifer here in the Springs Heartland, and that we should be working together to find solutions to those problems?
Would you believe me? Or has there already been so much “us vs. them/fighting” rhetoric that you think the people in those groups will never be able to agree on anything? Never even be able to have open and honest conversations?
Based on reams of evidence in news reports and messaging by the various groups I mentioned, I wouldn’t blame you if you came to those hopeless conclusions. For the 10 years I worked as communications coordinator for the nonprofit Ichetucknee Alliance (IA), however, my intuition kept telling me that if aquifer- and springs-related conversations could be held in private, outside of public forums, some surprising things might be revealed.
I had a gut feeling that many of the people the springs advocates had identified as foes actually love our springs as much as we water defenders do, and that those seemingly at-odds groups should be trying to find new ways to communicate with each other.
During the six years I spent as a stakeholder on the Floridan Aquifer Collaborative Engagement for Sustainability (FACETS) project run by the University of Florida’s Water Institute, I discovered that my intuition was right.
And although several water defenders have suggested that instead of using water models to make decisions about water use permits, Minimum Flows and Levels (MFLs), etc., the State of Florida should be using actual water data, I decided to maintain a shared focus on a water model with the FACETS group for the purposes of what I hoped could be productive conversations.
The Project
In 2017, I received an invitation from the UF Water Institute to represent the Ichetucknee Alliance as a stakeholder on a new project to create a mathematical water model for the Santa Fe River region in North Florida and the Flint River region in South Georgia. FACETS was designed to be a five-year project that would gather information from agriculturalists, foresters, state agency representatives, public policy experts and environmentalists in support of the creation of that water model. The model would include information about different crop types and crop management systems to analyze their effects and the effects of land use changes on spring flow, nitrate pollution, and impacts on the local economy.
The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) National Institute for Food and Agriculture and included participation by the University of Georgia, Auburn University and Albany State University (part of the Georgia State University system) in addition to the University of Florida. The ambitious vision for FACETS was to “promote economic sustainability of agriculture and silviculture in North Florida and South Georgia while protecting water quantity, quality and habitat in the Upper Floridan Aquifer and the springs and rivers it feeds.”
I wondered at the outset whether that was an achievable goal and since I would be representing the Ichetucknee Alliance on the project, I asked members of IA’s board of directors and advisory board for advice about whether to accept the invitation.
The people I communicated with were not enthusiastic. They saw FACETS as “just another exercise in tradeoffs” and wondered how I could communicate about the project if I disagreed with its findings.
My gut kept telling me to say yes, however, since I had long wanted to have some contact with agriculturalists outside of public forums. Since I usually regret it when I ignore my intuition, I accepted the invitation to represent IA as a stakeholder.
Based on the feedback I had received from IA’s directors and advisors, though, I resolved to write my own report about FACETS when the project ended.
The Process
FACETS turned out to be a six-year instead of five-year project when it was disrupted by the COVID pandemic in 2020 and in-person meetings were shifted to the Zoom online platform.
Much credit for the work on this Participatory Modeling Project (PMP) must go to the FACETS facilitators, who made sure all stakeholders’ voices were heard and all comments and questions were respected. I had observed a couple of stakeholder meetings during a different facilitated water-modeling project several years before FACETS. On that previous project, it was obvious to me and to many other people that the facilitators were leading stakeholders to desired conclusions. Facilitation during the FACETS project was the polar opposite of that sham process.
FACETS began at the field “Parcel Scale” by interpreting agricultural Best Management Practices (BMP) field trial results and collecting detailed information from growers to develop the part of the model that focused on different crop management systems. The modelers wanted that information to correspond as closely as possible to current agricultural and forestry practices. The crops and crop rotations considered for the Florida part of the project included corn-peanut, corn-carrot-peanut, Bermuda hay and pasture, and slash, loblolly and longleaf pine—including restoration longleaf pine as a “bookend” to the expansion of current agricultural practices. Not all crops grown in the Santa Fe River region of North Florida were included, likely because of funding limitations.
Development of the Parcel Scale part of the model was a lengthy, labor-intensive process that involved a lot of back-and-forth communication between the project team members and growers to ensure that the model used accurate information.
After interpreting the Parcel Scale results, the project team began creating the part of the water model that could be used on a Regional Scale to evaluate the effects of specific crop rotations and crop management systems on stream flow, nitrate pollution and regional economics. For the Regional Scale, stakeholders worked in tandem with the project team to develop nine scenarios that the modelers used to highlight flow, pollution and economic tradeoffs:
1. Restoration Forestry-High (a bookend)
2. Restoration Forestry-Low
3. Mix & Match (combination of different scenarios)
4. Solar Farm Expansion
5. High-Tech Controlled Release Fertilizer (CRF) Adoption
6. Sod Based Rotation (SBR) Adoption
7. Current Conditions
8. Urban
9. Agricultural Expansion (a bookend)
It became obvious during the Regional Scale discussions that the restoration (low-density) longleaf pine scenario resulted in the lowest leaching and highest recharge, which—not surprisingly!—led to quite a few discussions about how “realistic” that scenario was, since it led to regional economic losses and since many FACETS participants could not envision agriculturalists deciding to switch from row crops to longleaf pine. This “realistic” bone of contention might have also been prompted by the fact that several water defenders have publicly advocated for mass switches from row crops to longleaf pine.
One key member of the project team pointed out that the concepts of what was “realistic” were based entirely on the economic conditions that currently exist, not on how those conditions might change in the future.
I pointed out that a missing piece of the economic puzzle was a failure to include the economic impact of springs- and river-based recreation; again, this omission was likely due to funding issues.
In terms of what is “realistic,” I asked the stakeholder group and project team: How “realistic” is it to keep depleting and polluting the Floridan aquifer that feeds our springs and provides our drinking water?
One thing I learned that surprised me during the process of creating the model is that not all forestry crop types are equal with regard to pollution prevention and aquifer recharge—what matters, instead, is which pine trees are grown and how those tree crops are managed.
(to be continued in Part 2)
I wondered at the outset whether that was an achievable goal and since I would be representing the Ichetucknee Alliance on the project, I asked members of IA’s board of directors and advisory board for advice about whether to accept the invitation.
The people I communicated with were not enthusiastic. They saw FACETS as “just another exercise in tradeoffs” and wondered how I could communicate about the project if I disagreed with its findings.
My gut kept telling me to say yes, however, since I had long wanted to have some contact with agriculturalists outside of public forums. Since I usually regret it when I ignore my intuition, I accepted the invitation to represent IA as a stakeholder.
Based on the feedback I had received from IA’s directors and advisors, though, I resolved to write my own report about FACETS when the project ended.
The Process
FACETS turned out to be a six-year instead of five-year project when it was disrupted by the COVID pandemic in 2020 and in-person meetings were shifted to the Zoom online platform.
Much credit for the work on this Participatory Modeling Project (PMP) must go to the FACETS facilitators, who made sure all stakeholders’ voices were heard and all comments and questions were respected. I had observed a couple of stakeholder meetings during a different facilitated water-modeling project several years before FACETS. On that previous project, it was obvious to me and to many other people that the facilitators were leading stakeholders to desired conclusions. Facilitation during the FACETS project was the polar opposite of that sham process.
FACETS began at the field “Parcel Scale” by interpreting agricultural Best Management Practices (BMP) field trial results and collecting detailed information from growers to develop the part of the model that focused on different crop management systems. The modelers wanted that information to correspond as closely as possible to current agricultural and forestry practices. The crops and crop rotations considered for the Florida part of the project included corn-peanut, corn-carrot-peanut, Bermuda hay and pasture, and slash, loblolly and longleaf pine—including restoration longleaf pine as a “bookend” to the expansion of current agricultural practices. Not all crops grown in the Santa Fe River region of North Florida were included, likely because of funding limitations.
Development of the Parcel Scale part of the model was a lengthy, labor-intensive process that involved a lot of back-and-forth communication between the project team members and growers to ensure that the model used accurate information.
After interpreting the Parcel Scale results, the project team began creating the part of the water model that could be used on a Regional Scale to evaluate the effects of specific crop rotations and crop management systems on stream flow, nitrate pollution and regional economics. For the Regional Scale, stakeholders worked in tandem with the project team to develop nine scenarios that the modelers used to highlight flow, pollution and economic tradeoffs:
1. Restoration Forestry-High (a bookend)
2. Restoration Forestry-Low
3. Mix & Match (combination of different scenarios)
4. Solar Farm Expansion
5. High-Tech Controlled Release Fertilizer (CRF) Adoption
6. Sod Based Rotation (SBR) Adoption
7. Current Conditions
8. Urban
9. Agricultural Expansion (a bookend)
It became obvious during the Regional Scale discussions that the restoration (low-density) longleaf pine scenario resulted in the lowest leaching and highest recharge, which—not surprisingly!—led to quite a few discussions about how “realistic” that scenario was, since it led to regional economic losses and since many FACETS participants could not envision agriculturalists deciding to switch from row crops to longleaf pine. This “realistic” bone of contention might have also been prompted by the fact that several water defenders have publicly advocated for mass switches from row crops to longleaf pine.
One key member of the project team pointed out that the concepts of what was “realistic” were based entirely on the economic conditions that currently exist, not on how those conditions might change in the future.
I pointed out that a missing piece of the economic puzzle was a failure to include the economic impact of springs- and river-based recreation; again, this omission was likely due to funding issues.
In terms of what is “realistic,” I asked the stakeholder group and project team: How “realistic” is it to keep depleting and polluting the Floridan aquifer that feeds our springs and provides our drinking water?
One thing I learned that surprised me during the process of creating the model is that not all forestry crop types are equal with regard to pollution prevention and aquifer recharge—what matters, instead, is which pine trees are grown and how those tree crops are managed.
(to be continued in Part 2)
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