Why are efforts to save Florida's freshwater springs so often doomed to fail? I think it's because of significant barriers that exist throughout our culture--knowledge barriers, legal barriers, funding barriers, political barriers, barriers of vision and value. Would we have more success if our water defender groups joined forces with groups outside "the choir" that are working to break down some of these barriers? What are other ways we could be more effective at dismantling or breaking through these barriers? It's clear that we need some outside-the-box thinking.
- Apathy/feelings of powerlessness (public, elected representatives, government agency officials, etc.)
- Greed (ex: special interest political campaign contributions lead to outsized influence on elected representatives; resistance by corporations and businesses to behavioral changes that would result in lost profits)
- Ignorance, including:
- Ignorance of Florida's hydrological cycle
- Ignorance of interconnections throughout the Floridan aquifer
- Ignorance of who makes water-related decisions and how those decisions are made/political issues
- Myth of an infinite supply of freshwater
- Failure by elected representatives and agency officials to recognize water as a public interest/common interest
- State of Florida funding favors South Florida needs over North Florida needs
- Free water in rural areas/need for tiered water pricing to encourage conservation
- Lack of accountability for state agencies
- Current laws permit damage to natural systems instead of preventing it/natural systems lack their own rights to exist and to thrive
- Regulation of non-point sources of pollution prohibited at the federal level
- Ineffective Best Management Practices (BMPs), Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs), Minimum Flows & Levels (MFLs), Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) that offer only an illusion of protection for springs
- Reliance on ineffective water models and cherry-picking of model data
- Shifting baselines: Few know what we have lost.
- Decreasing levels of state enforcement of environmental regulations
- No environmental checks and balances: water management district board members appointed by the same person (governor) who appoints the head of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, no water defenders/environmentalists on water management district boards
- Economy and environment falsely perceived and opposing interests instead of linked interests
- Effects of regional water usage beyond the control of local agency officials
- No widely agreed-upon water ethic
- No clear definition of "public trust" in Florida water law
- Short-term thinking trumps long-term thinking on the part of the public, elected representatives, agency officials, business and commerce
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