By BLANCHE HARDY
The St. Johns River Water Management District’s Governing Board recently approved the 2025 Central Florida Water Initiative’s (CFWI) Regional Water Supply Plan. The Plan provides a roadmap to secure sustainable water supplies for the next 20 years. The District considers cooperative planning critical to protecting and managing the region’s shared water resources, considering central Florida’s population now exceeds 3.4 million and is growing.
Florida’s five water management districts develop Regional Water Supply Plans to identify sustainable water supply for all water uses while protecting water resources and related natural systems. Regional Water Supply Plans are updated every five years to project water demand over a 20-year period in their governing area.
The CFWI is a working partnership that includes the St. Johns River, South Florida and Southwest Florida water management districts and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Local governments, utilities, environmental advocates and other stakeholders also participate in the initiative.
“Water sustains our communities, fuels our economy and supports the natural places that make central Florida special,” said Regional Water Supply Planning Coordinator Callie Register. “By planning together today, we’re sustaining these resources for the people and the ecosystems that depend on them.”
The CFWI engaged in public involvement for review of the draft report preceding the Board’s approval. Friends of the Wekiva, Audubon of Florida, and the St. Johns Riverkeeper, along with agencies such as the Polk Regional Water Cooperative, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and the Florida Farm Bureau Federation, participated.
Comments were also received from consultants, industry representatives, cities, and area utilities, including the Water Cooperative of Central Florida (WCCF). The WCCF is a group of local governments working under an interlocal agreement between the City of St. Cloud, Toho Water Authority and Orange and Polk counties. The WCCF has been engaged in alternative water supply efforts and is implementing the Cypress Lake Wellfield Project, an alternate water supply brackish Lower Floridan aquifer groundwater use project.
The CFWI Plan identifies strategies to meet current and future needs while protecting natural systems. Without the projects outlined in the 2025 Plan, they project central Florida could face a groundwater shortfall of 96 million gallons per day (mgd) by 2045.
The plan estimates a total of 639.15 mgd of water was consumed in 2020 by public and domestic self-supply, agriculture, landscape and recreational uses, commercial, industrial, institutional uses and power generation. The projected 2045 water need is 905.5 mgd, an increase of 41 percent. The largest anticipated consumption increase is by power generation, an additional 92 percent, followed by public supply at more than 58 percent. Conversely, domestic self-supply and agriculture are expected to reduce consumption by 26 and 3 percent, respectively.
To mitigate the projected consumptive outcome, the plan includes 140 water supply and water resource development projects and 27 water conservation projects to ensure growth and environmental protection move forward in unison.
From fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2024, approximately $397.5 million was provided for 36 alternate water supply projects that are now completed or are under construction. The result has been 88.84 million mgd of supply.
As part of this program, the CFWI continues to implement water conservation measures and programs in its Planning Area. From fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2024, the Districts provided approximately $2.85 million for 30 water conservation projects that were completed or are being implemented at an estimated water savings of 1.08 mgd.
