Editorial: Florida crumbling
May 13, 2012
The following article was published in The Gainesville Sun on May 13, 2012:
Editorial: Florida Crumbling
During the freeze of 2010, Plant City farmers pumped water out of the ground continuously for 11 days to insulate their strawberry crops against the biting cold.
“The massive water withdrawal dropped the level of the aquifer sixty feet in a week and a half,” Gainesville author Cynthia Barnett writes in “Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis.”
“One hundred and forty sinkholes opened up in communities surrounding the farms. Seven hundred and fifty residential wells dried up. An underground chasm closed Plant City’s Trapell Elementary School….”
Sinkholes are a natural phenomenon in porous, limestone-girded Florida. Even so, the cause-and-effect relationship between dropping groundwater tables and increased sinkhole occurrence is absolutely clear.
And a prolonged drought — coupled with continuing, excessive withdrawals from the aquifer — all but guarantee that still more sinkholes, like the one that forced the evacuation of a family in Jonesville last week, will occur.
Which raises an interesting question:
Sinkholes are so common in Florida that the insurance industry has gone to the Legislature to limit its liability for claims.
But what is the culpability of the state — legally and ethically — when permitted draining of the aquifer creates sinkhole activity that destroys property, homes and businesses and endangers public safety? Does the state’s doctrine of sovereign immunity cover all sins?
“Even though it’s related to the drought, it’s really over-pumping of the aquifer that is making matters worse and making conditions such that we’re more likely to have sinkholes,” Alachua County environmental protection director Chris Bird told The Sun this week.
The massive Jonesville sinkhole is yet another warning sign that Florida is flirting with a water disaster. Our politicians and water managers haven’t even begun to adopt a conservation ethic sufficient to counteract Florida’s consumption bias in water use policy.
That needs to change, and soon. Florida is crumbling beneath our feet.
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During the freeze of 2010, Plant City farmers pumped water out of the ground continuously for 11 days to insulate their strawberry crops against the biting cold.
“The massive water withdrawal dropped the level of the aquifer sixty feet in a week and a half,” Gainesville author Cynthia Barnett writes in “Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis.”
“One hundred and forty sinkholes opened up in communities surrounding the farms. Seven hundred and fifty residential wells dried up. An underground chasm closed Plant City’s Trapell Elementary School….”
Sinkholes are a natural phenomenon in porous, limestone-girded Florida. Even so, the cause-and-effect relationship between dropping groundwater tables and increased sinkhole occurrence is absolutely clear.
And a prolonged drought — coupled with continuing, excessive withdrawals from the aquifer — all but guarantee that still more sinkholes, like the one that forced the evacuation of a family in Jonesville last week, will occur.
Which raises an interesting question:
Sinkholes are so common in Florida that the insurance industry has gone to the Legislature to limit its liability for claims.
But what is the culpability of the state — legally and ethically — when permitted draining of the aquifer creates sinkhole activity that destroys property, homes and businesses and endangers public safety? Does the state’s doctrine of sovereign immunity cover all sins?
“Even though it’s related to the drought, it’s really over-pumping of the aquifer that is making matters worse and making conditions such that we’re more likely to have sinkholes,” Alachua County environmental protection director Chris Bird told The Sun this week.
The massive Jonesville sinkhole is yet another warning sign that Florida is flirting with a water disaster. Our politicians and water managers haven’t even begun to adopt a conservation ethic sufficient to counteract Florida’s consumption bias in water use policy.
That needs to change, and soon. Florida is crumbling beneath our feet.