Suwannee Riverkeeper wrote to SRWMD this morning about the proposed water withdrawal permit for Nestlé near Ginnie Springs on the Santa Fe River, “This permit would be taxation without representation of river, spring, and aquifer water.

“The SRWMD board should refuse to hear any water withdrawal permit requests in the Santa Fe River Basin, or in the Upper Suwannee Basin (including the Withlacoochee and Alapaha Rivers) until the governor fills the corresponding vacant SRWMD Board seats.”

You can still attend this morning’s 9AM SRWMD board meeting in which the Seven Rivers water withdrawal permit for Nestlé will be heard.

WWALS to SRWMD: no water taxation without representation
PDF

The Letter

See also PDF.

See also the previous WWALS letter of December 9, 2019.

August 11, 2020

To: Hugh Thomas, Executive Director
Suwannee River Water Management District
9225 Co Rd 49, Live Oak, FL 32060
Hugh.Thomas@srwmd.org
386-362-1001

Cc: Lindsey Garland
Public Communications Coordinator
SRWMD
Lindsey.Garland@srwmd.org

Re: Please deny and review Nestlé water withdrawal permits

Director Thomas,

Seeing nothing substantial has changed since our letter with the same message of December 9, 2019, Suwannee Riverkeeper for WWALS Watershed Coalition asks the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) to act for the public good by denying the Seven Springs Water Company permit renewal request at Ginnie Springs on the Santa Fe River, and by reviewing the Nestlé permit for Madison Blue Springs on the Withlacoochee River, among others. We further urge the SRWMD board to approve no such permits in the Santa Fe River basin until the corresponding seat is filled on the SRWMD board.

In particular, Seven Springs still proposes to extract many times the historical withdrawals from the Ginnie Springs site, and Nestlé still proposes to double its local capacity to put Floridan Aquifer water in plastic bottles that many of us later will have to clean up from rivers and springs.

Taxing such water bottling would still bring in far more revenue for water quality monitoring that the pittance Nestlé pays for that now.

And the SRWMD board is still missing three members. Especially it is missing the members to represent the Santa Fe and Upper Suwannee (and Withlacoochee and Alapaha) Rivers.

This permit would be taxation without representation of river, spring, and aquifer water.

The SRWMD board should refuse to hear any water withdrawal permit requests in the Santa Fe River Basin, or in the Upper Suwannee Basin (including the Withlacoochee and Alapaha Rivers) until the governor fills the corresponding vacant SRWMD Board seats.

Thank you for your consideration.

For the rivers and the aquifer,

John S. Quarterman
Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
/s
WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc.
contact@suwanneeriverkeeper.org
www.suwanneeriverkeeper.org

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