Update 2021-02-09: Back to Live Oak and online: SRWMD Nestle Special Meeting 2021-02-23.

Update 2021-02-04: Special SRWMD Board Meeting February 23, 2021, in Fanning Springs.

You can address your own postcard to SRWMD:

SRWMD Board Members
9225 CR 49
LIVE OAK, FL 32060

NO Nestlé PERMIT

Just “NO PERMIT” is enough, but No permit for Seven Springs or Nestlé would be better. You don’t even need to know who the Board Members of the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) are.

NO PERMIT postcard to SRWMD
PDF

The lead organization on these postcards is Our Santa Fe River (OSFR). If you’re in High Springs this afternoon, you can get a physical postcard from OSFR board member and WWALS member Kristin Rubin at the High Springs Farmer’s Market, 23517 185th Rd., High Springs, FL, from 3 to 6 PM. Tomorrow, January 30th, OSFR will have cards at 441 Alachua Farmer’s Market, 5920 NW 13th St., Gainesville, FL, from 9 to 12 AM.

But you can use any old postcard. Just address it, put No Permit on it, stamp and mail it.

If you haven’t been following this story, last year the SRWMD board tabled removed from their March 2020 agenda the permit application by Seven Springs Water Company to withdraw more water at Ginnie Springs on the Santa Fe River. That was because Nestlé started a case with the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH) to oppose SRWMD staff’s recommendation to reject the permit. Nestlé shrunk the amount they want slightly, SRWMD staff decided to like that, and it came back to the SRWMD Board. Which again in August tabled the permit application, this time until Nestlé is actually listed as an applicant along with Seven Springs. That threw it back to DOAH. A few days ago the DOAH judge ruled no objection to the withdrawals, so now it’s back to the SRWMD board, perhaps as soon as its February meeting.

Plus let’s not forget that Nestlé already sucks up massive amounts of water from near Madison Blue Spring on the Withlacoochee River. That also needs to stop.

For those who say, “but agriculture and that phosphate mine withdraw far more water,” yes, that’s true. But they don’t sell it back to us in plastic bottles that we then have to clean up out of springs and rivers. And Florida needs to start somewhere with limiting withdrawals so spring and river levels. What better way to start than with a withdrawal permit that is totally unnecessary for anything but profit for a Swiss company?

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

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