With springs and rivers losing flow and with pollution in our waterways increasing, it may be time to consider whether Florida should adopt the Precautionary Principle—and given legislative and state agency reticence to take effective actions to protect our springs, how could this adoption effort proceed?

To understand the Precautionary Principle, we need to understand the scientific method and what science can and cannot do.

The scientific method is a way for people to explain how natural, biological and mechanical systems work. As explained on the website of the American Museum of Natural History, the method involves several steps:

• Scientists define a question to investigate.
• Scientists develop a hypothesis, a theory that offers an explanation of the question under investigation; they then make predictions based on that hypothesis.
• Scientists design procedures to test their predictions and gather data from those procedures.
• Scientists then draw conclusions about their hypothesis based on the data they gathered. Often these conclusions lead to new hypotheses, and the whole process is repeated—which explains how scientific opinions can change over time.

What is missing from this process are the decisions that people may need to make based on the findings of scientists. That’s because science is an investigative method, a system for analyzing how things work; it is not what’s called a “normative” system because it does not provide guidance about what people should or should not do in any given situation. Human beings must make those moral and ethical decisions.

Another consideration is that there is a lot of room for human beings to influence scientific findings, either intentionally or unintentionally. For example, it matters which questions are asked, which data points are selected for analysis, and how data is analyzed. Humans being who they are, a 100 percent “objective” analysis of scientific data may not even be possible.

So it is not surprising that different scientists—in the case of the Ichetucknee, the politically influenced* scientists of the Suwannee River Water Management District and the politically independent scientists of the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute—can come to different conclusions when analyzing scientific data. If different questions are asked, if different data points are chosen for analysis, and if data is analyzed in different ways, scientific findings will differ.

What can people do, then, when decisions about something such as setting the minimum flows and levels (MFLs) for the Ichetucknee need to be made, and there are different opinions about where those levels should be set? Or different opinions about whether water use permits need to be capped or limited?

The Precautionary Principle provides guidance for how people can make decisions in such situations: Until scientists can come to agreement, choose the course of action that causes the least amount of harm to the natural system.

Here is another way to describe the Principle: When an activity raises the threat of harm to people or the environment, we are justified in taking precautions against such harm even in the face of conflicting or incomplete science.

And finally: When faced with scientific uncertainty and the possibility of causing grave harm to a natural system, we should choose the most conservative course of action that causes the least amount of harm until scientific findings indicate that it is safe to proceed with further actions.

In other words, we should not have to wait for scientific findings to be agreed upon by everyone to take action to protect our springs and rivers.

If we were using the Precautionary Principle, we could say that since damage to the Ichetucknee in the form of long-term flow loss has already occurred and is ongoing, the Suwannee River Water Management District would be justified in taking immediate actions to reduce or even cap groundwater pumping. The situation with nitrate pollution is a bit more complicated since according to federal law, non-point sources of pollution such as agriculture and septic tanks are not regulated.

If you would like more information about the Precautionary Principle, it has been described in depth in a publication by the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Finally, how might this Principle be adopted by the State of Florida? Adoption would require broad legislative and gubernatorial support or, failing that, an effort by the people of Florida to amend state law to require the Principle’s use.

*Politically influenced because the directors of the water management districts and the head of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP, which oversees the activities of the water management districts) are appointed by whoever is the governor of Florida. There is at least one documented instance of a scientist from a water management district who lost his job because he failed to toe the political line.