Protecting Ichetucknee Springs Requires More Than Limits on Tubing

Protecting Ichetucknee Springs

Requires More Than Limits on Tubing

by Nathan Crabbe

Protecting Ichetucknee Springs Requires More Than Limits on Tubing

One of the great things about living in Gainesville is being within a short drive of Ichetucknee Springs and other natural wonders. Yet, like with so many things in life, long periods of time can pass without taking advantage of the opportunity to visit them.

Last weekend, my wife and I brought our two kids to meet up with some friends and their son at Ichetucknee Springs State Park. It was my first time there since changes had been made in park policies, including the upper stretch of the spring-fed river being closed to tubing.

Tubing had been halted there in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic during a typically busy season, providing a test run that showed the benefits of better protecting aquatic grasses that are crucial to the wildlife of the ecosystem. Now the upper stretch remains closed in an effort to allow the vegetation even more time to recover.

We felt lucky to get there early enough to enjoy floating on the cool water with family and friends. Just leaving behind our phones and soaking in nature for a few hours is a luxury in this day and age, so hopefully the state will continue taking steps to protect the environment there for visitors to appreciate for generations to come

Nathan Crabbe is opinion and engagement editor for the Gainesville Sun. He has been with the paper since 2005, previously working as a reporter on the University of Florida and environmental beats. Before that he investigated wrongful convictions for the Innocence Institute of Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and covered the environmental and county beats as a reporter for the Napa Valley Register in Napa, California. His article was originally posted online in The Gainesville Sun’s website on July 15, 2021, and is reprinted with permission of the author.

Changes in tubing policies aren’t enough. Even though excessive groundwater withdrawals in the area have diminished spring flows, the Suwannee River Water Management District keeps allowing the pumping to continue unabated. District officials are now proposing spending hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money on an absurd plan to pipe water from the Suwannee River to the Ichetucknee to boost water levels.

Groundwater pollution from livestock, fertilizer and septic tanks also poses a threat, fueling algae growth that clouds the Ichetucknee’s formerly pristine waters. Again, the state’s solution is spending taxpayer money rather than cracking down on the polluters causing the problem.

But the state can’t spend its way out of the problem, as shown by a Florida Springs Council analysis of 2021-2022 restoration projects being conducted by state agencies. Even if there are no new pollution sources, the analyses found that it would still take 217 years to achieve water quality goals through the projects.

The Ichetucknee/Santa Fe River system would take even longer: It is on track to be restored in 391 years based on the capabilities of current springs projects. And the cost of reaching water quality goals for the basin would total more than $4 billion, according to the study.

The report calls on the state to boost funding for springs, spend the money on more effective projects and pass laws requiring nutrient pollution to be reduced. Local residents need to push elected officials to take these and other steps to better protect our nearby natural wonders.