Visitors to parts of South Florida might bring something even more valuable than tourism money to the region: Their digestive tracts. That's because some utilities recycle wastewater for irrigation and, as "snowbirds" in these areas migrate to other climates for summer, they've been said to leave an already drought-plagued region dryer.
Most of South Florida's drinking water has traditionally come from rains that fill shallow in-ground supplies. The water, stored in a natural rock basin known as an aquifer, has seen increased demand as the population has grown. Utilities have been digging deeper, tapping into an aquifer shared with other southern states, and water "wars" have erupted. To conserve South Florida's drinking water supplies, utilities in places such as Jupiter and Martin County treat waste water so that it's safe for irrigating golf courses and common spaces within communities. The earth then purifies it even more.
People have long paid attention to making sure that waterways, at one time more primary transportation routes for sailing ships, are navigable to mariners. With the Industrial Revolution, transportation became faster, people were provided quicker routes, they began immigrating, became more mobile and changed their settlement patterns. South Florida's drinking water supplies became impacted as early as the 19th century. Rains at the time meandered southwest along a gently, largely uninterupted sloping prairie from about Orlando to Florida City. The rains moistened a rich soil known as peat, flooded supple interior lands and sated the shallow aquifer until the excesses filtered by unpoiled grounds cascaded into Florida Bay at the mainland's southern edge.
To make the land buildable and farmable and, in some instances to reportedly enhance maritime travel, developers drained interior regions that provided natural water storage, and they carved canals east and west across the state. Inlets along coastal areas were created or widened, the harvested sand and clay used to create more buildable land. Salt water began making its way farther inland, and freshwater began flowing into rivers, streams, the ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Farming communities sprouted around Lake Okeechobee, a natural freshwater reservoir in the middle of it all and one that was diked after fatal hurricane flooding in the 1920s.
Author Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, in describing the “River of Grass” that otherwise became Everglades National Park, likened South Florida to a long pointed spoon, its coastal borders composed of rock that rises above sea water and carries fresh water, its swampy interior, depending upon elevations and rainfall amounts, carrying different amounts of fresh and salt water. “The rock holds all the fresh water and the grass and all those other shapes and forms of air-loving life only a little way out of the salt water, as a full spoon lowered into a full cup holds two liquids separate, within that thread of rim. Lower the tip of the spoon a very little, and the higher liquid moves out across the submerged end, as it does at the end of the Glades.”
How clean are Florida's waters?
Salt and fresh water now travel through the shallow Biscayne and deeper Floridan aquifers. Florida Bay, which spans from about Key Largo to Long Key, is a part of Everglades National Park and is home to the uninhabited Everglade Keys. Birders might visit these islands in hopes of spying roseate spoonbills, bald eagles and more. Anglers cast lines for trout, redfish and other species. The aquifer that serves the Florida Keys is in this area, too. It's composed of a porous rock that author Ted Levin in "Liquid Land: A Journey through the Florida Everglades" noted flakes in Coca Cola and dissolves in balsamic vinegar.
Rains carrying pesticides, fertilizers and pollution from vehicles can make their way into waters like Florida Bay that can enter aquifers. They can also spill into outright sources of drinking water. Septic systems, solid waste from landfills, industrial waste wells and sewage disposal ponds can also contaminate aquifers, according to the US Geological Survey. Contaminants that aren't used, absorbed or diverted ultimately make their way into the ocean, the agency notes.
The Environmental Protection Agency regulates public drinking water systems, but people with private wells are largely responsible for making sure their own water is
safe to drink. In instances where well water tests positive for contaminants caused by humans, the agency provides bottled water and filters or people are connected to a public drinking water system.
Drought conditions, along with climate change, happen in cycles and are being hurried in by greenhouse gases, experts contend. Since the Industrial Revolution, waters throughout the world are said to have become increasingly acidic because of carbon emissions in the air. Mercury, as a result, has been found in fish in the Everglades and those in similar habitats elsewhere in the United States. Plankton, which convert carbon into shells, have been found with incomplete shells in acidic waters. Beaches have closed to swimmers because of high bacteria levels that some have attributed to wastewater.
Businesses and residences as well as air, land and sea transportation are becoming “greener.” Many South Florida utilities have replaced septic systems with wastewater treatment facilities, and they clean storm water before it spills off unnatural surfaces into area seas. Power utilities are moving away from petroleum and natural gas and toward less harmful sources that include the sun and the wind.
Biotech firms such as those with locations throughout Florida are working to create a new "supercrop" of plants that grows hardier and more abundant, resisting pests, weeds, drought and diseases without the need for pesticides and fertilizers. As the biotechs also set their sights on natural fuels for motorized vehicles NASA, with its Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Fla., plans to establish space stations and fuel depots that would allow for travel to other galaxies. There in space, evidence of the water that's needed to sustain life has been found on Mars, and an ocean is believed to be blanketed in ice on a moon of Jupiter known as Europa.
