Environmental Activists Meet Setbacks from City, County In Saving Aquifer Efforts

As the feds and state legislators do their best to destroy hard-won environmental protections, area government is also giving environmental activists some real setbacks. The name of the activist game is Preventing Water Pollution, Saving the Aquifer. That's our drinking water they are playing with, folks.

Unregulated growth long years ago swamped South Florida, and now the politicians down there are talking about piping water from North Florida to their congested, water-short counties. Will we follow their example?

To bring you up to date on the area losses:

• County Commissioners have approved a zoning change to permit the building of a student apartment complex in the environmentally sensitive Bivens Arm area. (See People for Land Use Control (PLUC) organizes to give citizens more voice in zoning.)

• Citizens protesting the proposed cement plant near Newberry have been told by the county attorney that they cannot file a lawsuit to stop the project. They are waiting a court decision. Plans call for the plant to be built on the edge of a limestone quarry which is open down to the aquifer.

• A state engineering study has shown landfill liners leak far more pollutants than expected. State Department of Environmental Engineers (DER) will investigate the issue and the need for tighter landfill regulations. Yet County Commission continues to promote the Delta landfill near Orange Heights, an area vulnerable to water pollution. (see )

• With this issue, FACT begins reports on long range plans by the St. Johns River Water Management District (see ) and the Suwannee River Water Management District (see ). All state water management districts have prepared plans which will be the basis of statewide water plans to be made by the next legislature.