ORANGE PARK – A new study suggests population increases and urban development will double Florida’s water demand over the next half century unless better conservation and planning practices are put in place.

The study, released earlier this month by the University of Florida, the Florida Department of Agriculture and the growth survey group 1000 Friends of Florida, paints an unsustainable situation for Florida’s cities and suburbs.

The study suggests an additional 15 million new residents will settle in Florida by 2070. Housing and entertaining these new residents will stress the aquifer, particularly in crowded cities. The study projects development for these structures will swallow protected lands in Florida. Housing developments and urban Meccas require heavier amounts of water than underdeveloped areas and agricultural lands, a stress that could lead to unsustainable usage of the Floridan Aquifer.

“We’re concerned the future looks very dark for water in Florida, but I want to point out we have an array of solutions available to us,” said Cori Hermle, an environmental planning consultant with Fresh From Florida, in a briefing. “It’s actually implementing the mitigation techniques that poses a challenge.”

The study says there will be roughly two million fewer acres of agricultural land in Florida by 2070. This accounts for nearly a 25 percent drop in water used for agriculture and a 106 percent increase in water demanded from development.

Pumping the aquifer for this water would become an increasingly unviable solution to a water supply already threatened by saltwater intrusion, wetland damage and worsened by sea-level rise.

The study did not include water used by mining, power companies or industrial use, meaning the numbers could be skewed even more dramatically.

This study builds upon a September study, entitled Florida 2070, where the group found the state stands to lose 15 percent of its green space to development.

According to the report, Northeast Florida’s water demand stands to skyrocket from over 655,000 to more than 1.2 million gallons a day. In an alternate trend, however, the blow from population growth can be mitigated through smart growth measures, packing in the new population more compactly and therefore increasing protected lands from development.

“The aquifer is going to get more and more stressed as time goes on, so we need to be proactive in addressing that issue,” said district 5 Sen. Rob Bradley(R-Fleming Island). “Certainly one of the cornerstones on how the state deals with this issue in the future is reuse systems. We need to be very aggressive I think in expanding reuse space.”

Water management districts must adjust their 20-year regional water supply plans every five years to meet projected water demands. The Water 2070 study comes at a pivotal moment when a final vote on water conservation and reuse projects identified in the northeast Florida regional water supply plan comes to its final vote on Jan. 17.

The St. Johns and Suwanee River Water Management Districts collaborated on the plan, which aims to conserve 40 to 44 million gallons a day between the counties they represent.

Essentially, the plan presents an array of projects for implementation in each county’s utility company.

“We’re going to be looking at all kinds of alternatives. Conservation is going to be integral to our success,” said Scott Laidlaw, chief of the Bureau of Water Supply Planning at SJRWMD. “Our projects identify other sources of water without relying on groundwater, because we don’t think it is stable above and beyond our current use.”

Chief among Clay County Utility Authority’s projects to avoid pumping from the aquifer is to use the multi-lane toll road, the First Coast Expressway, currently slated to cut through Clay County as a funnel to collect runoff water into storm water ponds. The system would then redirect the water to a centralized plant to filter out heavy metals and petroleum distillates – common vehicle pollutants.

The project would inject an estimated 2.5 million gallons of purified water straight into the aquifer. Current estimates set costs at $26.8 million.

Although the plan uses the same population estimates as SJRWMD, Laidlaw said the group’s study is a high altitude view for an extremely complex problem. While water districts look forward 20 years, the plan looks forward 50. Still, Laidlaw said, meeting future water needs is the reason water supply plans exist, and said he’s confident when the time comes the districts can rise to the challenge.

Laidlaw said the project doesn’t provide any information water planning professionals weren’t already aware of, but said there has been a “shift in perspective in terms of water supply planning looking at the state as a whole instead of each individual water district.”