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Planning:
Water Resources

When planners use the phrase "water resources," they often mean water used and managed for people: drinking water, water that supports fisheries and farms, water used in manufacturing, and water for recreation. Planners must also manage waters that can become problems if not handled properly, such as stormwater runoff and sewage.

Most water resource issues can be classified as problems of quantity or of quality. Following are a few examples from the ARROW region.

Water quantity issues

• Who gets how much water? Who decides? This is especially critical in times of drought.
  
  
• Can a natural flow regime, including seasonal cycles of drought and flood, be sustained in the Apalachicola River in the face of increasing upstream demands for water in the Chattahoochee and Flint river basins?
  
  
• How much water should be reserved for natural communities and for fisheries?
  
  
• Is there so much water in the region that it can be exported elsewhere (in bottles or via pipeline) without either creating shortages here or doing ecological damage?

Water quality issues

• How can Apalachicola Bay and its fisheries be protected from pollution by stormwater runoff?
  
  
• Are septic tanks along the region's river and Gulf coast degrading water quality and damaging fisheries? Will central sewage treatment solve this problem?
  
  
• Will central water and sewer systems encourage even more development, which could worsen stormwater runoff?

TMDL

• A term that is being commonly used today among planners if "TDML." What is it and why is it and why is it important to you? Click on this link to http://www.dep.state.fl.us/water/tmdl/background.htm to their web page summarizing some of the more important things you should know about TDML and how it relates to water quality

The ARROW Almanac doesn't have the answers to these questions, but it does give you background information to help you think about solutions.

ARROW
Florida Natural Areas Inventory
1018 Thomasville Road
Suite 200-C
Tallahassee, Florida 32303
Phone: (850) 224-8207
E-mail: fprice@fnai.fsu.edu

Note: The content of the website has not been updated since 2005. The site remains online for it's value as legacy content and is unlikely to be updated.