The moonscape that seems to go on forever while flying over Hamilton County, Florida in a small plane is the PCS phosphate mine, as seen in some WWALS aerials in these slides that David Wilson presented at a Santa Fe River Springs Protection Forum April 13, 2017 at Otter Springs, Florida. Dave is Treasurer of the Board of Florida Springs Institute, and a WWALS member. His slides are published on the WWALS website with his permission.
According to the slides, perhaps JEA is responsible for the low water levels at White Sulfur Springs, formerly a famous resort, now bone dry:
PCS naturally claims to have had nothing to do with that, even though PCS has massive water withdrawal permits in Hamilton County, shown as the huge blue circles towards the upper right of this figure:
Fig. 4: Principal springsheds (red lines) + consumptive use permits (dots sized by withdrawal rate), Florida portion of Suwannee River springshed,
in
A Plan to Restore the Lower Suwannee River Springs,
Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute, January 2016,
which is an executive summary of
Lower Suwannee River Springs Restoration Plan,
Prepared by The Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute, October 2015.
WWALS is for a water budget, real models based on real data, and peer review.
There is much more in Dave’s slides about the background of PCS, and about its effects as viewed by itself, by its neighbors, and by others.
Some WWALS aerials are on Dave’s slide 20:
The rest of those aerials by Jim Tatum and John S. Quarterman from that Southwings flight for WWALS on 22 October 2016 are on the WWALS website, including some videos and a google maps showing the location of the pictures:
See also Proposed HPSII phosphate mine in Union and Bradford Counties, Florida.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
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