Just saw a report on Ch 12 news, West Palm, and Jana Eschbach interviewed both a citrus grove owner and Congressman Patrick Murphy regarding a sudden revelation that one can only hope is legitimate and accurate. A citrus grower (name escapes me) is presently storing runoff on his land where the pilot project exists, about 40 acres if I am correct. The claim on the report is that by farming (storing) water on an expanded acreage, reportedly as much as 4,000 acres the farmer could hold enough water to shut the St. lucie Locks during wet season. Longggg pause......... The facts are not all in but when I do the math, I have to wonder how this is true. One acre-foot of water is 326,000 gallons. Should a farmer with 4,000 acres hold a foot of water on his tract, that would equal 1.3 billion gallons, or about what spews through the S-80 (St. lucie) lock in 24 hours during a major discharge, and in some years, like 2013, it reached 3 times that amount daily. Okay, for every additional foot that the farmer can hold, add another 1.3 billion gallons. If the farmer can hold upwards of 10 feet of water on 4,000 acres, we are talking 13 billion gallons, or what the estuary had seen in a week during the summer of 2013. Lets take it further-- if 20 feet of water was held (and who knows if that is possible) we are talking 26 billion gallons. Thats impressive, but one 4,000 acre farm doing this certainly wont stop the discharges over an entire wet summer. Now, a string of farms, we may have something. This story will develop over the next week or so, stay tuned.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 22:29:44 +0000
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