Answer to water woes may lie below

To quench Southwest Florida's growing thirst, siphoning more drinking water from underground aquifers is "not beyond the realm of possibility," a South Florida Water Management District official said Monday.

But water managers won't allow that to happen at the expense of existing wells, fragile wetlands or the health of the aquifers themselves, said John Muliken, the district's water supply planner.

A regional water supply plan made public earlier this month stressed the need to develop alternative water sources, particularly those that draw from underground brackish — or somewhat salty — water reserves.

"The plan was perceived as being overly negative about developing (underground) fresh water in the future," Muliken said before a crowd of about 30 water utility leaders and government officials.

Muliken vowed to revise the report to be friendlier toward the possibility of expanding the region's reach into freshwater aquifers. But, he added, "the plan will continue to have a conservative tone."

The district's Lower West Coast region's water-supply plan covers more than 5,100 square miles, including all of Lee, most of Collier and Hendry and portions of Glades, Charlotte and Monroe counties.

Water managers expect 674,000 new residents to flood the region by 2025, boosting the overall population to 1.6 million and increasing the water demand by 153 million gallons a day. In response, utilities plan to spend at least $1.7 billion to expand their operations.

The water supply plan last was revised in 2000. The updated plan will go before the water management district's governors on July 12.

At Monday's meeting south of Naples, Muliken and Mike Coates, who wrote the water supply plan for the district, sought suggestions on the water report.

Representatives of Lee and Collier counties' two largest public water authorities criticized a 2003 district policy that raises the permitting bar for freshwater aquifers.

Lee County Utilities, which serves about 200,000 customers in unincorporated Lee County, wants to add 7.4 million gallons a day of water from wells near the far eastern end of Alico Road in Estero.

"We still see an opportunity for limited development of traditional sources," said Howard Wegis, staff engineer with Lee County Utilities.

Collier County's public utilities department is looking to augment its drinking water capacity by 10 million gallons a day by developing new wells near the Orangetree subdivision and in East Naples.

It costs $1.26 to treat 1,000 gallons of fresh groundwater, according to the water management district's estimates. The same amount of reverse osmosis-treated water, a method used to make brackish water potable, costs $2.35.

Developing traditional water sources saves customers money, said Paul Mattausch, director of Collier County's public utility department.

The appearance of parched private wells in Cape Coral underscores the fact that much of Southwest Florida is nearing the limit on how much fresh water it can pull from beneath the ground, experts say. Overuse can lead to wetlands drying up and saltwater intrusion from deeper aquifers.

Meanwhile, rural Hendry and Glades counties areas are girding for an explosion of growth.

"There isn't a week that goes by that we don't have a consultant come through the door saying, 'We want to convert these 1,000 acres of citrus groves or pasture into residential,'" said John Capece, a consultant himself for Port LaBelle Utilities Systems.

In general, homeowners use far less water than farmers. Today, agriculture is the biggest consumer of water in Southwest Florida, gulping 405 million gallons of it a day.

And it will remain so in the future, but household faucets are expected to close that gap by 2025, with a 74 percent jump in demand compared with agriculture's mere 4 percent rise, according to the district's estimates.

Terri Kesner, Charlotte County's assistant utilities director, said the water supply plan has a glaring omission. It has no information about Babcock Ranch, a Lee-Charlotte straddling development that is forecast to hold 50,000 residents.

Muliken said the plan can be updated to include that information once the developer turns in the future community's water-use projections.