By Gary Bartell

For the past 25 years, water quality and quantity issues at a local, regional, and statewide level have been my No. 1 priority.

Most recently, I had the honor of being one of nine county commissioners statewide to be appointed as a voting delegate to the Water Congress organized by the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida.

The Century Commission is a board the Legislature set up to analyze the state's long-term issues and potential problems. The Water Congress delegation was charged with the task to build consensus on sustainable water supply policies for the state and to forward a set of recommendations to the Century Commission forr submittal to the Governor and Legislature for the upcoming legislative session.

The appointed delegation was made up of a widely diverse group of water supply "end users": i.e., agriculture, environmental, industrial, and the public. As a delegate to the Water Congress I represented the Florida Association of Counties, the Withlacoochee Regional Water Supply Authority, and Citrus County.

Prior to the actual meetings delegates were asked to submit their top priority issues so the initial agenda could be formulated.

The priority issues I submitted were:

• Require cost-effective demand management strategies, water conservation, and use of reclaimed water measures before launching into expensive alternative water supply projects.
• Reward efforts to maximize economies of scale by funding the creation and start-up of regional water supply authorities
• Promote regional cooperation by underwriting the cost for constructing alternative water supply projects developed by regional water supply authorities.
• Encourage alternative water supply projects that are beneficial to the environment.
• Maximize the duration of water use permits for alternative water supply projects to reduce procedural hurdles and costs associated with the issuance of bonds.
• Require the Department of Environmental Protection to aggressively use its existing authority to resolve conflicts among the water management districts that can delay the construction of alternative water supply projects.

At the opening of the session, individual representatives of end users presented their perspective on the future needs of water supply.

At the conclusion of the opening session the delegates were separated into five breakout committees with each group made up of delegates from all areas of end users of water supply. The individual groups were then tasked to debate the same agenda and to build consensus or no consensus on the same set of issues.

During the two days of committee debate, the breakout group I was assigned to kept to the agenda at hand until, at the 11th hour, an attempt was made within my group to add new issues for consideration including:

1. Creating a statewide water supply board
2. Creating a statewide water Czar
3. Modification of the Local Sources First legislation
4. And, transfer of water

These are all issues I adamantly oppose.

The format of the session called for the individual breakout committees to take a vote at the conclusion of the debate on the issues that were presented; however there was an attempt to remove these four new issues
from the vote. This would have resulted in these four new issues being written into the minutes but without any means to determine whether or not delegates supported them.

I strongly suggested for our group to vote these issues up or down so the Century Commission and Governor, and ultimately the legislature, would know the opinion of the Water Congress delegates on all the issues that were brought forward and not leave any room for uncertainty about our opinions on these four critical issues.
Consequently, the vote within our group was resoundingly in opposition to these four additional issues.

At the conclusion of the breakout sessions, the general session was reconvened to discuss and compare each group's findings. The four new issues that were brought forward in my group were not regurgitated again
at the general session, but it is a part of the record that these suggestions were resoundingly opposed by at least one breakout group.

The Final Recommendations of the Century Commission statewide Water Congress can be reviewed on the web at: http://www.centurycommission.org/specialevents.asp. Any person or group that would like additional information please call: Gary Bartell, Citrus County Commissioner, at 341-6560.