Florida Keys wellfields get more monitoring
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South Florida water managers and Florida Power & Light have reached an agreement that will increase monitoring of saltwater intrusion in the area of the mainland Turkey Point nuclear power plant.
The agreement is good news for Keys residents, who draw 17 million gallons of fresh water from wellfields near Florida City that could be threatened by any additional saltwater intrusion.
FPL will spend millions to increase the monitoring program first negotiated with water managers in 1983, including construction of 10 additional monitoring wells.
Jim Reynolds, executive director of the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, said he was pleased to learn about the action being taken, especially since monitoring will help track hyper-saline water from Turkey Point's cooling canals.
"Those cooling canals were built back in the 1970s," Reynolds said. "With 30 years of loading with warm, salty water, that denser, hyper-saline water settles, hits the hard pan, and then mushrooms out in all directions."
There have been concerns lately that some of that dense, salty water has moved westward, closer to the area where both Monroe and Miami-Dade have wellfields tapping the Biscayne aquifer.
The Keys Aqueduct Authority maintains its own series of monitoring wells. Reynolds said there has been some saltwater movement closer to Keys wellfields, especially during droughts, as saltwater layers move inland from the coast.
Closely related to this week's announcement on test wells, the South Florida Water Management District announced the start of construction on a $44 million C-111 Canal project designed to restore fresh-water flows to parts of the Everglades and Taylor Slough.
The deep canal now carries away an estimated three-fourths of the fresh water that once filtered through Taylor Slough.
In recent years, scientists have blamed the lack of natural water flows for increased salinity in Florida Bay, triggering seagrass die-offs, algae blooms and fish kills.
Important to Upper Keys backcountry fishing, Florida Bay is nursery for juvenile marine life including shrimp, lobster and migratory fish.
David Anderson, executive director of Audubon of Florida, said redoing the C-111 is key to restoring freshwater flows to Taylor Slough.
He pointed to the decline of wading birds like the roseate spoonbill as an example of the ecological damage that has been done for too long with the deep, C-111 canal diverting freshwater from Florida Bay.
The restoration project, expected to begin by the end of the year, will add spreader canals, retention ponds and two new pumping stations.
Islamorada flats guide Mike Collins, the longest-serving member of the South Florida Water Management District board, told the Miami Herald this is "the down payment on the rest" of the Everglades restoration, adding the C-111 spreader canals means "significantly increasing freshwater flows through Taylor Slough toward Florida Bay.
"The result will be tangible ecological benefits that will help restore and protect an integral piece of our ecosystem and economy."
"That C-111 dumps a lot of fresh water in the bay," Reynolds said. "Holding it back for the Everglades -- that should, if anything, help our wellfields."
This report was supplemented with material from the Miami Herald.
