SRWMD Ag Cost-Share Partners Save 315 million gallons of water annually
The Suwannee River Water Management District (District) Governing Board approved 32 agricultural cost-share projects saving an estimated 315 million gallons annually or 863,000 gallons per day.
The District is investing $1.5 million dollars to partner with agricultural producers to implement water conservation projects such as irrigation retrofits and new water saving technologies. Participants are required to implement best management practices and voluntarily participate in the District’s water use monitoring program.
Agricultural produces from across Alachua, Columbia, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lafayette, Levy, Madison and Suwannee counties were approved for their water saving projects. The total District cost is $512,575 with the growers contributing a total of $247,825 or 33% of the equipment costs.
Typical projects include installing subsurface drip irrigation systems, center pivot swing arms that eliminate end guns, soil moisture probes, weather stations and remote monitor controllers.
Governing Board Chair Don Quincey stated “the program is cost effective and provides incentives to growers that benefit our water resources. The interest in the District’s Ag cost-share program demonstrates the importance of partnering with the agricultural community to make a positive difference in conserving our water supplies,” said Don Quincey.
The next application funding opportunity for the second quarter ends January 4, 2013. For more information, please contact SRWMD Ag-Team member Kevin Wright, P.E., at 386.362.1001.
@Don Quincey, SRWMD
Come on guys. You seem to know all about the price of things, but nothing about their value. Don’t worry, the Rubes will not know what you are talking about! Give us some data to work with. You got all those PHD’s. Humor us Cretins.
let me see if I got this right! (1) Get a permit from the district to pump water for ag or industrial purposes by any application method. (2) Develop and implement project. (3) Apply to district for funding to make the project efficient, which they now require?.
In other words the taxpayers of the district supplement the ag users by the amount of $512k, of mine and your tax dollars to improve processes that should never have been approved in the first place. Folks we have known for decades that center pivot irrigation is the most wasteful method of irrigation known to man.
Question, are any of these to be implemented practices new or recently discovered? No, we have known about them for generations. The district is being run by folks who are working for big ag and big business. An example of local tax dollars being diverted to special interest.
We do not have the data to do the estimates, but the amount of tax dollars going to projects of this nature probably exceeds the amount going to food stamps and welfare payments in our county.
About time we started demanding the data to do an analysis. I will begin with a basic question to the SRWMD. Based on the analysis you have conducted to justify these projects, what is the value of a gallon of water pumped from the aquifer flowing under Madison County?
Governing Board Chair Don Quincey, that last question was directed at you!