Is it too much growth or not enough water fueling Zephyrhills' growth moratorium?

Monday night, the city council of Zephyrhills will hold a final vote on barring new developments for the next year.

That's because the fastest-growing city in Pasco County is nearing the maximum amount of water it's allowed to withdraw from the aquifer.

Meanwhile, the largest man-made lagoon in the country just opened up near Zephyrhills. WUSF's Steve Newborn talked with Brian Armstrong, executive director of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, about how they determine who gets water.

WUSF: Zephyrhills is set to embark on quite a radical course - it's barring new developments for the next year, as the city is nearing its maximum water use permit that it's allowed. Brian, could you give our listeners an idea of how it's determined how much water each city like Zephyrhills is allowed to get.

ARMSTRONG: So the primary driver in the amount of water that a municipality gets is their demand projections. So permits typically lasts from between 10 and 20 years. And what you have to do is project out into the future, how much water you think you need. So for instance, with Zephyrhills, we just renewed their permit in 2020, which was a permit for 20 years based off their demand projection. They are now predicting that's going to last until 2025. They began this discussion about a building moratorium before they even submitted a modification for us to review. So we were surprised that they took that action or were discussing that action, before we actually had an opportunity to review what they were asking for.

It's no secret within the Tampa Bay area back in the early '90s, late '80s, we set what was called the Northern Tampa Bay Water Use Cautionary Area, which identified it as an area of resource concern. But we've grown that area over a million people and reduced the major pumping with the regional entity by over 70 million gallons per day. So there are other opportunities to meet your needs. And I think Zephyrhills needs to further investigate those.

But getting back to permitting, we call it a three-legged test. And the main tests are: is in a reasonable and beneficial use? So public consumption of water, yes. Does it meet public interest? Is it in the public's interest to issue water use permits for consumption? Yes. And then the other one, is it going to impact an existing legal user? So is there already someone else there. And in this instance, the impact would be to the Hillsborough River, which would impact the city of Tampa. That's the limiting factor in this area. So you take those three criteria, you do a very thorough investigation that involves looking at the demand projections to see if we agree. We also do extensive groundwater and surface water modeling to make sure it doesn't impact the environmental resources. And then we also make them look at the least-quality source available, their per capita usage. So it's a very involved process to get a water use permit and it has been for the last 40 years.

Is Zephyrhills part of Tampa Bay Water? Do they get their water through their regional network?

They do not. But [Pasco] County is, and like a lot of the counties that are part of Tampa Bay Water, they serve other municipalities. Tampa Bay Water doesn't serve them directly. But via through those counties, they do receive regional water, which we promote greatly, because the regional systems have one job - and that's to create water.

Zephyrhills recently became the biggest city in Pasco County. So is this a question of there's not enough water? Or is it Zephyrhills is just growing too fast?

So I'll tell you like I tell everybody, Florida is a peninsula, we are never going to run out of water. The thought that Florida's going to run out of water is kind of absurd. And the fact that there's always desalinization available, so we're not going to run out of water. We've just run out of cheap water, right, which is the upper floor. And so that's the issue they're facing, and their development is based off what they approve. The district doesn't get involved in approving development. We were responsible for identifying sources, which we have through our regional water supply plan. And I know that they have had some conversations about getting water from the county, who is a member of Tampa Bay Water. And if you've followed us, for any length of time, we have used all available sources, and we will continue whether it be groundwater, surface water, desalinization, we build large reservoirs through the regional systems. So they have to decide for themselves how much development they want allow, and what they want to pay for water.

At the same time that Zephyrhills is thinking about a moratorium on development, what just opened right down the street is the biggest man-made lagoon in the entire country. It's called Mirada Lagoon, it's 15 acres of water. Why is something like this being permitted when an existing city down the road is having to restrict development because it’s using too much water?

So they don't have the similar impacts in the basin to the existing legal user that Zephyrhills would because of their location, but this is kind of a mindset change for Florida. When a new development would go in, there would be a golf course attached to it, right? That was the way you sold homes. Well, as the golf industry is slowing down and going away, in most instances, the lagoons have kind of replaced those.

Lagoons actually use a lot less water than golf courses. And if you think about it, with most lagoons of this size or even reservoirs that are a mile long in Florida, once you fill them, it's almost zero net balance with the rainfall and the evaporation. So they are less intensive than, say a golf course. And they provide a feature for these communities.

So the lagoon, it takes water out of the aquifer, right? But you're saying it's kind of a one-time thing because the rainfall replenishes that?

So that's for the most part, that's how all the reservoirs work in Florida. It's a net balance. Sometimes, like if you're in severe drought, you may have to top it off, but the biggest contribution is the initial fill. And that lagoon in particular gets its water from Pasco County to fill it, who can get water from Tampa Bay Water.

Brian, what about the future on this topic?

It seems like a big story and what's making it a story is Zephyrhills made this choice. But we've been dealing with water supply issues for 40 years, we've reduced pumping from the aquifer while growing this area by a million people. So there are opportunities to address this.