Clearly, Lake Jesup in Seminole County is a lake. But it’s also a watershed, made up of dozens of different sources of water all ultimately feeding into the lake: like rivers, ditches, canals and other lakes.
Lake Jesup is one of five major watersheds within a larger drainage basin, the Middle Basin of the St. Johns River. The St. Johns is Florida’s longest river, flowing 310 miles from its marshy starting point in Indian River County up to Jacksonville, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
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"River of lakes"
The St. Johns River flows south to north, which actually isn’t too unusual. Like anything else, rivers follow gravity, chasing the path of least resistance.
But since the St. Johns River is very flat, barely fluctuating in elevation from start to finish, it tends to move slowly — making it one of the world’s laziest rivers, according to the nonprofit St. Johns Riverkeeper. During times of heavy rainfall, excess water can accumulate and make the river rise, especially at bottleneck points where the St. Johns narrows.
The St. Johns also widens at different points along its long and winding journey, illustrating the origin of its Seminole-Creek name, Welaka: “river of lakes.” Lake Jesup is a good example, according to Alex Roberts, a field program supervisor with the St. Johns River Water Management District.
“Lake Jesup, it’s called a lake, but it’s part of the river, technically,” Roberts said. “Looks like a lake, acts like a lake, functions like a lake … It's just a very wide basin in the river.”
Wetlands: the key to water control in Central Florida
The size of Lake Jesup fluctuates significantly, from 8,000 to 16,000 acres, depending on wide-ranging water elevations.
Exactly two weeks after Hurricane Milton, water levels were still high enough to close off Seminole County’s public wilderness area on Lake Jesup’s north shore. The parking lot and entry road into the preserve were still inundated, seemingly merging into the lake itself.
Although the SJRWMD has some water control structures in the Upper Basin, farther south, the District’s ability to control water levels in the Middle Basin is more limited.
“[As] we move into the Central portion, we don't have any water control structures in that area,” said Tim Miller, the District’s bureau chief of water resource information. “In terms of water control in the Central Florida area, we're relying on that floodplain and wetlands.”
That’s why SJRWMD works to acquire and conserve wetlands for floodplain conservation. One acre of wetlands can hold up to 1.5 million gallons of water, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association and the Environmental Protection Agency.
At Lake Jesup, about 8,500 acres of floodplain around the lake are in public hands, between the District and Seminole County.
Two weeks after Milton, about 100 feet in from Lake Jesup’s typical dry shoreline, the lake’s north shore was completely inundated by several feet of water — meaning the wetlands there were functioning perfectly, Roberts said.
“Usually this is dry [and] almost looks like a grassland-type habitat,” Roberts said. “[But] this is how it naturally is supposed to act, during storm events. The water comes up, and all the plants that are in here are adapted to this flooding event.”
It’s a real-time visual for why wetlands are so important for flood protection.
“If you were to build a house out here, this is what would happen,” Roberts said. “And that's something we need to keep in mind, is that some of these areas are just supposed to do this. This is what we need them to do.”
Although many wetland areas are protected in Central Florida, those protections don’t always stand the test of time, as Central Florida Public Media has reported. In just one Volusia County example, an area designated to be left untouched as natural wetlands was later built into Sawyer’s Landing, a subdivision of some 90 homes, according to project plans.
Now, that subdivision is one of several newer developments allegedly sending more water down into adjacent, older neighborhoods that were built on lower ground, according to county residents like Wendy Anderson, an environmental science professor with Stetson University.
“The original developers here were not going to develop it because it was originally wetlands, but the people they sold it to didn't have any problem doing that,” Anderson said earlier this year.
Today, Sawyer’s Landing and another newer development nearby, Victoria Trails, are “creating a much, much higher elevation, almost like a dam that kind of pushes the water,” Anderson said.
“That water used to spread out over a much larger wetland area and now is being contained or constrained into those larger acreage properties,” Anderson said.
Anderson is also an appointed member of Volusia County’s Environment and Natural Resources Advisory Committee, or ENRAC, where she helps draft language for new ordinances to address flooding issues. Councilmembers nearly disbanded the committee twice this year, most recently in September, when the committee narrowly survived a tie vote.
One vote to save ENRAC came from incumbent Council Chair Jeff Brower, who’s made a name for himself disparaging unfettered development in the county and at times, pushing for temporary building moratoriums many residents are also begging for.
“That's a citizens' group, and they're really taking their time, looking at all the issues … flooding, trees, the comprehensive plan,” Brower said of ENRAC. “It's good to get that community, and it's a great cross-section [of people].”
If Brower should lose his seat to opponent Randy Dye, the future of ENRAC would look a bit more uncertain. Although Dye said he embraces citizen input, he also said he dislikes inefficient committees that are “just for the sake of meeting.”
“At the end of the day, I think if we can help our government be more efficient by eliminating bureaucracy, of course. But man, I — that one's tough,” Dye said. “I would say that would be an awful tough one to say goodbye to.”
The election is Nov. 5.
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