Linking Growth with Water Availability
by Steven M. Seibert
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About two years ago, one of the Florida Department of Community Affairs’ (DCA) most experienced planners, Mike McDaniel, made a startling discovery. Mike had been tasked with developing the pilot project for better communication among local governments and Florida’s five water management districts. Mike was working to implement changes enacted by the 2002 Legislature; the new law required more formal linkage between these two levels of government.
What Mike discovered was a fundamental communication problem. Local government planners, i.e., those responsible for assuring compliance with Florida’s extensive growth management laws, typically communicated with land-use planners at the regional planning council and the DCA. On a separate track, the water experts at the local level, who are generally found within the utilities departments, spoke with their counterparts in the water management districts, and ultimately with Florida Department of Environmental Protection staff.
The issues of water supply and water resources were the province of one linear group who seldom communicated with the other. Intergovernmental coordination at the local, regional and state levels was clearly lacking.
Let’s approach this problem from a different perspective. During the dry season, read any “Letter to the Editor” section of a Florida newspaper; there will be a citizen questioning why local governments continue to approve building permits or amend land-use plans when there is a water shortage, or a drought, or water restrictions are in place.
No matter how sophisticated we are in making sure the legal or operational structure is right to assure the linkage occurs, we still need to translate that in a way citizens understand.
So, what does the law require today?
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Let’s start with the “Capital Improvements Element” of the Local Government Comprehensive Plan. It requires that local governments “assure the availability of public facilities,” which clearly includes water supply. This is the current law, and is found at Section 163.3177, Florida Statutes. The DCA has relied upon this section to find at least two local governments’ land-use amendments “not in compliance” because of what it considers to be a blatant inadequacy of water supply to support the amendment. This legal requirement to “link up” has been in the law for years, but is now being enforced with greater vigor.
In 2002, the Legislature went a step further and created another statutory linkage between the state’s five water management districts’ regional water supply plans (RWSP) and comprehensive plans of local governments. Each local government must establish a 10-Year Water Supply Facilities Plan, which must project the community’s water needs for at least a 10-year period, and identify and prioritize the water-supply facilities and sources of water that will be required to meet those needs . . . as well as how to pay for them. These plans are due December 1, 2006, or whenever the local government updates its “Evaluation and Appraisal Report.”
It is important to note that this 10-year plan may well contemplate revisions to a local government’s Potable Water sub-element, as well as its Conservation and Intergovernmental Coordination elements.
The 2002 law also requires local governments to consider the RWSPs whenever they amend the local comprehensive plan.
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In 2004, the Legislature required each local government in its comprehensive plan to identify the water-supply resources necessary to meet the existing and projected water-use demand for the established planning period. It is the DCA’s intention to require a certain level of linkage today, on a sliding scale, as we move toward the December 1, 2006, date.
The linkage discussion is now “front and center,” and corrects a longtime flaw in the law. In the past, it was only required that a local government show it had the necessary “capacity” to provided water – that its treatment plant and the conveyance pipes were large enough to serve the population, and that there was no requirement that an adequate resource was available.
If comprehensive planning is to mean anything, it must be realistic. It must address the truly essential needs of the community. Water is one of those needs and, in my opinion, requiring that there be a meaningful linkage between water-supply planning and land-use planning only makes sense.
And as for explaining this to the citizenry, local government officials have tools today not available 10 years ago – perhaps not even five years ago. Information can be disseminated over the Internet, cable television and public-access programming. Local officials can meet publicly with the water management district personnel, and can link to the districts’ informative Web sites.
Local officials can meet with their counterparts regionally; this is a regional issue, and a thoughtful conversation with other governments is totally appropriate. Regional planning councils may be valuable as a “convenor” in this effort.
Will Rogers said, “Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.” Perhaps the transparent linkages between growth and water supply, and honest conversation among different levels of government officials, will reduce the tendency for fighting.
Steven M. Seibert of The Seibert Law Firm in Tallahassee is a former secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs.
Reprinted from Quality Cities January/February 2005
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