Alachua County Commission considers new restrictions on irrigation systems

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the first of three Special Meetings on April 4, the Alachua County Commission considered proposed changes to codes related to landscape irrigation and water conservation.

Stacie Greco, the Water Resources Program Manager with the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department, presented the proposed changes after leading off with a chart by year of average daily water use versus the percentage of new homes with irrigation systems, showing that newer homes are using far more water than older homes.

Greco said that irrigation systems are “now negating and trumping all the water savings in the building codes for indoor water conservation, like our faucets and our toilets.”

The County’s irrigation design code has been in effect since 2016 and was expanded into the municipalities in 2019, and a recent analysis showed that the new code did not produce significant water savings; Greco said that was not a surprise because “we knew it was a baby step to start to regulate the irrigation industry and individual lots.” She said that pools do not significantly drive water use, but water use drops when the irrigated area is reduced. She said, “We’ve found over the years that limiting irrigation is key. If irrigation is installed, it will be used.”

Proposed changes

The proposed changes for residential properties, which will apply only to new irrigation systems and additions to existing systems, include a requirement to get the County’s approval for new systems unless they meet the Florida Water Star Gold Certification. Greco said the County is encouraging temporary irrigation systems (one year, to establish new landscaping) instead of permanent systems, so there are no application fees for temporary systems.

Site plan sketches are currently required for all systems, but Greco proposed making a site plan optional if the system covers less than 1,500 square feet and is limited to three zones. Irrigation will be limited to 50% of the permeable area in single-family lots, with a maximum of 0.25 acres of irrigation, down from the current limit of half an acre.

For new installations, the controller must be outside and accessible to County staff, and the builder/developer is responsible for ensuring compliance after the inspection and before the sale.

Commissioner Ken Cornell said, “I’ve said we’ve got to save water for food. I’ve been saying it since I was elected in 2014. We’ve done a lot of things, but I think just lowering the size is really the only way to stop it. If it’s there, it’s going to be used.”

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler agreed: “You’ve heard me say all along, I’d like to see it all gone, no in-ground, no irrigation.”

Homeowners are already responsible for inspecting their systems annually, and staff considered requiring documentation of those inspections, but they said they received feedback that that would be seen as overreach. Greco said the County could decide to start asking for documentation at any time, but they are not proposing it at this time.

New requirements for commercial properties include the irrigation limit of 50% of permeable areas, required high-efficiency nozzles for turf, separate zones for trees, and registration with the County, along with providing documentation of an annual inspection of the irrigation system.

Greco said that properties that use a lot of water sometimes put in irrigation wells, and for the County, that means “we lose that data” in water supply planning. She said the State does a water use report every five years, “and they see that public supply water use is decreasing. One of the hypotheses in that is we might just be shifting our water to those wells that aren’t being accounted for.” She said local governments are preempted from prohibiting irrigation wells, but it’s unclear whether the County or a water utility could require homeowner associations to prohibit them. Greco recommended that the board send a Chair letter, asking for a written response from the water management district and Department of Environmental Protection on whether there is a way to prohibit irrigation wells: “We want something in writing so we can move forward.”

Cornell said Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson has emphasized the importance of protecting farms and food security, “and so there should be some alignment with that effort, to also shift how we are using water in the state. We’ve got to clean ourselves, and we have to drink it, but we don’t have to put it on St. Augustine grass. We really just don’t. We need it to grow food.”

Commissioner Mary Alford made a motion to authorize staff to advertise a public hearing on proposed revisions to the code and to approve the Chair letter regarding irrigation wells, and Wheeler seconded the motion.

During public comment, Ed Bravo, a partner at Big Trees Plantation and past president of Florida Nursery Growers & Landscape Association, said the 50% limit on irrigated land is the strictest in the state. He said he thought the current programs are working to encourage people to use less water for irrigation: “I think they are beginning to take hold, and designers are starting to get used to the fact we have to do better with less. We all understand that… When I see the tendency to berate sod in particular and other parts of the landscapes as being the culprit, the designs to the irrigation codes are not the issue… It’s behavior… It’s as easy as turning them off… You just don’t use them when you don’t need them. It’s not complicated.”

Luis Diaz, developer of Town of Tioga, said the County should be “careful with the law of unintended consequences” and that they should give the current codes a chance. He said he’s an owner of a nursery, and they have sold “lots of trees to the County that replaced trees that died because they were not being irrigated.” He said that if they want a tree canopy, they should encourage bubblers, but under the proposed codes that discourage irrigation, national developers are likely to come in and plant trees that will be dying by the time they move on.

The motion passed unanimously.