April 4. 2005
BY KAREN VOYLES
SUN STAFF WRITER
The Gainesville Sun
Dixie County has an enviable problem.
It is growing by attracting people who want a weekend or part-time home and do not need or want some of the county's more expensive services.
The problem is how to provide one of the basics all people need - drinking water.
The part-timers don't send their children to county schools or join the 70 percent of permanent residents who use the county Health Department as a primary health care provider. Instead, they arrive late on Thursdays or Fridays, spend the weekend at their non-homesteaded houses along the coast, eat at local restaurants and buy gas from local suppliers, then leave on Sunday night.
With the spike in the weekend population, Dixie county's three small coastal communities, Suwannee, Horseshoe Beach and Jena, have been taking long, hard looks at how to provide for a sometimes tripled demand for water on the weekends.
The communities also are working to come up with plans to continue providing water reliably as dozens of new housing units open each year.
PART-TIME RESIDENTS
The county's permanent population growth projection is notable, not in terms of raw numbers, but as a percentage. According to the University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research, the rural county is expected to grow about 17 percent, gaining just under 2,500 permanent residents, during this decade - rising to a population of about 17,100.
Not included in the growth estimate are the part-time residents the county also is expected to attract.
Dixie County building inspector John Jenkins said the construction boom has already begun along the coastline.
Jenkins said his office is in the process of permitting 88 condominium units in Suwannee. Horseshoe Beach has 24 units nearly completed and another 64 units are planned. Meanwhile, plans are being developed to build 500 units in Jena.
"We also have one man in the process of buying up 3,000 acres up near Rocky Creek and that will likely be individual homes," Jenkins said.
The Rocky Creek area is along the central portion of the county's coastline.
County coordinator Arthur Bellot said the new construction is a mixed blessing. While it will increase the tax base - especially the non-homesteaded weekend homes - the growth requires additional services, including greater water supplies.
"The areas being developed are within existing water systems," Bellot said. "It's not up to the County Commission on how to handle this issue, but everyone can see the need is there for additional water."
Chris Doolin, a lobbyist for the Small Counties Coalition, said the drinking water decisions being made in Dixie County now are part of a larger growth management issue facing most of the state's small counties.
"They need to provide opportunities for long-term capacity and services, but it is a chicken-and-egg question - how to get the infrastructure before the growth and the dollars that come with it arrive," Doolin said. "There is a delicate balance there that these rural counties are trying to reach."
CENTRALIZED SYSTEM
One idea that has been floated for several years is to pipe water from a centralized system in Cross City.
City Manager Mike Cassidy said the idea was raised again recently because of the potential economies of scale.
"One water plant supplying multiple users may be less expensive in the long run," Cassidy said. "This has not been completely priced out yet, but here in Cross City, we were open and willing to come to the table. We are not in a position to say we need to pipe water to Suwannee or anywhere else. We could not say what was best for those communities."
Cross City's existing water plant can produce 1.8 million gallons a day, but is only using about a third of that capacity to serve the city's approximately 1,000 water meters, Cassidy said.
Suwannee Water District Chairman Jim Brown said he believes the issue of piping water from Cross City to his community "was pretty well put to rest" at a district meeting earlier this year.
Brown said the water district is "down to the wire" on moving ahead with plans to significantly upgrade its water system. District engineer Frank Darabi of Gainesville was directed to get the plans and drawings completed so the estimated $2.5 million construction work can be put out for bids.
"We are not obligated to do this work and we could get grants changed around to do other things, but right now we are working with a financing package that is 65 percent grant and 45 percent loan and it would add about $10 a month to the bills, which are about $20 a month now," Brown said. "If we have to apply for a new grant to do something like pipe water from Cross City, it would only be 25 percent grant and then 75 percent which would be paid back by the water users."
Among the reasons the district decided not to pursue piping water from Cross City was security concerns.
"It would be 37 to 44 miles of pipeline and since the 9-11 attacks, so many things have to be done to secure water that it would almost take 24-hour surveillance at the pumping station, which would be needed because of how long the pipeline would be," Brown said. "That would be another added cost."
The district already provides water to about 860 meters and has projected it will add up to 400 more in the next decade.
The Suwannee system can produce about 170,000 gallons per day and runs at near capacity on weekends. The plan Darabi was directed to work on by water district board members calls for the water plant to be moved from its current location to a new location outside the flood plain. The system also will be enlarged to be able to produce up to 300,000 gallons a day.
Horseshoe Beach Town Council member Teddy Kight said his community's water system was originally built in 1962 and has been updated a couple of times since then. Kight said the increased demand the Horseshoe Beach water system experiences during weekends and holidays is likely to grow as more vacation and part-time homes are built in the area.
"We can triple the amount of water we use on the weekends - maybe up to 200,000 gallons on big weekends like Memorial Day," Kight said. The town is planning to put its recently constructed 250,000 gallon water storage tank into service this month, nearly tripling the storage capacity of its existing tank.
"Two years ago, we threw around the idea of bringing water here from Cross City by piping it, but we did not think it was feasible," Kight said. "It seemed like it was going to cost about the same thing to lay the pipe as to build the plant. And, if all the communities started to pull from Cross City, we didn't know if their system could handle it, and we don't want to get caught out on a limb."
The question of who would maintain the 18 miles of pipeline from Cross City to Horseshoe Beach was also a consideration.
Bellot said Jena residents have been able to draw water from the Steinhatchee system across the river in Taylor County.
"But now we have a lot of development within the Jena area and we have concerns about how much longer that arrangement will be feasible," Bellot said. "Our concern is that the supply will not be able to keep up with our demand, so we have asked our county engineer (Darabi) to look into that and we will be exploring the options he comes up with."
Karen Voyles can be reached at (352) 486-5058 or voylesk@ gvillesun.com.
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