A proposed $206 million overhaul of Miami Beach’s antiquated drainage system is just the first of many big-ticket bills South Florida faces.

A Honda makes a big splash in South Beach at the MacArthur Causeway south exit onto Alton Road. Heavy rain caused flooding in South Beach and elsewhere in South Florida on April 12, 2010. Photo by Marsha Halper / Miami Herald Staff
MARSHA HALPER / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

By CURTIS MORGAN The Miami Herald

Posted Saturday 9.01.12

Climate change may be the subject of debate in some places but in South Florida it’s become a costly reality.

In Miami Beach, where prolonged flooding in low-lying neighborhoods has become the norm after heavy storms, city leaders are weighing a $206 million overhaul of an antiquated drainage system increasingly compromised by rising sea level.

The plan calls for more pumps, wells to store storm runoff, higher sea walls and “back-flow’’ preventers for drain pipes flowing into Biscayne Bay. Those devices are intended to stop the system from producing the reverse effect it often does now. During seasonal high tides, the salty bay regularly puddles up from sewer grates in dozens of spots, such as near the local westside bar Purdy Lounge. Extreme high tides — like one in October 2010 — can push in enough sea water to make streets impassable, including blocks of the prime artery of Alton Road.

“It’s the first time, as far as I know, that any community in South Florida and actually in the entire state of Florida is taking into account sea level rise as they plan their storm water infrastructure,” said Fred Beckmann, the city’s public works director, during a public hearing on the plan earlier this month.

It won’t be the last time.

South Florida counties and cities, as well as the South Florida Water Management District which oversees flood control for the region, all are beginning to draw up projects for keeping the coastline dry as sea level creeps up. The potential costs could be staggering.

The district alone has identified three flood control gates along coastal Northeast Miami-Dade — critical to draining storm water from Pembroke Pines and Miramar in southwestern Broward — in fast need of retrofitting with massive pumps. Rising seas threaten to reduce the capacity of a system that now depends on gravity, the storm water flowing downhill into the Atlantic. Cost estimates run $50 million or more for each pump alone and buying land for them could double or triple the bill. Nine other gates could need similar work down the road.

Fort Lauderdale, where high tides also push salt water up storm drains in the ritzy Las Olas Isles section, is also planning to install back-flow preventers, said Jennifer Jurado, director of Broward’s environmental protection and growth management department. Hallandale Beach already had to install pumps on storm-water injection wells, at about $10 million each, to combat increasing back-pressure, she said.

“The overall issues are so much greater, I think we’re easily looking at hundreds of millions of dollars,’’ she said. That’s just for the next 20 to 30 years, to handle a moderate three to seven inch rise.

A study last year by the Florida Atlantic University Center for Environmental Studies found that the projected rise over the next 70 to 100 years would require one city alone, Pompano Beach, to spend from $500 million to $1 billion to overhaul drainage and water supply systems, as well as coastal roads and facilities.

“If 50 years from now we’re looking at a foot and a half or two feet and rising, our region is going to be confronted with some very serious problems,’’ said Barry Heimlich, an FAU researcher who co-authored the study. “It’s going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.’’

Lawmakers in some states have blithely dismissed the threats of global warming, most notably those in North Carolina, where state lawmakers earlier this year passed a law ordering that only historic trends, not projections, be considered in coastal planning.

In South Florida, political leaders and planners aren’t in denial. In 2009, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties formed a climate change “compact’’ to work together to confront a problem South Florida will see sooner than just about anywhere.

A string of studies by insurers, environmental groups and government and university researchers have singled out Miami-Dade County at the top of the list of at-risk cities, with tens of billions of dollars of property that could be damaged by heightened storm surge or flooding.

Earlier this year, a report from Climate Central, an independent research and journalism organization, suggested Miami-Dade and Broward counties alone have more people vulnerable to flooding than any state except Florida and Louisiana. Other studies suggest some of the lowest-lying Florida Keys may be the first to be inundated.

The compact’s draft projection of sea level in Southeast Florida — based on local trends and global forecasts — calls for a rise of three to seven inches by 2030 and nine to 24 inches by 2060. From there, many scientists predict the trend could accelerate.

Miami Beach and other low-lying barrier islands are particularly vulnerable to drainage problems but those are spreading to the mainland, said FAU’s Heimlich. The FAU study found a sea level rise of about six inches could cut flood-control capacity by more than half — with higher tides bottling up canals and structures that now drain with gravity as runoff flows downhill to the coast.

“This is a problem that is not far away,’’ said Heimlich. “It is already being experienced and will get worse in the next few years.’’

Broward and Miami-Dade counties both are doing more detailed analysis of how existing drainage systems might have to be retro-fitted or expanded.

Doug Yoder, deputy director of the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department, said sea level rise will also push more salty and brackish water into surface drainage and sewer systems, adding to the costs and volume of treating runoff. Worsening salt water intrusion, which can shrink and taint the underground Biscayne Aquifer, the county’s main source of drinking water, will also require more expensive treatment systems in the future.

Potentially, Yoder said, the county could have to move sewage treatment plants like the aging facility on Virginia Key inland and build them at higher elevations. Monroe County is already planning to do that with a new fire station in Key West, adding several feet to the ground-floor elevation.

While there are a wide range of potential costs, including raising roads, Yoder said solving drainage was critical. Without it, he said, “you wonder how long people will continue to live in a place that floods routinely.’’

James Murley, executive director of the South Florida Regional Planning Council, said Miami Beach is out front in accounting for sea level rise. On-going budget challenges could make it tough sell for some communities worried about spending too much to address impacts that might not come as soon as anticipated. Forecasts differ on the pace and impact.

The plan crafted by Miami Beach’s engineering consultant, CDM Smith, is intended to address sea level rise for just 20 years.

Environmentalists and other critics said that relatively short window, at least in terms of climate change impacts, seemed intended to minimize costs. But Mike Schmidt, a vice president with CDM Smith, said projects could be altered to account for faster or higher rises. More or larger pumps, for instance, could be added to force storm water out against the higher pressures of rising sea levels.

Much of Miami Beach’s drainage system dates back to the 1940s and there is limited data about how many outfalls were designed to remain above high tide or for how long. But an analysis performed by Coastal Systems International, another contractor assisting in the project, showed the ends of the drain pipes are spending more time submerged, with the mean high water elevation creeping up by about 1.68 inches over the last 14 years. The plan, which still must be approved by the Miami Beach Commission, is designed to handle another six inches by 2030

Beckmann, the public works director, said the city only needed to two pumps for stormwater when he started 11 years.

“Right now, we have 17 and we’ll probably call for another 14,’’ he said.

Schmidt said rainfall still accounts for 95 percent of the flooding in Miami Beach but in century or two, the city could be more like New Orleans, sitting below sea level with its safety dependent on sea walls and pumps. “Eventually, if the projections are true, you’re facing a position where the sea level rise would go above the land surface and then you’re raising critical infrastructure,’’ he said. “Your sea walls are going higher, you’re putting in locks and dams and you’re pumping almost everything.’’

For now, Miami Beach Mayor Matti Bower said her biggest concern was figuring out how to pay for the projects, saying she didn’t think it was fair for the city alone to be tackling the expense.

Normally, the city would issue a bond and raise stormwater rates to cover costs but because the drainage project is also designed to reduce environmental impacts to the bay, the city will explore options including seeking federal grants or money from other state or county agencies.

“I’m not even worried about 25 years from now because I’ll be 100 then,’’ Bower said, “but I do worry for the children and grandchildren.’’

Miami Herald staff writer David Smiley contributed to this report.

Posted on Mon, May. 14, 2012

Miami-Dade’s leaky pipes: More than 47 million gallons of waste spilled in past two years

By CHARLES RABIN AND CURTIS MORGAN
crabin@MiamiHerald.com

MARICE COHN BAND / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

The central district Wastewater Treatment Plant, on Key Biscayne, Monday.

Miami-Dade County’s antiquated sewer system has ruptured at least 65 times over the past two years, spewing more than 47 million gallons of untreated human waste into waterways and streets from rural South Miami-Dade to the ritzy condos of Brickell Avenue to the Broward County border.

The breaks and blowouts — topping out at nine in a single stinky month last October — were documented in nine warning letters that state environmental regulators sent to the county’s Water and Sewer Department between June 2010 and April.

The letters, warning that the county could be on the hook for “damages and restoration’’ and civil penalties of up to $10,000 a day, were the catalyst for ongoing negotiations with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Justice and Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The talks are expected to end with a legal settlement committing the county to a multibillion-dollar plumbing repair plan — and probable customer rate hikes.

The letters lay out more dirty details of “unauthorized discharges’’ not included in a 78-page draft consent decree released last week that declares the county in violation of federal water quality laws, in large part because some of the foul spills drained into canals and Biscayne Bay.

Many of the leaks from the county’s 7,500 miles of lines were relatively minor, posing minimal traffic disruptions and public health concerns. But at least eight topped 100,000 gallons. Six more released more than 1 million gallons of raw sewage from rusted valves or cracked concrete-and-steel pipes that county engineers acknowledge had long out-lived their intended life span.

The worst problem by far, according to the DEP letters, is the county’s aging Central District Wastewater Plant on Virginia Key, which is designed to discharge partially treated sewage out a pipe more than a mile off shore. State records show that between October and December 2011 four separate failures sent a total of more than 19 million gallons spilling from the plant.

The largest at Virginia Key, on Oct. 9, spilled 17 million gallons of raw sewage.

Doug Yoder, the Water and Sewer Department’s deputy director, blamed it on a broken pin holding a filter screen used to divert “chunks of stuff” from the liquid flow. Once the pin failed, the thick solids built up, triggering a massive back-up that forced workers to shut down that plant and divert incoming sewage to another site, causing even more of an overflow.

The public never heard about that failure, Yoder said, because “nothing actually left the plant site. The overflow went into the storm drains, then back to the plant.”

But three weeks later, on Oct. 31, another million gallons of partially-treated sewage spilled out a relief valve into surrounding bay waters, forcing Miami-Dade to issue no-swimming advisories. That was triggered by a power outage that shut down a pump as operators shifted from a generator to the power grid.

Yoder conceded operators have a difficult task at Virginia Key, the oldest and most decaying of the county’s three plants. It handles some 25 million gallons of raw sewage a day from Surfside, Bal Harbour and Miami Beach. The county has mulled replacing it, which would cost $500 million — money Yoder said the department doesn’t have. He also acknowledged the department has resisted pouring a lot of repair money into a plant it hopes to replace.

“We want to avoid spending a lot to keep it running if we’re going to take it out of service,” he said.

The federal enforcement action isn’t the county’s first. In 1996, Miami-Dade paid a $2 million fine — at the time the largest ever for a U.S. Clean Water Act violation — and agreed to expand the capacity of a system that was constantly pouring raw sewage into the Miami River and Biscayne Bay.

Since then, the department estimates it has spent some $2 billion on upgrades but hasn’t come close to covering needed fixes for a system in which many pipelines are approach a half-century in age or even older.

Blanca Mesa, an activist with the Sierra Club who has raised concerns about the county’s plans to replace only one segment of an aging and fragile sewer pipe under Government Cut, said the failures point to a long history of ignoring problems and putting off proper maintenance. She said today’s problems echo failures detailed in a 1991 grand jury report documenting sewage spills into the Miami River.

“Somebody has to understand we have to set the right priorities in this county, and we haven’t been doing that for a very long time,’’ she said.

Miami-Dade Commission Chairman Joe Martinez agrees the county has to find a way to pay for the repair work. One option might be to issue bonds, Martinez said, but he would insist that property tax bills don’t rise for residents as a result. Martinez said it’s possible that any increase in bond debt would be offset by a decrease in the property tax rate, if home values rise this year, as he expects.

“We’re going to have to wait until the tax rolls come out,” he said. “We definitely need to fix the infrastructure, but we must gain people’s confidence that [the money] will be used for that.”

Mayor Carlos Gimenez said he is waiting to learn how much money the county would need to spend before committing to a financing plan. First he would look to reduce water department costs, he said, then possibly enter some type of private-public partnership.

“The last thing we want to do is put any kind of burden on the public,” he said.

Past political decisions have compounded the sewer department’s problems, by cutting into reserve funds that could have helped finance the system upgrades.

Historically, county leaders tapped water department funds for other departments struggling to make ends meet. Though that practice stopped in 2007, last year the Water and Sewer Department still “loaned’’ $25 million to the county’s general fund to help balance the books. Payback is scheduled to begin in 2014, at $5 million a year.

Right now, the department has three reserve accounts. One is required to maintain a 60-day reserve, or $55.7 million. Another is expected to have about $30 million by the end of this budget year in September. A third is empty.

Another type of reserve account intended for unexpected repairs maintains between $50 million and $60 million each year — a fraction of the repair bill that county engineers estimate could run into the billions.

Adding to the problem, county commissioners and mayors have repeatedly resisted raising what rank as some of the lowest water and sewer fees in the state — though they did boost it 4.7 percent last year. The average homeowner pays about $135 quarterly, according to the county.

Miami-Dade certainly isn’t alone in struggling to mend its leaky and aging sewage system. Most major cities in the United States have similar problems. The EPA estimates there are 240,000 water and sewer main breaks across the country each year, and puts the price tag at hundreds of billions of dollars.

In Broward County, for instance, state regulators say sewer failures have sometimes drawn scrutiny but not a similar sweeping state-federal enforcement case. Waste there is handled by 28 different utilities with much smaller and generally newer systems. Miami-Dade’s system is the largest, and among the oldest, in the state with huge pipelines carrying large volumes over long distances.

Alan Garcia, director of Broward’s wastewater and water services, said less than 3 percent of the county’s 7 million feet of pipes is older than 50 years. About 40 percent of the county’s breaks are construction related, he said.

“We do an aggressive job of monitoring our pipes,’’ he said.

Jennifer Diaz, a Florida DEP spokeswoman, said Miami-Dade hasn’t tried to cover up its problems, acknowledging in an April 2011 “self assessment’’ sent to the EPA that numerous breaks were putting the county in violation of the U.S. Clean Water Act.

The DEP opened its own enforcement case against Miami-Dade in 2009. But the following year, after consulting with the EPA and Miami-Dade, all the parties agreed to draw up a joint state-federal consent decree that acknowledges “improper’’ management and maintenance practices.

In a written statement, Diaz said the spills “are mitigated by Miami-Dade to the greatest extent possible.’’

Still, the potential failure of some key pipelines could have disastrous consequences. Earlier this year a consultant warned that the sewer main running under Government Cut to Virginia Key was so brittle it could rupture at any time. It was constructed from pipe made by a now-defunct company named Interpace, whose notoriously defective products have been linked to a number of major failures.

Though county engineers maintain the pipeline remains safe for daily use, department director John Renfrow acknowledged an unexpected failure would be “catastrophic,” spewing tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage into Biscayne Bay.

His warning echoes one issued exactly two decades ago about potential sewer line breaks by a Miami-Dade grand jury appalled by environmental and other conditions in the Miami River.

“The Miami River and Biscayne Bay would experience the worst environmental catastrophes in modern history,’’ the 1991 report warned. “The detrimental impact of a spill of this type and the cleanup and mitigation costs are incalculable. If we are seriously concerned about the bay, we must address this known environmental hazard now.’’

Miami Herald staff writer Carli Teproff contributed to this report.

Posted on Sun, May. 13, 2012

By CURTIS MORGAN

Walter Michot / Miami Herald Staff

At Hillcrest Golf & Country Club in Hollywood, the fairways and greens are irrigated with 'reclaimed' waste water.

South Florida has suffered through some dreary declines of late — home values, paychecks and the Miami Dolphins, for instance.

But in the case of the public thirst for one precious commodity — fresh water — the decline has actually turned into a major money-saving plus.

The 53 water utilities serving Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties pumped about 83 million fewer gallons a day in 2010 than they did in 2000 — despite a population that grew by some 600,000 over the decade — according to a new draft analysis produced by the South Florida Water Management District.

Do the math and it adds up to South Floridians using about 20 percent less water each day for drinking, bathing and sprinkling yards per person than they did a decade ago. That’s about 30 billion gallons over the course of a year, enough unused water to fill 45,900 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

It’s an unexpected but entirely welcome drop-off in public demand in a region that only a decade ago was worried about taps running dry in relentlessly sprawling suburbs.

“It’s not a surprise that it went down,’’ said Mark Elsner, administrator of water supply development for the water management district. “It’s a surprise it went down so much.’’

WHAT’S BEHIND IT

Though water consumption per person has been declining for decades, water managers point to a combination of factors that are accelerating the trend. They include newer water-efficient toilets and other fixtures, tougher restrictions on lawn irrigation and stepped utility rates designed to make customers pay a premium for excessive water use.

Water managers and state and local environmental regulators have pushed conservation programs and also demanded that utilities expand use of “reclaimed” wastewater — often by using it to irrigate parks and golf courses.

At Hillcrest Golf & Country Club in Hollywood, for instance, every drop from the sprinklers is recycled wastewater — cheaper and in totally unrestricted supply.

“We have a very good deal for water. We could use a million gallons or 10 gallons and we pay the same amount,’’ said Lewis Rissman, Hillcrest’s general manager. “The city of Hollywood doesn’t even know what to do with all their reclaimed water.’’

Clearly, South Florida’s economic downturn, housing market collapse and flattening population growth have contributed to the slaking thirst as well.

“There are a lot of things working together,’’ said Elsner, whose agency oversees the water supply for 16 counties stretching from south of Orlando to Key West. “What you’re seeing is a conservation ethic being developed. People are understanding the value of water.’’

What the decline in demand from public utilities does not mean is South Florida is in the clear when it comes to water shortages

South Florida depends on wildly varying annual rainfall to replenish its underground aquifers and Lake Okeechobee. Right now, for example, an unusually dry winter has left ground water levels lower than normal.

The district’s long-term planning analysis, revised every five years with new consumption and population figures, also covers only four counties in the region and doesn’t track similar trends for agriculture, which consumes an estimated 37 percent of the region’s water. It also doesn’t account for some critical future demands — such as the massive volumes of water needed to help restore the Everglades. The draft study predicts the four counties will still need to expand the public water supply by 18 percent by 2030.

But improved conservation has eased pressure on traditional public water supplies and utilities contemplating new, far more expensive water systems designed to reclaim wastewater and tap other new sources, from deep aquifers to sea water.

SCALING BACK

The drop-off has been significant enough that Miami-Dade’s Water and Sewer Department has been able to scale back projects considered essential only five years ago, saving the utility — and its customers — hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2007, Miami-Dade, which had historically relied almost entirely on the cheap, clean Biscayne Aquifer, was forced to draw up a $1.6 billion expansion plan to serve a then-booming population. Under pressure from water managers, who warned that drawing more from the underground supply could hurt regional water supplies, the Everglades and Biscayne Bay, Miami-Dade designed projects to tap the deeper brackish Floridan aquifer or to treat wastewater.

Bertha Goldenberg, assistant director of the water and sewer department, said the county has since been able to cancel or defer a handful of projects, including one that would have piped highly treated wastewater back into the ground near Zoo Miami to increase ground water supplies.

“We basically saved $300 million by changing that,’’ she said.

Alan Garcia, director of Broward County’s water and wastewater services, said the decline has allowed the agency to push back a $46 million project to tap the Floridan until at least 2023 and explore other potentially cheaper options for the future, such as teaming up with other Broward and Palm Beach utilities in constructing a massive reservoir.

Garcia said county figures show per person usage falling sharply in some areas, down almost by half between 1990 and 2008 in one area that includes Lighthouse Point and parts of Pompano Beach.

“People have finally started to see they don’t need to water their lawns four or five days a week,’’ he said. “It’s expensive water and they don’t need to use it.’’

Miami-Dade’s Goldenberg also points to irrigation restrictions the district first imposed in 2006 during a severe drought as a major factor in the decline, with county usage dropping by 20 gallons a day per person over the following two years. In 2010, both Miami-Dade and Broward made twice-weekly lawn watering rules permanent.

Miami-Dade programs to offer rebates and exchanges for high-efficiency toilets and shower heads and to improve homeowner associations’ irrigation systems also combined to save nearly 8.5 million gallons a day last year, according to a water department report completed in April.

The district analysis shows that, based on 2010 figures, Miami-Dade remained the largest consumer of the public water supply, slurping some 347 million gallons a day. Broward trailed with 217 million gallons a day, followed by Palm Beach County with 207 million gallons and Monroe with 16 million gallons.

But Palm Beach County’s agricultural industry, dominated by sprawling sugar farms, made it the thirstiest county overall. Farms, which draw from their own wells and pumps, pushed Palm Beach’s total daily demands to over 600 million gallons. Miami-Dade’s combined farm and public total runs just over 400 million gallons a day, according to the report.

Measuring by usage per person, Palm Beach recorded the greatest decline between 2000 and 2010, at 28 percent, followed by Broward at 19 percent and Miami-Dade at 17 percent. Miami-Dade’s updated numbers, which include figures through 2011, show a 21 percent reduction since 2000.

THIRSTY MONROE

Officially, Monroe ranked far and away as the thirstiest county per person at 198 gallons per day in 2010 but water managers said that number was heavily skewed by tourists in the Florida Keys, who use much of the water but aren’t included in the calculations.

Lower population projections also have eased the pressure to expand water systems. The last time the district produced its analysis, in 2006, when South Florida was in the midst of a super-heated housing boom, water managers calculated the four counties would be using nearly 2.3 billion gallons of water a day by 2025 for everything from home faucets to farming.

That estimate is now down by some 400 million gallons — for 2030, five years later.

“I don’t think the question is are we going to run out of water but are we going to run out of less expensive water,’’ said Elsner, of the water management district. “What this does is extend the traditional fresh water sources further down the road.’’

Miami-Dade now believes it can cover much of its future demand through 2030 with a plant in Hialeah already under construction and expected to be completed later this year that will tap the Floridan and a second plant in South Miami that is being designed to use less expensive technology.

“We’re a lot better off than we were in 2005,’’ Goldenberg said. “Our demands were above our allocations so we were really in a crisis.’’

South Florida has suffered through some dreary declines of late — home values, paychecks and the Miami Dolphins, for instance.

But in the case of the public thirst for one precious commodity — fresh water — the decline has actually turned into a major money-saving plus.

The 53 utilities serving Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties pumped about 83 million gallons a day of water less in 2010 than they did in 2000 — despite a population that grew by some 600,000 over the decade — according to a new draft analysis produced by the South Florida Water Management District.

Do the math and it adds up to South Floridians using about 20 percent less water each day for drinking, bathing and sprinkling yards per person than they did a decade ago. That’s about 30 billion gallons over the course of a year, enough unused water to fill 45,900 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

It’s an unexpected but entirely welcome drop-off in public demand in a region that only a decade ago was worried about taps running dry in relentlessly sprawling suburbs.

“It’s not a surprise that it went down,’’ said Mark Elsner, administrator of water supply development for the water management district. “It’s a surprise it went down so much.’’

Though water consumption per person has been declining for decades, water managers point to a combination of factors that are accelerating the trend. They include newer water-efficient toilets and other fixtures, tougher restrictions on lawn irrigation and stepped utility rates designed to make customers pay a premium for excessive water use.

Water managers and state and local environmental regulators have pushed conservation programs and also demanded that utilities expand use of “reclaimed” waste water — often by using it to irrigate parks and golf courses.

At Hillcrest Golf & Country Club in Hollywood, for instance, every drop from the sprinklers is recycled wastewater — cheaper and in totally unrestricted supply.

“We have a very good deal for water. We could use a million gallons or 10 gallons and we pay the same amount,’’ said Lewis Rissman, Hillcrest’s general manager. “The city of Hollywood doesn’t even know what to do with all their reclaimed water.’’

Clearly, South Florida’s economic downturn, housing market collapse and flattening population growth have contributed to the slaking thirst as well.

“There are a lot of things working together,’’ said Elsner, whose agency oversees the water supply for 16 counties stretching from south of Orlando to Key West. “What you’re seeing is a conservation ethic being developed. People are understanding the value of water.’’

What the decline in demand from public utilities does not mean is South Florida is in the clear when it comes to water shortages

South Florida depends on wildly varying annual rainfall to replenish its underground aquifers and Lake Okeechobee. Right now, for example, an unusually dry winter has left ground water levels lower than normal.

The district’s long-term planning analysis, revised every five years with new consumption and population figures, also covers only four counties in the region and doesn’t track similar trends for agriculture, which consumes an estimated 37 percent of the region’s water. It also doesn’t account for some critical future demands — such as the massive volumes of water needed to help restore the Everglades. The draft study predicts the four counties will still need to expand the public water supply by 18 percent by 2030.

But improved conservation has eased pressure on traditional public water supplies and utilities contemplating new, far more expensive water systems designed to reclaim wastewater and tap other new sources, from deep aquifers to sea water.

The drop-off has been significant enough that Miami-Dade’s Water and Sewer Department has been able to scale back projects considered essential only five years ago, saving the utility — and its customers — hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2007, Miami-Dade, which had historically relied almost entirely on the cheap, clean Biscayne Aquifer, was forced to draw up a $1.6 billion expansion plan to serve a then-booming population. Under pressure from water managers, who warned that drawing more from the underground supply could hurt regional water supplies, the Everglades and Biscayne Bay, Miami-Dade designed projects to tap the deeper brackish Floridan aquifer or to treat waste water.

Bertha Goldenberg, assistant director of the water and sewer department, said the county has since been able to cancel or defer a handful of projects, including one that would have piped highly treated waste water back into the ground near Zoo Miami to increase ground water supplies.

“We basically saved $300 million by changing that,’’ she said.

Alan Garcia, director of Broward County’s water and wastewater services, said the decline has allowed the agency to push back a $46 million project to tap the Floridan until at least 2023 and explore other potentially cheaper options for the future, such as teaming up with other Broward and Palm Beach utilities in constructing a massive reservoir.

Garcia said county figures show per person usage falling sharply in some areas, down almost by half between 1990 and 2008 in one area that includes Lighthouse Point and parts of Pompano Beach.

“People have finally started to see they don’t need to water their lawns four or five days a week,’’ he said. “It’s expensive water and they don’t need to use it.’’

Miami-Dade’s Goldenberg also points to irrigation restrictions the district first imposed in 2006 during a severe drought as a major factor in the decline, with county usage dropping by 20 gallons a day per person over the following two years. In 2010, both Miami-Dade and Broward made twice-weekly lawn watering rules permanent.

Miami-Dade programs to offer rebates and exchanges for high-efficiency toilets and shower heads and to improve homeowner associations’ irrigation systems also combined to save nearly 8.5 million gallons a day last year, according a water department report completed in April.

The district analysis shows that, based on 2010 figures, Miami-Dade remained the largest consumer of the public water supply, slurping some 347 million gallons a day. Broward trailed with 217 million gallons a day, followed by Palm Beach County with 207 million gallons and Monroe with 16 million gallons.

But Palm Beach County’s agricultural industry, dominated by sprawling sugar farms, made it the thirstiest county overall. Farms, which draw from their own wells and pumps, pushed Palm Beach’s total daily demands to over 600 million gallons. Miami-Dade’s combined farm and public total runs just over 400 million gallons a day, according to the report.

Measuring by usage per person, Palm Beach recorded the greatest decline between 2000 and 2010, at 28 percent, followed by Broward at 19 percent and Miami-Dade at 17 percent. Miami-Dade’s updated numbers, which include figures through 2011, show a 21 percent reduction since 2000.

Officially, Monroe ranked far and away as the thirstiest county per person at 198 gallons per day in 2010 but water managers said that number was heavily skewed by tourists in the Florida Keys, who use much of the water but aren’t included in the calculations.

Lower population projections also have eased the pressure to expand water systems. The last time the district produced its analysis, in 2006, when South Florida was in the midst of a super-heated housing boom, water managers calculated the four counties would be using nearly 2.3 billion gallons of water a day by 2025 for everything from home faucets to farming.

That estimate is now down by some 400 million gallons – for 2030, five years later.

“I don’t think the question is are we going to run out of water but are we going to run out of less expensive water,’’ said Elsner, of the water management district. “What this does is extend the traditional fresh water sources further down the road.’’

Miami-Dade now believes it can cover much of its future demand through 2030 with a plant in Hialeah already under construction and expected to be completed later this year that will tap the Floridan and a second plant in South Miami that is being resigned to use less expensive technology.

“We’re a lot better off than we were in 2005,’’ said Goldenberg. “Our demands were above our allocations so we were really in a crisis.’’

BY CURTIS MORGAN

CMORGAN@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Though the previous washed-out weekend might have suggested otherwise, South Florida’s rainy season has not yet begun — at least officially.

But when it does start sometime this month, expect it to be a bit wetter than normal, forecasters and water managers said Thursday.

South Florida’s wet season, which usually begins around May 20 and runs until mid-October, typically produces about 70 percent of the regional rainfall. Those five months help keep the Everglades healthy and water supplies recharged or — if the rains don’t show — produce droughts that kill crops and lawns.

Robert Molleda, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Miami office, said a number of indicators, including the easing of the global La Niña weather pattern, point to a wetter season into June. The remaining months appear likely to be close to average.

With the region still showing lingering effects from an unusually dry fall and winter, a bit more rain would help, said Susan Sylvester, chief of water control operations for the South Florida Water Management District, which oversees the water supply for 7.7 million people from Orlando to Key West.

Above-average April rainfall, much of it delivered last weekend, helped Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties but only provided a bit of recharge for Lake Okeechobee, which serves as the region’s water barrel.

Overall, the 16-county district’s rainfall deficit since November is about 5.5 inches. Lake Okeechobee was at 11.63 feet above sea level Thursday, about two feet below its average mark for the date.

The typical wet season produces about 35 inches of rain but one tropical storm or hurricane can easily push the figure higher.

 

The Colorado River Aqueduct, a lifeline to Southern California.

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and FELICITY BARRINGER

Published: April 23, 2012

SAN DIEGO — There are accusations of conspiracies, illegal secret meetings and double-dealing. Embarrassing documents and e-mails have been posted on an official Web site emblazoned with the words “Fact vs. Fiction.” Animosities have grown so deep that the players have resorted to exchanging lengthy, caustic letters, packed with charges of lying and distortion.

 And it is all about water.

Water is a perennial source of conflict and anxiety throughout the arid West, but it has a particular resonance here in the deserts of Southern California. This is a place where major thoroughfares are named after water engineers (Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles) and literary essays (“Holy Water” by Joan Didion, for instance) and films (“Chinatown”) have been devoted to its power and mystique.

Yet in the nearly 80 years since the Arizona National Guard was called out to defend state waters against dam-building Californians, there has been little to rival the feud now under way between San Diego’s water agency and the consortium of municipalities that provides water to 19 million customers in Southern California. This contentious and convoluted battle seems more akin to a tough political campaign than a fight between bureaucrats, albeit one with costly consequences.

At issue is San Diego’s longstanding contention that it has been bullied by a gang of its neighbors in the consortium, able by virtue of their number to force the county to pay exorbitant fees for water. The consortium two weeks ago imposed two back-to-back 5 percent annual water rate increases on San Diego — scaled down, after strong protests, from what were originally set to be back-to-back increases of 7.5 percent a year.

The battle is being fought in the courts — a judge in San Francisco is struggling to untangle a welter of conflicting claims from the two sides — but also on the Internet. San Diego officials have created a sleek Web site to carry their argument to the public, posting 500 pages of documents they obtained through public records requests to discredit the other side.

And they might have struck oil, as it were, unearthing documents and e-mails replete with references to the “anti-San Diego coalition” and “a Secret Society,” and no matter that the purported conspirators contend that they were just being jocular.

“There is a lot of frustration,” said Jerry Sanders, the mayor of San Diego, who has watched from the sidelines as the independent San Diego Water Authority waged its wars. “It’s been building over the years.”

Asked about the tactics, Mr. Sanders demurred. “Whether they are effective or not, I’ll leave that to other people to judge.”

If nothing else, the fight is an entertaining diversion from the kind of bland bureaucratic infighting that usually characterizes these kinds of disputes.

Dennis A. Cushman, the assistant general manager of the San Diego authority, said it posted the documents — and asked a judge to force the disclosure of a ream of other private e-mails and documents — so beleaguered water consumers “could see how the business of water in California is actually done.”

“We had suspicions about what was going on,” Mr. Cushman said. “We were shocked by the depth and scope and the level of sophistication of what was going on.”

“It’s not done in public,” he said. “It’s done out of public view. The meetings aren’t open. They are designed to expressly exclude the agency they are discriminating against.”

Jeffrey Kightlinger, the general manager of the regional water consortium, described the charges as “nonsense,” saying that the meetings that Mr. Cushman had deemed illegal did not fall under the state’s open meetings laws. He described the campaign against his organization — the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, also known by the acronym M.W.D. — as unlike anything he had seen.

“It sounds like a political campaign, and hiring political consultants to run it for them strikes me as a new level of activity I haven’t seen before in public service,” he said.

“It just seems to me to have a different tenor and tone than before,” he said. “The idea of bandying about secret-society issues, talking about ‘the truth about M.W.D.’ strikes me as unprofessional and does a disservice to the public.”

Kevin P. Hunt, the general manager of the water district of Orange County, said he was taken aback at the suggestion that some kind of plot was afoot. “It would be funny if it hadn’t created such a furor,” he said. “It was a bunch of guys and gals getting together to do their work. It’s all in the spin you put on it — calling it a ‘secret society’ and making it sound like a cabal. I didn’t even know what a cabal was.”

The case ultimately will be determined in a state court in San Francisco. At issue is how much the district should be charging San Diego to use the district’s pipes to transport water the county bought elsewhere. (San Diego officials have made a concerted effort to expand the sources of their water over the years — including a long-contested, substantial transfer of Colorado River water from inland farmers — so they are not as reliant on the district as they once were).

San Diego has four seats on the district’s 37-member board, and there is little incentive for other communities to entertain San Diego’s argument: When San Diego pays less, everyone else pays more.

Mr. Cushman said that the district had come to view San Diego as “its golden egg.”

Still, even supporters of San Diego’s actions suggest that all accusations may ultimately be little more than a sideshow.

“It just doesn’t feel right,” said Lani Lutar, the president of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association. “They are already pursuing the lawsuit. Those are ratepayer dollars being spent and all of the advertising. Is that necessary? The lawsuit is going to resolve the matter. The P.R. stunt has taken it too far.”

San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the country, and this part of California gets 10 inches of rain a year, on average. And this city is at the end of two long water transport systems.

“We’ve always had end-of-pipeline paranoia,” said Lester Snow, the executive director of the California Water Foundation and a former head of both the San Diego and state water agencies. “It is often just physical — the pipeline crosses earthquake faults and anything that happens bad anywhere can affect us.”

The long history has left San Diego with what seems to be a permanent sense of grievance. But Mr. Snow said that this represented a new level of animosity. “The current dispute has gone way beyond a rate-increase dispute,” he said.

 

Florida is in the crosshairs of climate change. Rising seas, a population crowded along the coast, porous bedrock, and the relatively common occurrence of tropical storms put more real estate and people at risk from storm surges aggravated by sea level rise in Florida, than any other state by far.

Some 2.4 million people and 1.3 million homes, nearly half the risk nationwide, sit within 4 feet of the local high tide line. Sea-level rise is more than doubling the risk of a storm surge at this level in South Florida by 2030. For the hundreds of thousands of Floridians holding 30-year mortgages, that date is not far off in the future.

The world’s oceans are already rising, thanks to global warming. Global average sea level has gone up about eight inches since 1880. In South Florida, taxpayers are already paying the price for climate change as salt water pushes through porous bedrock into coastal drinking-water supplies, and rivers and canals choked by heavy rains have a harder time draining into the ocean. A recent Florida Atlantic University study estimated that just six more inches of sea level rise — very plausible within two decades — would cripple about half of South Florida’s flood control capacity.

It’s now, not later, for sea-level rise in South Florida.

That’s a big reason why Climate Central has worked for two years on a new analysis of this threat, blending storm surge, tides and more into the picture. Integrating storms and tides show that a small amount of sea level rise can make a big difference — multiplying the odds of extreme coastal floods around the United States, not just South Florida. Think of it like raising the floor at a Miami Heat game: you’d see a lot more dunks. Overall, sea-level rise is making the odds of a South Florida flood reaching more than four feet above high tide, by 2050, on par with the odds of losing at Russian roulette.

More than half the population of more than 100 Florida towns and cities lives on land below that four-foot line. Miami-Dade and Broward counties each have more people below four feet than any state, except Florida itself and Louisiana.

Just how vulnerable any area is depends on many elements. Our analysis factored in not only local sea-level rise projections, storm-surge patterns and tides, but also local topography and patterns of development. In an attempt to better inform people, businesses and planners who live and work near the coast, we have mapped and evaluated risk in 3,000 towns, cities and counties across the lower 48 states, including South Florida, and have created a free, ZIP code-searchable map with neighborhood views and risk information at SurgingSeas.org. Among our key national findings:

• Global warming has already doubled or tripled the odds of extreme high water events over widespread areas of the U.S. coast.

• Widespread areas are likely to see storm surges on top of sea level rise reaching at least four feet above high tide by 2030, and five feet by 2050.

• Almost five million U.S. residents currently live on land less than four feet above high tide, and more than six million on land less than five feet above.

Sea-level rise is already increasing flood threats everywhere. It’s set to become an even greater problem much sooner than most people expect. Swift cuts in greenhouse gas pollution can significantly reduce sea level increases, but past and present pollution already commit us to a good deal more rise.

It’s time we start preparing for higher seas and storms, if we want to avoid their worst effects. In South Florida, where the porous limestone makes building effective sea walls or levees almost impossible, the task is especially urgent.

Ben Strauss is director of the Program on Sea Level Rise at Climate Central, a nonprofit research and journalism group.