TEDxJacksonville Salon on Jacksonville's Environment

Topic: Water Myths On a day to day basis as we water our lawns, wash our clothes, or do laps in the pool, it rarely occurs to us that clean water is a precious and rare commodity. We are running out of drinkable water and our community has never faced a greater imperative to protect and conserve our aquifers. What can we do today to address this challenge?

Led by: Dr. Quint White,  Executive Director, JU Marine Science Research Institute


Asghar Syed provided notes from White's Group:

• Where are we in Jacksonville? A study conducted suggested that Jacksonville's usage would be unsustainable by 2013. Actually, due to the financial crisis and some increased awareness, Jacksonville's per person usage has declined from 150 gallons per person per day three years ago to 106 gallon per person per day today. This is a step in the right direction and we haven't become unsustainable yet... but it's only a matter of time. The average usage globally is 5 gallons per day.
• About 40% of the water used in Jax is used for irrigation. In other parts of Florida, more than half goes to irrigation. This is all clean drinking (or drinkable) water.
• Lawns, and particularly grass, take up a lot of clean water. Consider drought resistant native plant species. Floridayards.org is a great resource.
• Commercial consumption: we talked a little about the Marine Science facility Quint built at JU. Leed certified gold. www.ju.edu/msri/Pages/default.aspx
• Collecting rain water. We talked a lot about installing rain buckets.
• Gray water came up a few times. Gray water can be collected rain water or treated sewer water.
• Quint suggested that the biggest step forward would be a tiered approach to how JEA charges people for water use. Quint suggested that everyone get the first two to three thousand basically for free, and get charged a substantial and increasing rate beyond that, essentially to make conservation an economic (in addition to moral) decision.
• In discussing sustainable use of our acquirer, Quint also suggested that we take recharge zones into account when planning our land use. Sarah Boren noted that it takes a long time for water to trickle from recharge zones in Keystone heights over to our acquirer. Quint said that we have he technology to collect data on every square mile of north florida to determine where the recharge zone are. We then need to preserve those ares.
• Quint told one sobering story about the clean water wasted in Nocatee. When the developers built out the area and began selling houses, there wasn't enough use in the region to support the system. Stagnant water in the pipes serving just a handful of houses could damage the system and no-doubt would be a problem for the few users, so the developers drained clean water of the system for months to keep it flowing.