St. Johns district representative speaks in Keystone Heights
BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS—An intergovernmental coordinator for the St. Johns River Water Management District spoke to the Lake Region Prosperity Partners at Keystone Beach about his organization’s missions.
Doug Conkey is a former Clay County commissioner, Clay Chamber president and Clay County YMCA of Florida’s First Coast executive director.
The Massachusetts native and Naval Academy graduate spent 21 years in the Navy as an aviator.
Conkey has been with the water management district for over a year and serves as one of four of the organization’s intergovernmental coordinators. He covers Baker, Bradford, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns Counties.
On Thursday, Dec. 22, Conkey gave the Lake Region Prosperity Partners, a council of the Clay County Chamber of Commerce, an overview of the district’s missions and how it achieves its goals of preserving water quantity, maintaining water quality, flood control and natural resource preservation.
Creation and governance
Conkey said all five of the state’s water management districts were created with the legislature’s 1972 Florida Water Resources Act.
“The state realized: we better get our arms around this water situation, we’re going to be running out of it pretty fast and aren’t taking good care of it,” he said.
Conkey added that the five districts center around Florida’s five major water basins, with the St. Johns River and Suwannee River districts meeting in the Lake Region.
St. Johns covers the St. Johns River, which goes all the way down to the Indian River Lagoon,” he said. “Over 12,000 square miles or, if you like big numbers, 7.8 million acres, all or parts of 18 counties including a sliver of Bradford County right here by Keystone Heights.”
Conkey briefed the group on St. Johns nine-member governing board led by Chair Rob Bradley and the district’s staff, headed by Executive Director Mike Register.
Register, an engineer by profession, was appointed executive director in September 2021 but has been employed by the district for 30 years.
Water supply
Conkey explained that the district’s activities revolve around its four core missions: preserving the water supply, maintaining water quality, flood control and natural resource conservation.
Preservation of the water supply is the goal most people associate with water management districts. The St. Johns district implements that goal through its North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan, regulating Upper Floridan Aquifer withdrawals through consumptive use permits and enforcing minimum flows and levels regulations.
Conkey said the water supply plan is now undergoing an update, and the district is seeking public comments for its draft report.
For Lake Region residents that may not appreciate the importance of the supply plan, the report held the key to replenishing Keystone Heights area lakes.
When then-Senator Rob Bradley and then-district Executive Director Ann Shortelle were searching for a solution to decreasing water levels in Lakes Brooklyn and Geneva in 2016, the pair found the Black Creek Water Resource Development Project in Appendix J of the North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan.
The Black Creek project, now under construction, will bring up to 10 million gallons of water daily to the Lake Region through a system of pumps and a 17-mile pipeline.
As stated in the water supply plan, the project’s primary goal is to recharge the Upper Floridan Aquifer through one of its two recharge areas: Keystone Heights. The other recharge area for the aquifer is near Valdosta, Georgia.
Water quality
Conkey said the second mission of the district is water quality, a goal highlighted during recent algae blooms in the Indian River Lagoon and in Doctors Lake between Fleming Island and Orange Park.
“Doctors Lake is a classic example because it’s kind of sedentary,” he said. “(The water) doesn’t move much as opposed to the river. When the blooms get in there, it doesn’t take long for those to turn deadly.”
Conkey said the district’s water quality mission also played a role in the development of the Black Creek project. He pointed out that after federal regulators objected to transferring the tannin-stained water from the creek to the aqua pura in Lake Brooklyn and the aquifer, the district proposed a manmade wetland to filter the decomposing soil, leaves and tree bark from the water.
The wetland filter idea was based on a similar project near Doctors Lake that successfully removed phosphorus from surface water before it reached the lakeshore, lowing the risk of algae blooms in the inlet.
Flood control
Conkey said one of the district’s lesser-known missions is flood control.
However, that objective came to the forefront after Hurricane Ian dumped around 20 inches of rain in the Orlando area last September.
Conkey showed the group a slide of flood control structures on the Ocklawaha River.
However, the storm’s impact centered to the east of those controls, in an area bordered by Lakes Jesup, Monroe and Harney in Seminole County.
Conkey also showed the group satellite imagery that revealed that the aftermath of the storm closely tracked the impact of a 100-year storm in the area.
He added that in response to the flooding brought on by Ian in the Orlando-Daytona area, the legislature ordered all water management districts to inventory critical wetlands and to earmark those lands for state acquisition.
Conkey described wetlands as non-structural flood control areas, Mother Nature’s solution to excess rainfall.
He added that the lawmakers’ directive to inventory and acquire wetlands is an admission of the value of the previously underappreciated swamps and bogs.
“They recognized that we can’t stormwater-pond ourselves out of this,” he said. “We can’t build enough levies and dams. We’ve got to recognize that Mother Nature needs its natural defenses.”
Natural resource preservation
Conkey said the district achieves its fourth mission: natural resource preservation through the acquisition and management of lands.
“We have almost 800,000 acres in the district alone that we either own outright or jointly with the North Florida Land Trust or other entities,” he said.
Conkey added that the public has access to 98% of the district’s holdings.
“Trails, camping and boating,” he said, “and there are some commercial activities, like harvesting alligator eggs.”
He added that some of the district’s lands are used for honeybee farming in Nassau County.
Another natural resource preservation activity the district oversees is mitigation bank management.
When developers impact a wetland, one option is to purchase credits from a mitigation bank to offset their wetlands impacts.
He added that one large mitigation bank close to the Lake Region is north of Camp Blanding, east of Highland.
“But because of our area’s growth over the last three years, the mitigation banks are running a little dry on those credits, which are very expensive,” he said.
Conkey said one important technique the district uses to manage its lands is controlled burns. He said the fires mitigate the growth of invasive species and lower the risk of wildfires.
“When I toured Black Creek three months ago, it was two months after a planned burn,” he recalled, “and the flowers and the natural habitat were stunning. That’s what we want.”
Conkey explained that a lot of planning goes into the controlled burns.
“You just don’t light a fire and let it go,” he said. “It takes planning because there’s neighborhood Y over here, neighborhood X over there. They’ve got to get the winds right because when (the residents) wake up and have ash coming over their homes, they want to know what’s going on.”
During his talk, Conkey also discussed the district’s funding, budget and cost-share programs.
