Dan@BcTelegraph.com
Officials from the Suwannee River Water Management District appeared before Union County commissioners on Tuesday, February 17 to explain a sweeping proposal to pipe treated wastewater from Jacksonville, more than 40 million gallons per day, through constructed wetlands and possibly to Union County, aiming to restore depleted springs and rivers.
The project, called Water First North Florida, is a regional partnership involving the Suwannee River Water Management District, the St. Johns River Water Management District, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and several utilities. Its goal is to address a state-mandated recovery plan for the lower Santa Fe and Ichetucknee rivers, which are currently not meeting minimum flow levels required by Florida law.
The plan calls for reclaimed water from JEA’s Buckman Water Reclamation Facility in Duval County to be treated at an advanced water reclamation facility, then filtered through a large, constructed wetland of more than 1,000 acres before being recharged into the aquifer at sites across the Suwannee River district. Officials estimated at least a 13-year buildout before the system is fully operational.
County Taken by Surprise
The presentation drew pointed questions from commissioners who said they only recently learned about the project — and not through official channels.
“I started hearing rumors about it in mid-December, and I started asking a lot of questions, and nobody knew anything,” said Commissioner Donna Jackson. She added she later attended a legislative reception in Tallahassee in January and went “person to person to person” asking lawmakers about the project. “Nobody knew anything about this or claimed to know until I ran into (Suwannee River Water Management District Legislative and Government Affairs Coordinator) Tyler Windburn,” she said. “I kept saying I felt like there was a concerted effort to keep this from our knowledge.”
Amy Brown, the district’s executive director for water resources, pushed back on that characterization. “It’s certainly not an intent to keep it from anybody,” she responded. “It is a big thing that is kind of moving in chunks.”
How the Water Would Be Treated
At the center of the project is an ongoing pilot study at JEA’s Buckman facility, now in its second year. Researchers are testing two side-by-side half-acre wetland cells, one with conventional treatment and one with ozone as a pretreatment, to determine which more effectively removes contaminants of concern, including nitrates, pharmaceuticals, polyfluoroalkyl substances, and industrial chemicals.
“The working theory is that the ozone would break down a lot of these contaminants of concern and allow the wetland biology to better assimilate those contaminants,” Brown explained. She called the ozone-wetland combination approach “truly innovative and groundbreaking,” and said the full pilot study results are expected after a two-year run beginning in November 2025.
Jackson asked specifically about nitrates, a known problem in the basin. Officials said treatment wetlands are well-understood to convert nitrate into nitrogen gas, effectively removing it from the water.
Siting Study Underway, No Sites Selected Yet
A formal siting study is currently in contract negotiations. The three-phase study will identify where a large treatment wetland could be located in the St. Johns district, where treated water could be temporarily retained, and, in the third phase of the study, expected to begin in September 2026, where recharge sites could be located within the Suwannee district. Brown said the siting study would take two years to complete.
No specific parcels in Union, Columbia, or Baker counties have been selected, Brown said, though preliminary modeling has assessed the potential benefit of recharging water at various locations throughout the region.
“There’s not a specific site that has been selected,” she emphasized.
District Executive Director Hugh Thomas confirmed the siting process would begin with publicly held lands and that private landowners would be compensated.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Officials warned that without a major recharge project, the district faces a statutory requirement to reduce permitted water allocations by as much as 30 percent region-wide within 20 years, a prospect that alarmed commissioners representing a largely rural, agricultural county.
“If you have an agricultural installation in your district and they’re currently irrigating, potentially 30% of that could be reduced?” Jackson asked. Brown confirmed that without the project, new development would also face significant water offset requirements.
“We have a 20-year time clock to recover those systems,” she said. The recovery strategy includes five-year milestones, with the requirement to revise and strengthen the plan if early targets are not met.
Skepticism and Calls for Transparency
Not all commissioners were reassured. Mac Johns offered a blunt assessment of public trust in large government projects, invoking Ronald Reagan’s line about the “nine most terrifying words: I’m from the government, I’m here to help,” and noting that a wastewater treatment plant in Tampa had recently been shut down for failing to meet standards, while the same Buckman facility has been fined $200 per day since September 2025 for violations.
“Scientists and doctors create solutions, and then 10, 15, 20 years down the road, they’ve got to figure out a solution to the problem they created,” the commissioner said.
Commissioners and district officials agreed to schedule a public town hall in the coming months, and county staff committed to posting links to the Water First North Florida project website and FAQ page on the county’s own site.
