Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson is putting $25 million toward a new slate of projects designed to help farmers conserve water and cut down on pollution. The funding, announced Tuesday, targets the Suwannee River and Lake Okeechobee basins, aiming to balance agricultural needs with environmental protection.
The grants are being distributed through the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ (FDACS) Agricultural Regional Projects Program. The initiative focuses on large-scale, collaborative efforts to reduce the amount of nutrients—specifically nitrogen and phosphorus—that end up in the state’s water supply.
“Protecting Florida’s water resources is essential to our state’s future, and Florida’s farmers, ranchers, and growers are central to that mission,” Simpson said. “By funding large-scale, regional projects that are rooted in sound science and real-world practices, we’re proving that environmental stewardship and agricultural productivity go hand in hand.”
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A significant portion of the funding will support operations in the Middle and Lower Suwannee River Basin. Several dairies, including Full Circle Dairy, North Florida Dairies, and Shenandoah Dairy, will use the money to upgrade infrastructure. Planned improvements include constructing new barns to move cattle off open pastures and building massive wastewater storage ponds to prevent runoff.
For example, the project at Shenandoah Dairy in Gilchrist County involves building a 17-million-gallon storage pond. Officials estimate this move alone will stop nearly 14,000 pounds of nitrogen from loading into the regional groundwater annually.
Another major effort in the Suwannee region involves the local Water Management District removing “end guns” from irrigation systems. By eliminating the overspray these devices cause, the district expects to cut nitrogen loads by more than 200,000 pounds per year.
Further south in the Lake Okeechobee Basin, the projects focus heavily on cleaning up existing water issues.
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The Cypress Chapter of the Izaak Walton League plans to use the funding to extract muck and invasive water hyacinths directly from Lake Okeechobee without disturbing the lake bottom. The material will be processed on a barge and turned into a nutrient-rich slurry for fertilizer, a process projected to remove over 370,000 pounds of nitrogen annually.
Additionally, Lykes Brothers Inc. will move forward with the Harney Pond project in Glades and Highlands Counties. This system will pump water from a local canal, run it through treatment cells to remove nutrients, and return clean water downstream.
According to FDACS, these projects rely on partnerships between producers, water management districts, and local governments to meet state water quality goals.
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