With millions of gallons being pumped every day amid record-breaking droughts, North Central Florida has a water problem. Lawmakers are trying to find solutions, but locals and environmentalists say they’re insufficient.
The Water First North Florida project was lawmakers’ $1.1 billion solution to recharging aquifers in the Lower Santa Fe and Ichetucknee Rivers by pumping reclaimed water from Jacksonville municipal treatment plants.
On Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee,, posted a letter saying the project — in its current state — was being cancelled. It now has to go back to the drawing board.
Suwannee River Water Management approved the project in November 2025 to address the low water levels, despite concerns, since they were below the Minimum Flows & Water Levels set by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. St. Johns Water Management District and Jacksonville utilities service JEA are also major funders behind the project.
Over miles of pipe, the project would carry 40 million gallons per day of reclaimed wastewater from Jacksonville to North Florida aquifers, rivers and springs.
Water management district spokesperson Troy Roberts wrote the district is aware of the letter and has no additional comments regarding the project.
David Hastings, chair of the Suwannee St. Johns Group of the Florida Chapter of the Sierra Club, is a retired oceanographer. He said Jacksonville has been pumping so much that it has been pulling from North Central Florida’s own aquifers.
He compares the process to getting water from sticking straws in the ground and sucking it out like “a slurpee.” Whoever pulls the hardest for water gets the most.
Jacksonville is pulling the hardest, Hastings said. He suggests Jacksonville should instead create its own constructed wetlands, like Sweetwater Wetlands Parks in Gainesville — where reclaimed wastewater flows before it seeps back to the Florida Aquifer — to recycle its water.
He said agencies should protect Florida’s ecosystem by being stricter on how they issue permits for what he calls “a valuable resource like water.” A white paper from Bob Knight of the Florida Springs Institute about the Water First North Florida project and restoring the Santa Fe River reached the same conclusion, saying new water use permits should be suspended in order to refill the springs.
“We need to get a new way of thinking about water, recognising how valuable it is,” Hastings said.
On the Santa Fe River, Merrille Malwitz-Jipson owns a kayaking business, Rum 138. In the upcoming November midterm elections, she is running to represent District 10 in the Florida House.
For 10 years, Jipson said she has been sitting in on government meetings for the North Central Florida region. She has seen this type of project before and is worried about how clean the water from a large urban area would be, considering “emerging substances of concern” on a list from the Environmental Protection Agency about microplastics and chemicals found in water.
“If you can’t drink it,” Jipson said, “maybe we shouldn’t be putting it down our septic or our sewer, or places we know we’re going to have to reuse it and possibly drink it.”
She said that despite the Florida House of Representatives deciding not to provide further funding for the project, the pipeline could still go forward. Jacksonville has a lot of untreated wastewater, she said, but it's not fair to send it to a rural, agriculture-focused area like the Santa Fe region.
John Quarterman of the Suwannee Riverkeeper at the WWALS Watershed Coalition said he appreciates what Simon and other lawmakers did in canceling funding, but he will not believe the project is canceled until SRWMD, SJWMD and JEA all say it is.
Quarterman previously spoke at a Suwanne County town hall meeting in February about the project. He said alternatives, such as designing areas so that overflow from the well flows into the aquifer, should be considered instead of the pipeline.
“We should go for the easier, faster, less expensive projects that are less likely to break,” he said.