Greenprinting Underway

On Tuesday, Commissioners will hear an update from North Florida Land Trust on the Greenprinting study that they have started. This was paid for by private donations collected by Commissioner Holly Davis and comes at ZERO cost to tax payers.

This report includes the first Task of the study... The stakeholder meetings and meetings with the BOCC members.

I want to start off with the total conservation areas we have in Citrus County. We have all heard ad-nauseum that 30-40% of this county is conservation land and will never be built on.

The actual number according to NFLT is 35.84% and a total acreage of 133,970 acres. Sounds great, right? Well yes... but of that number, the county controls 310 acres.

That means the county can dictate what is done with ONLY those 310 acres. The rest is under State control (124,100 acres), Federal control (9,050 acres) or Private control (510 acres). The county has ZERO say over 99.77% of the conservation land in the county.

In other words... if the state wants to sell its land to a developer to build a golf course or hotels (they talked about it in 2025), then we have zero say in that.

Now that is not all bad news. We have a higher percentage of conservation land than the average in the state. That is good. Hopefully, the state continues to protect it.

But this will create the discussion that we need here... Do we want the county to control more of its land and set it aside for conservation? Looking forward to that community discussion and the ways to do it without solely relying on tax dollars.

Back to the report.

The first task was the community stake holders, identified as "Subject Matter Experts" (SME). 41 individuals were recognized to participate in this portion. They were asked a few questions and a report was generated based on their responses.

Here is the list of participants and the category they were recognized to represent.

Not surprising, drinking water was the #1 concern from this group of individuals.

After the SME's were polled, commissioners were asked to choose which 3 areas are most important to them.

Drinking water was again chosen as the highest priority, followed by Wildlife and Conservation Corridors, Access to Recreation, Agriculture and Historic and Cultural Resources.

Interestingly, no one had their top 3 concerns of Surface Water Features or Threatened and Endangers Species and Habitats, despite a very large percentage of our economy coming from tourists who come for those things with the manatees.

Although in fairness, they were asked to rank their top 3. I dont think any of them would say they dont care about the other four they did not select.

Another interesting thing... two commissioners expressed interest in adding more nature based recreation opportunities... More on this in a bit.

The report also includes 7 maps of the county. These show various conservation values and areas those values appear.

One thing of interest here. The 41 SME's that were asked questions were shown the map about the drinking water.

Here is a quote from the report:

"The participants said they were surprised that most of the high aquifer recharge areas in the county are not currently protected, and they reiterated this should be the County’s highest priority. This opinion in further validated in the results for Question 2, which of the water resource issues should be the highest concern, Aquifer Recharge was the highest priority for every SME group (except NGOs)."

In other words... there was great concern from all groups about the recharge areas. Where are these recharge areas you ask? All the navy blue (priority 1), the aqua blue (priority 2) and the carolina blue (priority 3) on this map.

Most of the priority 1 areas are in the Crystal River/Homosassa/Floral City areas... The priority 2 and 3 areas cover most of the rest of the county.

Remember when commissioners keep saying that the growth is going to the planned areas in the county... largely the central ridge area in Beverly Hills and Pine Ridge? Well that area is covered with priority 2 and 3 recharge areas... and remember, the report stated that there was concern from the SME's that the recharge areas are not well protected.

Essentially we are driving our building to the areas with the highest priority aquifer recharge areas... not to mention the parkway going right into priority 1 areas.

Interesting.

Maybe that is why we had the excavator issue a few months back when they hit "groundwater" and flooded the hole they were digging.

Although in fairness, most of the county is covered by some priority area. Not sure growth could have been directed to an area not covered by priority recharge areas. This gust means we need to be diligent on protecting the aquifer... but that largely falls to the state agencies like SWFWMD. Our state leaders play a role in this protection as well.

Now, BOCC will not be happy with this next part.

Why are we selling Betz farm to allow a developer to build 1400 homes?

That area sits on a priority 1 and 2 recharge area according to this map. BOCC identified that as its highest priority. It also sits next to surface water areas, grazing areas (agriculture), and threatened and endangered species and habitat areas... according to the maps above... also priorities in this conservation plan

Betz farm appears on 4 of the 7 maps that were identified as conservation areas to focus on. It would appear on the 5th if we turned it into recreational space, as was the plan when it was donated to the county by the Tamposi family in the early 2000's.

Seems like a valuable parcel of property for the county to continue to own and maintain for conservation, based on this study... yet they are set on selling it for more houses and commercial buildings.

How does that make sense?

In any case, it is now your turn to participate. The next task is public input. These workshops will take place on the following dates:

• February 3rd - 6pm to 7:30pm - Citrus Springs Community Center
• February 4th - 6pm to 7:30pm - Crystal River Visitors Center
• February 5th - 6pm to 7:30pm - Lecanto Government Building

Do what you can to make it to one of these meetings. Your input is needed to help craft the conservation and greenprinting policy in the county.