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[TOXIC AMERICA'S WATER CRISIS]
Some days are just unforgettable: the birth of a child,
your first day at school, the day you fell in the giant sinkhole.
Well, at least that last part is the reality for one woman in Plant City.
911- "911, emergency. Do you need police,"
"fire or ambulance?"
Carla Chapman- "I'm in the ground!"
911- "You're in the ground?"
Carla Chapman- "Somebody help me!"
It compresses you.
[CARLA CHAPMAN, SINKHOLE VICTIM] It's hard to... you can't maneuver out of it.
You're wiggling and maneuvering more into it.
So we're here in central Florida to investigate the problem
[EMERSON ROSENTHAL, VICE] of massive sinkholes being caused by groundwater pumping.
Basically, to get fresh water, they've caused all the porous limestone
underneath central Florida to start to cave in and crack
causing homes, neighborhoods, and even cars to start falling into giant holes.
So we're gonna get to the bottom of that story,
find out if there are any possible solutions.
[AMERICA'S WATER CRISIS, PART 2 OF 3]
Holy ***, it's cold.
Sinkholes are the result of groundwater pumping,
the process we use to retrieve 80 billion gallons of water every day.
The process is simple: water falls from the sky
and sinks down through the ground to fill aquifers,
which are like massive underground vaults of water.
By drilling into these aquifers, we can pump fresh water out.
It's cheap, and in theory a renewable source of drinking water for this country.
More than half of our water is already produced this way.
The problem is, we're using too much of it too fast.
We're draining aquifers faster than they can be replenished,
and it's conpromising not only wetlands, lakes, and rivers,
but the structural integrity of Florida's limestone foundation.
In Florida, where 95% of the population relies on groundwater
for drinking, it's no surprise that sinkholes swallow up new terrain every day.
So we're right outside of Gainesville, and this house right here has a
huge *** hole in its back yard.
Looks like it's about 80 yards across,
maybe 30, 40 yards deep.
Just a *** massive hole in the center of the earth.
We spoke to some of the neighbors, no one wanted to appear on camera,
but they did know the people who lived here,
and it happened in the middle of the night.
Said it sounded like thunder, and then suddenly went outside to find
their back yard had caved in.
The Floridan Aquifer, that's where we have all the water that's underneath us.
It's kind of like a bank account,
[EMILY KNIGHT, FLORIDA SPRINGS INSTITUTE] where you have a certain amount of money,
[EMILY KNIGHT, FLORIDA SPRINGS INSTITUTE] and you have bills that need to be paid every month,
and those could be the springs, and the rivers,
that could be the uptake that's used for plants and trees.
So you have withdrawals for your account, direct withdrawals,
which would be people watering their lawns, washing their cars,
cooling towers at power plants. And then there are the deposits.
Deposits are almost exclusively from rainfall
and its just the percentage of rainfall that manages
to percolate down and get right back into the system.
Right now we happen to be in a drought,
and we happen to have the highest amount of consumptive use
that we've ever had, and there isn't enough water.
So we're trying to reach the family who lived here previously
but nobody has gotten back to us. It's super terrifying
to know that, you know, we're in a neighborhood
where there's a bunch of families, and literally at any point
*** like this can just open up.
If you've got a home with a 36 foot hole in the front yard,
[TED CORELESS, LAWYER] under the current definition of what constitutes a sinkhole,
that's not covered because it didn't affect the house.
Now forget about the fact that it completely destroys the value of the home.
The idea was introduced and ultimately adopted into law
that required all property insurers who sell insurance
in the state of Florida to provide sinkhole coverage.
When the claims got to an unacceptable level for the insurance industry
because they felt they were losing money over that,
there was a real legislative push to try and
address the issue by discouraging claims.
I mean you can see the amount of control that they're exercising
over property rights of people, by being able to
change the definition of what constitutes a sinkhole.
In Florida, we're also over-permitting.
[JILL HEINERTH, CAVE DIVER/ ACTIVIST/ FILMMAKER] We're giving permits for withdrawals of water,
water that we simply don't have.
So permits are being offered to very large industrial operations,
mining, or agriculture in some cases. It's too much.
We don't have that much water to offer.
And because of that, that's why I see the flow declining in the springs
and slowing down over time.
So if groundwater pumping empties our aquifers,
and costs homeowners billions in sinkhole damages,
why do we still do it?
Because it's cheap.
With population levels skyrocketing, especially in Florida,
the supply authorities in charge of drinking water for
Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg have to find a way to keep the taps flowing.
Tampa Bay Water has increased groundwater pumping by 400%
since 1960, extracting 4.2 billion gallons of water each day
from the Floridan aquifer, just to keep up.
The first to pay for all this pumping of course is the environment.
Florida's springs have begun drying up,
and rivers are soon predicted to follow.
I've seen the quantity of water disappearing.
I've seen the life blood of the planet slow down.
There's less flow coming out of these springs.
And I've seen a continued degrading of the quality of the water
in the springs and rivers.
As more and more sinkholes opened up,
Tampa Bay Water was hit with a number of lawsuits
from property owners whose wells had been over-pumped.
They decided to try their hand at making ocean water drinkable,
so they proposed the largest desalination plant
in the Western Hemisphere, a notoriously expensive solution
Tampa's citizens weren't exactly stoked about.
Despite the amount of energy required, Tampa Bay desalination plant
was eventually approved, and today provides around 10%
of the region's drinking water.
15 years ago, this region was suffering some drought.
[CHUCK CARDEN, TAMPA BAY WATER] Looking for water sources other than groundwater,
[CHUCK CARDEN, TAMPA BAY WATER] this was an alternative that we chose.
There was a bunch of projects we called alternative sources
that were looked at: river waters, building reservoirs,
building a desal plant. We had engineers study it, and
found out it was possible, with a cost.
And this was the most cost-effective?
It wan't the most cost-effective, but it was the most drought-proof.
Can you give us information on how much money it takes
to keep a place like this running?
I'll use the rule of thumb the plant is a 25 million gallon a day plant,
and to run it 25 million gallons a day on
365 days, it would be about 20 million dollars of operations.
So why in particular is this the most expensive?
It's all because of the power and to some degree the chemicals, but
power is close to 50% of the operating cost, just
to keep the lights and the pumps running, there's a lot of horsepower.
It is more expensive than the other sources and it's
more complicated than treating groundwater.
But when it gets down to, you don't have any water,
it's a very viable solution.
You need to go to the hospital and the only vehicle you have is an SUV?
You'll get in that SUV and it's the best way of getting there.
The bottom line with drinking water is that when you use groundwater,
let's just say it costs a penny.
If you start withdrawing water from a surface water body, a lake, a river,
and have to clean that and deliver it to the public, that costs 10 cents.
If you have to desalinate the same quantity of water, it costs a dollar.
There's springs that are drying up all over the state of Florida.
Flow is down at all of the springs.
What do we have to do to keep everything from falling apart?
The unfortunate reality is that we're already feeling the pressures
of a fresh water shortage in Florida.
Houses are falling into sinkholes, springs are drying up,
and homeowners will continue getting screwed by insurance companies
unless someone's able to find a solution.
The question really is whether or not Florida will be able to pull itself together
before everybody ends up sitting in the sinkholes in their back yards
drinking desalinated ocean water out of dixie cups.
[COMING UP]