Water farm helps prevent harmful freshwater discharges to the coast

On Feb. 11, the South Florida Water Management District, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Evans Properties celebrated the completion of the Scott Water Farm Project, designed to hold more than 29,000 acre feet of water (about 9 billion gallons) per year on 7,500 acres of privately-owned land. The project will pump water from the C-25 canal and store it on wetlands that allow the water to percolate into the earth, recharging the aquifer.

Florida Representative Toby Overdorf said, when combined with the Bluefield Project, the Scott Water Farm will hold back 17.8 billion gallons of water that “will never see our precious Indian River Lagoon.”

The Scott Water Farm project is a public-private partnership, involving land in two counties and two different water management districts.