Water Price Responsiveness and Administrative Regulation—The Florida Example

Florida has an estimated 618 trillion gallons of fresh water in the aquifer system. In addition, there is a considerable amount of water in lakes, and annual runoff from streams (and underground aquifer seepage) has been estimated at 40 billion gallons [1, p. 9]. The annual runoff alone is seven times the withdrawal (about 14 percent) and 22 times the consumption (about 5 percent). A curious development has occurred in Florida, however, that would not have been expected by the reviewer of such aggregated figures. The general populace and, as a result, the legislators, became concerned enough with water management and use in the early 1970s to develop and implement sweeping water legislation. The nature of this legislation had not heretofore been observed in the southeast nor, for that matter, almost anywhere else in the eastern United States. The Florida Water Act of 1972 [3] was enacted to deal with localized shortages that were developing in, and have been compounded since, the late 1960s.