Bernd Ott looked puzzled, as if he were trying to solve a riddle.

The 30-year-old German visitor gazed out toward a patch of water plants floating past a swimming hole at Wakulla Springs, a few miles south of Tallahassee. A bystander had asked him why on earth he'd drive all the way from New Orleans to sit beside a Florida spring.

Taking off his round-rimmed glasses, he gestured toward moss-laden oaks and pond cypresses along a riverbank that once served as a backdrop for Tarzan movies and the '50's horror classic Creature from the Black Lagoon.

“This is the largest spring in the world,” said Ott, a software engineer from Munich. “There's nothing like this in Europe. The trees, the plants, the animals. Everything is completely different here.”

A computer exposition in New Orleans was the reason Ott and his three co-workers came to the U. S. Their itinerary provided for three days of sightseeing. In those 72 hours, they planned to experience Bourbon Street, visit an Orlando theme park, and explore a deepwater spring in Florida.

Getting to the spring from New Orleans took some doing for the four Bavarian engineers unfamiliar with traveling in the Florida Panhandle. They wound up spending a Saturday night at the Cherokee Motel in Blountstown, a two-traffic-light town in the middle of the Apalachicola National Forest. The party then drove another 90 minutes on two-lane roads to reach Wakulla Springs State Park.

Spring Greening

Ott is one of an estimated two million tourists who will be drawn to a Florida spring in 2003. He follows in the footsteps of countless others who, since the arrival of native peoples 12,000 years ago, discovered the irresistibility of the peninsula's incredible bounty of gin-clear spring waters.

With more than 700 springs identified from Pensacola to Key West—including some of the biggest and deepest on Earth—Florida can rightly boast of being the Spring Capital of the World.

For more than 200 years, writers have struggled to describe the unworldly, air-like clarity of the water in Florida's natural springs. Naturalist William Bartram, who searched the Southeast in the 1760s for new plant specimens, compared the surrealistic ambience of what may have been Volusia Blue Spring, near Orange City in western Volusia County, to that of “a piece of excellent painting.”

He described the disorienting effect of looking into water so clear that it is nearly invisible: “(it appears) . . . that you may without the least difficulty touch any one of the fish, or put your finger upon a crocodile's eye, when it is really twenty or thirty feet underwater.”

One can't be sure which spring Bartram was describing here, but one can rest assured that if it was Volusia Blue, he wouldn't recognize it today.

“I think we should rename it Volusia Green,” quipped Harley Means, a geologist with the Florida Geological Survey. Means is referring to an invasion of algae that has turned the spring's legendary blue waters into a shade of pea soup. It's a problem turning up throughout the state.

“Every single spring we've sampled in Florida has degraded water quality,” Means said. “Our primary contamination is coming from nitrates in storm water run-off.”

Far beyond worries of over-consumption and contamination from saltwater, degradation from nitrate pollution is the number-one menace threatening Florida's springs. Nitrates are nitrogen-oxygen chemical units that combine with organic and inorganic compounds. Nitrates are used as fertilizer and the primary sources include human sewage and livestock manure.

Heavy loads of nitrates can swamp a spring's normal nutritional balance. When they sweep into the sunny depths of a clear spring, they create an all-you-can-eat buffet for plants—including many noxious varieties such as bluegreen algae. An over-fed plant community can overwhelm and eventually kill a spring's ecosystem.

“Once nitrates get into a spring system they wreak havoc,” Means said. “It's like tossing a whole bunch of food in there, and algae takes advantage.”

Almost wherever one cares to look, higher than normal nitrate levels have penetrated the state's best spring systems. Some levels exceed federal and state drinking water standards. A number of springs are closed to swimming and have been for years, and others have simply gone dry.

A Cabana-style bathhouse once attracted folks to Wall Springs in Pinellas County, now closed to the public because of pollution. Kissengen Springs in Bartow was pumped dry years ago. Telford Springs, near Live Oak, is on the verge of becoming unusable because all-terrain vehicles have eroded the banks, allowing run-off from farms to flow directly into the spring.

Popular Pollution

In a development that Florida environmentalists say is long overdue, Florida's bureaucrats and scientists now officially recognize that Florida's unrivalled natural heritage in springs faces a crisis. The core of the problem, they say, is hardly surprising—an exploding population.

In just 30 years, Florida's population has ballooned by more than 150 percent. Although concentrated in the state's southern half, today's 16 million residents are spilling over into traditionally sparsely populated areas. What's alarming to state officials is that these areas comprise what they call the state's “spring region” where Florida's finest springs are found.

The region resembles an upended triangle, with a base extending from Walton County in the Panhandle to Nassau County above Jacksonville and tapering to an apex near Tampa in Hillsborough County. This spring zone is home to no less than 12 state parks built around springs and another eight springs that are largely surrounded by state-owned lands.

No place in this spring zone is exempt from people pressure these days. Wakulla Springs in the Panhandle, for example, lies at the doorstep of Leon County, whose population has nearly tripled since 1970. In the southern end of the region, growth has been comparatively slower, but relentless. In the same period, Hillsborough County's population jumped from 490,000 to a little over a million.

Between 1980 and 2000, the state's people-per-square-mile ratio also rose dramatically, from 179 to 296. More people correlates with more nitrates winding up in Florida's springs, says Means.

There's no mystery where the nitrate pollution comes from. Ironically, it stems from the very reasons Florida is so popular to begin with. With its enormous consumption of fertilizers, the Sunshine State's $9 billion agricultural industry is a chief contributor to the problem. Aggravating it is an annual flood of nitrate-laden run-off from the state's 1,370 golf courses, a mainstay of the state's tourism industry. Adding to the mix is the ubiquitous homeowner habit of keeping lawns lush and green through constant applications of fertilizer and pesticides.

In the face of all this, are Florida's springs inevitably doomed? For the first time ever, state planners are soberly asking the question. In 1999, the state's Department of Environmental Protection established a Florida Springs Task Force to assess the predicament of the state's freshwater treasures and to lay a blueprint for staving off a catastrophe.

Pricing Paradise

The idea for a springs task force came during a well publicized canoe ride Gov. Jeb Bush and his environmental chief David Struhs took down the Ichetucknee River in June 1999.

The trip was supposed to be a fact-finding mission about Florida springs led by Jim Stevenson, a well known springs expert and a DEP employee (now retired). At the time, Bush and Struhs were wrestling with what to do about a proposal to build a cement factory near the Ichetucknee recharge area. Fearing the plant would pollute the river and its spring headwaters, environmentalists urged the governor to deny the company state permits needed to build the factory.

At a news conference along the river's bank, the governor called the Ichetucknee “spectacular” and boldly promised that the plant would not be built. Anderson Columbia, a road-building company that wanted the plant, responded by filing a lawsuit against the state. Negotiations prompted by the suit led to an agreement that allowed the factory to be built.

The incident is a textbook example of the political power-struggle now affecting Florida's springs. Nonetheless, it helped spur DEP's resolve to put all springs issues into perspective so that planners could finally get a clear handle on what should—and could—be done.

Made up of government specialists, scientists and corporate and environmental leaders, the Springs Task Force started with a given—that Florida's springs were worth saving. But exactly why, and at what cost?

One of the first things the group did was to call for the creation of a corps of researchers who could do the fieldwork necessary to get at such answers. The 2000 Legislature responded with the creation of the $2.5 million Florida Springs Initiative, and the project's technical prowess was placed under the Florida Geological Survey headquartered at Florida State.

Stevenson, the project's first director, soon discovered that surprisingly little was known about the economic benefits of Florida springs. He turned to Florida State researchers for some answers.

Mark A. Bonn, director of the resort and condominium management program at FSU's Dedman School of Hospitality, and economics professor Frederick W. Bell were commissioned to document the importance of springs to the state's economy and establish a baseline which planners could use to measure the potential of ecotoursm and sensible rural development.

The researchers selected four prominent, spring-based state parks for the study. Their findings, released last April, represent a starting point for what surely will be heated debates to come over how to manage a resource that no other place on Earth can match.

Cold Gold

In her hit song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” in 1970 Joanie Mitchell lamented: “Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.”

The sentiment precisely fits a theme underlying the FSU spring study. For the first time, say its authors, Florida now has a real dollars-and-cents idea of what the state stands to lose if its government fails to adequately protect—and market—its one-of-a-kind spring system.

The four springs studied in the Economic Impact of Selected Florida Springs on Surrounding Local Areas are in counties where poverty and unemployment rates are higher than the state average and income and job growth is lower, said Bonn. Targeted were Wakulla Springs State Park, Ichetucknee State Park, Homosassa Springs State Park and Volusia Blue Spring State Park. A second study included an analysis of the economic potential of ecotourism in the Suwannee River basin (see sidebar).

Bonn and Bell were surprised by what they found. In short, the springs they studied were revealed to be substantial moneymakers, and sitting on untapped potential for stimulating local businesses even further.

“Spring parks are an export business that drives local economies,” said Bonn. “They bring in money that has a multiplying effect as it works its way through the local economy. But it's all dependent on good water quality.”

All four of the study springs are popular, averaging 254,000 visitors a year. Of the four, Wakulla Springs had the lowest attendance with 184,000 in 2002 and Volusia Blue led the list with 377,000.

“We were surprised that people were willing to wait in line, in their cars, for hours to enter Volusia Blue. And they also were willing to do that at Ichetucknee,” said Bonn. “I think the state should coin the phrase 'natural spring tourism' and brand this specific type of experience.”

The FSU researchers found that visitors spend an average of $17 million annually at each of the communities surrounding a park and that this money translates into 259 (albeit low-wage) jobs. They compare this economic punch to a community that hosts a spring training camp for a major league baseball team, and say it's more money than Hillsborough County—Florida's second most popular tourist destination—annually collects in bed tax ($14 million).

“And this is without all the negative side-effects of urban tourism such as wastewater and garbage,” said Bonn.

But again, he stressed that this economic muscle is bound to a single bone—high-quality water. Whether they use their water for recreation or industry, Bonn is convinced that communities have a strong economic interest in fighting to protect the quality of spring water.

“The challenge is to keep high-impact activities away from these springs,” said Bonn. “Communities should try to plan (growth) so that damage can be minimized.”

If spring-based communities need an example of what to do, Bonn said they should look no further than Wakulla Springs. He believes what's happened there in recent years could serve as a model for balancing use and protection.

Wakulla as Model

Lamar Hale of Thomasville, Georgia watches his nephew and niece plunge from the 20-foot-high diving platform into the bracing waters of Wakulla Springs. He laughs when the teen-age boy shoots up from the depth and breaks the surface like a ball fired from a submarine cannon.

Florida deepwater springs pour from the ground at a constant 72 degrees (F) year-round. Layers of sand, clay and limestone insulate the aquifer—a vast, subterranean river—from fluctuation in surface temperature. The water that emerges after decades underground nearly matches what the National Climatic Data Center pegs as the annual average temperature for the state, 70.7 degrees. It provides a refreshing oasis from the blast-furnace heat of a deep-south summer.

The Hale family has been swimming at Wakulla Springs for three generations. Lamar said his first time was in 1958, when he was five years old. From the platform, which provides a panoramic view of the park and spring, he eyes what appears to be a 25-foot, green oblong patch of algae in the river the spring feeds. “We never saw that stuff here when I was a child,” he said.

Mark Bonn frets over such comments like a farmer whose proverbial goose has come down with a fever. Of the four parks in the study, Wakulla Springs had a greater economic impact ($22 million) in its county than two other parks in the study. This despite having the lowest annual attendance of the four.

“These springs are people magnets, ” said Bonn. “To be able to see down 90 feet or more, watching the water bubble up—such sites are so rare that people want to experience them.

“But what we're finding out is that the economic value of a pristine spring transcends recreational value.”

Alan Freeland is president-elect of the Wakulla Chamber of Commerce and chairman of its economic development council. He smiled when told of the effort four German tourists made to visit Wakulla Springs.

“Of course they stayed in Blountstown,” said Freedland. “There's no place for them to stay around here.” Although the park features a historic, 27-room lodge, Freedland's point is well taken. Few other rooms-for-rent can be found near the spring, a fact that doesn't bother Freedland a bit.

“We don't want Disney World here,” he said. “Tallahassee may see the spring as an economic development tool but we consider it family. It gets that kind of reverence here.”

Apparently, such reverence is justified. When developers threatened to put a gasoline station near the springs in 1995, local environmentalists linked arms and got the project stopped in its tracks (see “The Battle for Wakulla Springs,”). Today, the state park supports 347 employees in Wakulla County, more jobs than the county's largest manufacturer.

“That spring provides a bigger economic impact to Wakulla County than the New York Yankees provides to Hillsborough County during six weeks of spring training,” said Bonn. “We've shown what's going on, the money that is changing hands at the springs.

“Now the questions we pose to the communities are, do you want to take some of this money and use it to maintain these economic engines? Do you want to keep these benefits flowing?”

Bottling Florida

Bonn's face brightens as he begins talking about a new water-bottling project at a spring in Madison County. Nestle Water of North America is building the facility in the small town of Lee. Bonn touts the job-creation of the plant, which will distribute the water around the world while generating greater community incentive to protect the spring's recharge area.

Nestle says the plant will initially hire 50 to 70 employees and may provide 250 jobs within 10 years. Although some residents complained the county offered too many incentives to lure the company, officials say the project is the biggest economic boost the county has had in a decade.

Thanks to Florida's abundant supply, bottled spring water is big business in the state. Bottlers withdraw more than 2 million gallons a day and are permitted by the state to mine up to 8 million gallons. Last year, a tidal wave of Florida spring water was sold in supermarkets and other venues, throughout the U.S. According to the Beverage Market Association, the sales volume was enough to give every man, woman and child in the country 21 gallons, an 11-percent increase from the previous year.

Some of the industry's bigger players have sizeable operations in Florida. Nestle, which accounts for about a third of bottled water sales in the U.S., markets the water of Crystal Springs—located 15 miles north of Tampa in Hillsborough County—as its Zephyrhills brand. Dannon, which along with Coke owns Danzai, bottles water at Ginnie Springs. Florida water also appears under such brands as Great Spring Waters of America, Ozarka and Deer Park. The more popular brands are sold for more than $21 a gallon.

Bonn and others see the water bottling business as a potentially powerful means of building public support for tighter regulations on water quality. The issue, though, worries some who fear the consequences of falling prey to greedy corporations.

Groups opposed to the industry say they fear the commercialization of water will lead to the springs being pumped dry. Organizations have sprung up in several states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, under names like Save Our Springs, to oppose granting rights to bottle companies.

Nestle promotes its Zephyrhills water by describing the “500 acres of environmentally preserved land” that surrounds the spring and how “no more than 5 percent” of the spring's water flow is drawn. Such claims are dismissed by critics who say profit motives will inevitably lead to stepped up consumption by bottlers of Florida spring water.

Dan Pennington is a community planner with 1000 Friends of Florida, a non-profit watchdog group that monitors growth management in Florida. He thinks much of the alarm over Florida's water bottling business is unfounded and welcomes the industry.

“Bottled water can be an ally (in the effort to preserve springs),” he said. “It creates jobs and is an industry that is concerned and will look out after the landscape. It makes little sense to pump a spring dry when it will continue to provide benefits well into the future.”

Forever Blue

Once-picturesque Sulfur Springs in Hillsborough County could be a poster-child for Florida's diseased springs.

Located seven miles from the heart of downtown Tampa, for years the site was a popular resort that supported a thriving shopping district with an art deco theater. When the spring tourism boon faded, the county ran the springs as a public swimming facility. Today, the site is fenced off from people by a concrete wall. The water is so polluted that health officials consider it toxic.

“That's a perfect example of what can happen if we do nothing,” said Mike Bascom, director of the Florida Springs Initiative. “Sulfur Springs is never going to recover.”

If it accomplishes nothing else, Florida's newfound interest in its storied fortune in spring water already has proven one thing—it's not too late.

Scientists agree that the bulk of the state's vast, underground repositories of water is still safe and clean. The recent upsurge in interest from bottling companies eager to profit from this amazing wealth of potable water amply demonstrates as much. And the recent FSU study underlines not only the current economic value of some of the state's most popular swimming holes, but also hints at how springs can return to their historic place in Florida's tourism-driven economy.

“There's been an awakening,” said 1000 Friend's Pennington. “We once looked at springs as a roadside attraction, sort of like an oddity. But they're a sustainable resource. If we protect them, we'll benefit. If we don't, they'll turn green and be gone forever.”