From the Gainesville Sun

By Christopher Curry

A long-lingering application to pump water from wells near Lilly Springs for a bottling operation was unanimously denied Tuesday by the Suwannee River Water Management District Governing Board.

Applicants Richard Corbin and John A. Barley sought to pump 400,000 gallons a day of water from two wells in Gilchrist County, about a half-mile south of Lilly Springs. Corbin and Barley could not be reached for comment.

The wells would have been on a 3.5-acre parcel at Northeast County Road 340 and Northeast 90th Avenue, just across the Alachua County line and southwest of Poe Springs Park.

Governing Board member David Flagg said the application was denied with prejudice, meaning any future application would have to be significantly different to be considered. Flagg said board members approved staff's recommendation of denial with prejudice because the plan was to pump water from within the district boundaries and truck it elsewhere for bottling.

Water management district staff's recommendation of denial stated that the applicants did not show that a pumping operation was a “reasonable-beneficial use” of the resource or “consistent with the public interest.”

Staff stated concerns that the withdrawal would have “unacceptable impacts” on the flow from Hornsby Spring in Alachua County and that the applicants “failed to provide reasonable assurances” that environmental harm would not be done to other area springs, wetlands, the Santa Fe River and Poe Springs Nature Park.

Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, president of the Our Santa Fe River, an environmental group formed to fight this application and other proposed water bottling operations, said she was “very pleased” with the denial and, in particular, the rationale for it.

“The staff gave the board good information, and the board took that information and denied the permit because it was not a reasonable and beneficial use and not in the public interest,” Malwitz-Jipson said. “That's huge. It was based on very important issues that are often overlooked when considering these types of permits. The citizens do not want these (bottling operations).”

A business plan previously submitted by Corbin and Barley stated the water would be transported off site in tanker trucks and possibly sold through Panther Creek Inc., a spring water brokerage firm based in the Liberty County municipality of Telogia.