If you live south of Royal Palm Boulevard or north of Wiles Road your water is being supplied by another government body with elected officials that you have never voted for. The City of Coral Springs doesn't supply you with your water or treat your sewage or make sure that the water levels within the canals are low enough during a storm. These supposedly elected government organizations are called Water Districts, and there are more than 5 of them serving the majority of citizens in the City of Coral Springs. Water Districts were organized by the state of Florida so that landowners could have use of treated water, proper drainage by way of all the canal systems and a place to dump the sewage from the developments they were building. This is all because many years ago Coral Springs had but a few developers. The districts were set up and the developers developed the land. Then the City of Coral Springs was incorporated and the center district called Sunshine Water District became under the control of the City of Coral Springs Public Works Department. The city expanded but never took control over North Springs Water and Coral Springs Improvement districts. These districts have been operating independent of the people they service ever since.  North Springs Improvement District has a water treatment facility. They sell water to the City Of Coral Springs (which costs us all money) when the City needs extra reserve capacity. They pump the sewage to the Broward County Sewage treatment plant, which treats the waste then dumps it into the ocean.
Coral Springs Improvement District has the territory south of Royal Palm Boulevard. It has within its facilities a water treatment plant and a sewage treatment plant. They are right next to each other. The CSID pulls fresh water from the Biscayne aquifer 200 feet below our houses and then pumps treated raw sewage 2000 feet below it. You didn't know that they pump the stuff below us in deep wells? They didn't ask you? That's because they didn't have to ask you since you don't count. You can't vote for them. We should care about this situation because the water supply and sewage treatment are essential services that a municipality normally provides. Water supply is also essential to fire fighting. We are paying for a fully staffed public works department with our taxes anyway. Having more than one organization supplying it to us only creates government wasteful spending by doubling of human resources and facilities. We can save millions of dollars a year by amalgamating the water sources in our city to operate under the Coral Springs Public Works Department. In case you are not familiar with the public works department, it is one of the largest sources of revenue to the City of Coral Springs. This is the only department within the city that makes money! Enough money to reallocate to other departments within the city thereby lowering our taxes. Whenever they save money by making the water treatment plant more efficient or by buying better, it translates into either more money for the city to use or making it easy for the City manager to lower taxes. This one department is constantly looking for ways to save the city and the taxpayers money. It's all Accounts Receivable and very little Accounts Payable. In contrast, the Coral Springs Improvement District and the North Springs Improvement District cost us money that never gets funded back into the city budget. They are completely independent and run by the highest paid civil servants in the country. They have Supervisors that are elected by people that own an acre of land and read the fine print on their voting announcement ads. That is the rule. Only landowners with and acre or greater get to vote them in. No one shows up to vote, so all of the same people get in. All of the time. They end up hiring the same legal firm and the same civil servants that are involved with more than 33 other water improvement districts. Even the state legislature tried to pass a bill to allow for more citizen voting rights by increasing the supervisors from 3 to 5 in the Coral Springs Improvement District. This was passed only to have it vetoed by Governor Jeb Bush. He said that this has to go before a public referendum so that the citizens can decide on whether or not they want more supervisors (that they can't vote for of course!) Click Here for the veto document . The Water District supervisors do what they please in an environment of uncontrolled spending and complete autonomy from our elected city commissioners. In fact they can pee in your water and they can get away with it! Just look at what they did at all the canals in the southern and northern part of the city. They went in and cut all of the trees down along all of the canals. Many homeowners were upset with this since the trees added to the beauty of their backyards. The Districts believed that the leaves were contaminating their canals and the trees got in the way of allowing them to clean the canals. They never replanted any trees as you or I would have to. Instead we have naked canal banks that are easy to access for their workers but no access to our citizens. When the city commissioners were asked about it , they said that they had no authority to do anything about. That's right. The water districts can do what they want to since they have no one to answer to. What else can they do? They can also operate recreational facilities. They can also tax us without asking us for our permission. They can hire any developer who can elect the supervisors, and use the water district as a mechanism to have our tax money flow through. ( Currently going on as we speak) When the supervisors hear something they don’t like all they need to do is blame staff and complain that their main goal is to simply make sure the water comes out of the tap! (OK, then why fund recreation facilities) They can also tax us to build “berms” and “streets” saving the developer a lot of money. We can do something about this. After much review, here is my 2 cent master plan to save us all millions of dollars: 1. Amalgamate the water districts by a referendum by the people put forth by our city commissioners. 2. Once combined, the water meter collection department to work, and fire the rest of the Improvement district staff. They are not needed. The City has a modern enough system to take care of it all with only a few more staff. ! 3. Get rid of the Sewage Treatment plant located between Ramblewood drive and Atlantic Boulevard. The people that live there know what I am talking about. Every time there is a problem at the plant they smell it long before the heads of the Coral Springs Improvement District who don't live there do. We can send our solid waster (you know the word) down to Broward County's waste treatment plant where two thirds of the city sends it. How can you have a sewage treatment plant that pumps the solid waste 2 thousand feet below us then sucks water for drinking 200 feet below us at the same location anyway? 4. Complain Complain and Complain. There is no reason to have government without representation by the citizens. With the water supply being one of the essential services a city can supply, it is time we took control of our water supply and place it under the control of people that we elect! Special District Handbook can be found at: http://www.floridacommunitydevelopment.org/sdip/documents/SpecialDistrictHandbook.pdf comments? Email Us by clicking here.... Back to Coralsprings.com | 
