Media Update

By Chad Smith
Staff writer

In the midst of a drought and more discussion in the region about water usage, the Alachua County Commission on Tuesday was urged to do more to move toward a solution.

In a presentation to the board, Robert Knight, the founder and director of the H.T. Odum Florida Springs Institute, a Gainesville-based nonprofit organization, said the springs that feed into the Santa Fe River, including Poe and Ginnie springs, have drained at much steeper rates than the decrease in rainfall would warrant.

That, Knight said, meant the culprit was human pumping.

"That's the only thing we can control," he said. "We can't control the rainfall."

He also said the drop in the flow from the springs couldn't be completely accounted for by pumping in the springshed, meaning pumping in other areas like Jacksonville was impacting water quantity here.

In the last 30 years, Knight said, rainfall has declined by 15 percent while the spring flow has dropped by 40 percent.

While Knight's presentation focused on water in the northwestern part of the county as well as in neighboring counties, Bob Palmer reminded commissioners that Orange Lake, near the Marion County border, was also severely depleted.

"The southeast corner isn't any better," said Palmer, the chairman of Alachua County's citizen Environmental Protection Advisory Committee.

Palmer suggested the county move from allowing landscape watering twice a week to once a week, adding that other counties around the state have taken that step.

"To me, that's kind of an easy one," Palmer said.

Rob Brinkman, a local environmental advocate, told commissioners that the state water management districts that operate in Alachua County don't have the ability to enforce water restrictions and that the county should spend money to hire people who can.

"You cannot afford not to do it," Brinkman said, adding that the economic impact of a water crisis would outweigh those costs.

Chris Bird, the county's environmental protection director, told commissioners his department has had an unpaid intern collecting data on water shortages.

Bird also said he disagreed with a recent finding by Gainesville Regional Utilities, the city-owned utility, that much of the water depletion is due to environmental factors.

But, he said, if the commission wanted his department to tackle the initiative head-on, it would have to drop another project. Like other areas of county government, the environmental protection department is short-staffed and under-funded, Bird said.

"If you want us to take on a new major initiative, something's got to give," he said.

In the end, commissioners voted unanimously to have staff revive a report from a year ago about the quality of water in the area.

After a presentation to reintroduce those findings, commissioners will go from there.

Commissioner Mike Byerly said he was hoping to get going sooner than later -- and to provide funding if necessary.

Byerly said it seemed to be deemed an urgent issue by just about everyone.

"If that doesn't warrant some increased attention and resources, then I don't know what does," he said.

Chairwoman Paula DeLaney agreed that it is a pressing issue for the county, let alone the state.

"At what point is there simply no more water?" DeLaney said.

In other business, the commission, without any discussion, unanimously approved a six-month extension on the moratorium of so-called Internet sweepstakes cafes, which law-enforcement officials and other opponents argue are illegal gambling operations.

In November, the commission approved a six-month moratorium on the businesses, which are typically run by nonprofit organizations and sell things like calling cards and give customers chances on online "sweepstakes" games that play like slot machines.

There are currently about 20 such businesses in the city limits, but none in the unincorporated county.

By Chad Smith
Staff writer

The Alachua County Commission on Tuesday approved a program that would allow residents on rural, unpaved roads to opt in to a special assessment to pay to have their street paved.

The commission voted, 3-1, with Commissioner Winston Bradley absent, to have staff draft an ordinance that would start the program, which would require at least 60 percent of residents on the road in question to respond to the request for pavement.

Then, 75 percent of respondents would have to be in favor of the assessment for it to be sent to the commission, which would give ultimate approval.

Commissioner Mike Byerly, who cast the dissenting vote, said he didn’t think it was a fair process for people who don’t want to opt in, adding that those who choose to live in rural areas know that paved roads aren’t part of the equation.

Byerly said he and his wife currently are building a house on a rough, dirt road.

Also, he said, those who live near intersections with paved roads will have to pay the same assessment but won’t get the same benefit.

“The costs are the same for everyone, but the benefits are clearly not,” he said.

Jack Zuidema, who lives on a dirt road, told commissioners he was in favor of the program, saying he believed it would add to property values.

Not to mention, it would be easier on vehicles, he said.

Zuidema said he was hauling a horse down his street once, and the road was so bumpy it spooked the horse, which kicked through the windows at the top of the trailer.

“I’ve been a homeowner, a landowner, a rancher,” he said. “I’ve owned land over there since 1984. We’ve traveled that dusty, rugged, muddy, washboard road for many, many years.”

Michael Fay, the county’s development program manager, said each project would cost between $250,000 and $300,000, and it would cost each resident paying the assessment more than $250 a year in most cases.

The assessments would be levied for 10 years.

Fay said the county would pave the roads by a process called chip-sealing that would be easier and cheaper to maintain than the unpaved, limerock roads they would be replacing.

By Anne Geggis
Staff writer

Alachua County leaders this week are gathering to mark the end of a flu season that barely touched the area and celebrate the county's off-the-charts vaccination rate against one of the biggest, seasonal killers.

But it's happening in the midst of one of the county's worst outbreaks of another vaccine-preventable illness: the chickenpox. The number of diagnosed cases reached 84 Monday, when typically, only a handful of cases are recorded.

For Paul Myers, Alachua County Health Department's director, having both a nationally recognized campaign against the flu at the same time as the chickenpox flare-up has an inescapable point.

"It's ironic and it further underscores the fact that when you have significant pockets of unvaccinated people living close together, a disease can be introduced, gain momentum and spill into the general population," Myers said.

Myers and others also are watching whether parental interest in vaccinating against the flu is on the wane from when the novel flu virus was at its height — as vaccination rates in the school program has waned since then.

Unlike the 2009-10 year when the flu virus H191 was spreading statewide and nationally, this year's flu season was a mild one. After starting in late February — later than any flu season in 29 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control — hospitalizations and deaths for flu were lower than average.

CDC estimates that from the 1976-1977 season to the 2006-2007 flu season, flu-associated deaths in the United States ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people.

And it looks like it's going to be a below-average year.

In Florida, flu never reached the widespread level, and regional outbreaks were reported for only four weeks out of the past 17. The amount of Alachua County's flu never reached beyond the mild activity level.

At the University of Florida's Emerging Pathogens Institute, this is the third year of gathering data on whether widespread vaccination of school-age children can lower the overall flu in a community.

Anecdotally, the campaign seems to be having the effect of reducing the flu, said Dr. J. Glenn Morris Jr., director of UF's Emerging Pathogens Institute.

"The impression of pediatricians and general practitioners is that since we started the campaign, we have seen significantly less flu," Morris said, adding it's going to take another year or two to gather the necessary data.

"What gets tricky is the intensity of the flu changes from year to year — you want to make sure what you're seeing is not random chance," he added.

What's unmistakable, though, is the admiration that the flu vaccination effort — which has brought together UF, school and Health Department officials — has garnered.

Most communities rely on parents making a special trip to the Health Department or the doctor to get their kids vaccinated against the flu.

Last year, for vaccinating at school, Alachua County was recognized as the national winner for a community campaign for immunization by the National Influenza Vaccine Summit, which is co-sponsored by the American Medical Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with the goal of addressing and resolving influenza and influenza vaccine issues.

Last month, Dr. Parker Small, a member of the Emerging Pathogens Institute and a professor emeritus of the pathology and pediatrics departments at UF's College of Medicine, was named Florida's first Childhood Immunization Champion. He was recognized for his work teaching immunology that has become a model for medical schools across the county and for his work driving the school-based vaccination program against the flu.

In spite of these accolades, however, there's some evidence that parents are less interested in signing the permission slip for their children to get a dose of FluMist at school.

Vaccination rates for elementary-level students continued a two-year dip to 46 percent after 50 percent were vaccinated during the year of H1N1 in 2009-10 — the novel flu virus dubbed "swine flu."

CDC numbers show that last year, 36.5 percent of the general population was vaccinated against the flu.

The Health Department's Myers said he thinks the level of vaccination was lower at the crucial, elementary school age level because of the mild season. It's the same kind of threat that could undermine progress against all the diseases that vaccination has been winning for the past 50 years.

"What we're seeing is complacency in the absence of disease, which is driven by high vaccination rates," he said. "Complacency starts to set in when people don't see disease in the community."

Jeanette Sexton, who is taking care of her 5-year-old grandson full-time, said she didn't have him vaccinated because that was low on a list of pressing priorities. She said she has questions about whether vaccines cause other health-related problems, but that's not why she passed on the seasonal flu vaccine for both herself and her grandson.

"My life is too busy — I just forgot about it," said Sexton, who works as a registered nurse in the neonatal intensive-care unit at Shands at the University of Florida. "Unless someone I know has the flu, the flu is not a reality for me."

When she heard about the chickenpox outbreak, however, she made sure that he was up-to-date on those shots.

Shirley Serrano of Gainesville had her daughter, a kindergartener, vaccinated for the flu.

"I thought it was helpful — so she wouldn't get sick," Serrano said.

Her husband added: "We took the school's word that it was good for her."