Taylor Creek Reservoir and Wellfield Environmental Monitoring Services

The St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) issued a Consumptive Use Permit (CUP) to the City of Cocoa, Florida for the withdrawal of 9 million gallons per day (mgd) average flow from Taylor Creek Reservoir and wellfields located south of the Beeline Expressway (SR 528) on the Deseret Ranch property in Orange County, Florida. The City required an ecological team to provide monitoring of the wellfield to ensure compliance with the issued permit.

DRMP’s ecological team provided the water use and vegetative monitoring as part of the CUP for the Taylor Creek Reservoir and wellfields.  DRMP conducted vegetative monitoring of 31 wetlands transects within and outside the wellfield’s zone of influence.  Data collected at these sites included herbaceous vegetation, shrub, sapling, subcanopy, canopy data, hand fern data and hydrological data.  The main elements of the monitoring plan consisted of continuous monitoring of water levels within the floodplain downstream of the reservoir, monitoring of wetlands within and contiguous to the reservoir, monitoring of the floodplain wetlands downstream of the reservoir and reference floodplain wetlands and monitoring of the hand fern communities in the downstream floodplains.  The monitoring plan also consisted of developing a hydrology report from data collected from wetland transects piezometers located in the wellfields.  Data were compiled and results were submitted to the St. Johns River Water Water Management District (SJRWMD) within annual monitoring reports for District approval. 

DRMP’s monitoring ensured that the withdrawal of the water from the reservoir had no negative impacts to any surrounding areas or wetlands. The withdrawal will provide the Taylor Creek Reservoir with more leeway in the estimated 4 billion gallon fresh water capacity. The study will ensure the City of Cocoa will maintain permit compliance.