Florida Springs

Why should it be a National Park?

Florida has more first-magnitude springs than any other place on the planet. A first-magnitude spring discharges at least sixty-four million gallons a day, and Florida has more than thirty of them, water that fell as rain, filtered down through a thousand feet of limestone, and came back up clear enough to read a newspaper through twenty feet of it. Silver Springs alone pushes out five hundred million gallons a day and has been a tourist attraction since the 1870s, when steamboats came up the Ocklawaha to see it. The springs are in trouble, and the trouble is invisible. Nitrate from fertilizer and septic systems has turned water that was once gin-clear into water that grows mats of algae. Aquifer withdrawals have cut flows. Several springs that ran continuously for thousands of years have stopped.

In July 2025 a Florida congressman filed a bill to study a Florida Springs National Park covering as much as 2,800 square miles. It is a study bill, not a park, and the reaction among the people who have spent their careers on these springs has been skeptical. Their objection is precise: a National Park boundary does not govern the aquifer, and the aquifer is the problem. Pumping and pollution happen on farms and lawns far outside any line the Park Service could draw. It is the rare case where the people who love a place most are the ones arguing that a park would not save it.