Apparently, the Mayor and Commissioners of the Town of Lady Lake voted against a developer.

That would be a first if that developer was ‘The Villages’.

But it’s not!

The request was for 82 new residences on an 18 acre site located next to the ‘Lake Sumter Apartment Homes’ on the corner of CR 466 and Cherry Lake Road, called ‘Sumter Villas’.

This despite the fact that Lady Lake does supply water to the huge ‘Lake Sumter Apartments’ next door, and in Sumter County.

The Mayor of Lady Lake, Ruth Kussard was quoted “An important thing to remember is (that) this is in Sumter County. We would have absolutely no jurisdiction over this project. Why would we give our water to another county? We need to look out for the residents of Lady Lake.”

Commissioner Tony Holden said “The town (of Lady Lake) should not be propping up development in Sumter County. We are not in the business of developing in Sumter County. We already have too much invested over there. Let’s stick to the Town of Lady Lake and Lake County,”

Commissioner Dan Vincent asked why ‘The Villages’ isn’t extending water for the planned development.

“Why aren’t you going to The Villages?” he asked.

An obvious answer is “Why would ‘The Villages’ enable competition?”

Back in the 90’s, the State of Florida approved the use of about 63 million gallons a year for The Villages.

Now ‘The Villages’ sucks up about 12.4 BILLION gallons from the aquifer every year.

As if that’s not enough, there’s another 850 million gallons annually for their extensions into Wildwood/Coleman in Sumter County.

Twenty years ago, the St. Johns River Water Management District (SWMD) admitted that the aquifer had dropped as much as 10 feet in ‘The Villages’ and, as predicted, that has continued.

Not to be deterred, they just extended the permit to the lower aquifer.

Is that a problem?

Well, the springs are down every year, wetlands are drying up and sink-holes are often reported within ‘The Villages’.

Even now we have salt water intrusion in coastal areas.

Sounds like a problem to me!

Is there a solution?

Not really!

In our system, wealth is created by development- residential, commercial, government, recreation. streets and services.

Almost every day we see politicians and business leaders bragging on creating another 5,000 jobs.

At the same time, we have thousands of unfilled jobs, so we are urgently in need of more people.

That means, more homes, more schools, more cars, more highways, more shops, stores and services.

The upside? – More wealth and more prosperity.

The downside? – More congestion, more pollution and more contamination.

Do we have an alternative, a choice?

I don’t think we do . . .

‘til next time

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CEP – Click to learn more

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