The private, non-profit Florida Springs Institute assessed north Florida dairies as a source of pollution to the Floridan Aquifer and artesian springs (https://floridaspringsinstitute.org/reports/). Ongoing monitoring of public and private supply wells, and the region’s springs and rivers, is documenting severe nitrogen pollution that is impairing ecological and human health.

The typical Florida dairy cow weighs 1,400 pounds and generates 300 pounds of nitrogen waste each year. That nutrient load is roughly equivalent to the waste from 30 humans. But unlike human wastes, dairy wastes are not subject to advanced treatment to remove harmful nutrients prior to discharge. In fact, in Florida, most dairy wastes are captured in a lagoon, diluted with groundwater, and sprayed as a slurry onto the ground to fertilize crops fed back to the cows.
The geology in the entire Suwannee River Basin agricultural area is karstic, namely sand lying above and in direct contact with the unconfined porous limestone aquifer below.  Inevitably, a large percentage of pollutants deposited on the land surface of the Suwannee Basin find their way vertically down into the potable groundwater. This is a problem for the more than 300 artesian springs in the Suwannee River Basin and the mostly rural inhabitants drawing their drinking water from the unprotected Floridan Aquifer.

Dairies are by no means the sole source of this pollution. According to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, excess nitrogen in north Florida’s springs and rivers is due to the combined effects of agricultural fertilizers, animal wastes (dairy, poultry, and cattle), and, to a lesser extent, human wastes from septic systems.

A mature Holstein dairy cow produces about 70 pounds of milk per day (John Moran photo).

But the region’s expanding dairy cow population stands out as the most concentrated source of environmental nitrogen pollution in north Florida. The study from the Springs Institute estimated that a small number of dairies are contributing about one fourth of the total anthropogenic nitrogen load to the regional groundwater.
Nitrate is the most stable form of nitrogen in water and is tasteless and invisible. Nitrate in drinking water is dissolved and cannot be removed by filtration.
Plant and animal communities living in springs are sensitive to very low concentrations of nitrate-nitrogen in groundwater. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Total Maximum Daily Load for nitrate-nitrogen in Florida’s springs is 0.35 parts per million (ppm).
While the Department’s nitrate-nitrogen maximum load for springs is 0.35 ppm, this standard is seven times higher than 0.05 ppm, the natural nitrate concentration in north Florida’s unpolluted springs and groundwater. And yet, Florida Department of Environmental Protection regulations allow dairies to raise groundwater nitrate concentrations to 10 ppm, 30 times higher than the springs regulatory threshold, and 200 times higher than the natural background concentration.

Nitrogen-rich dairy wastes originate as cow manure and urine and are released into our groundwater daily (John Moran photo).

Since 2018, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has been working on a series of Basin Management Action Plans intended to reduce nitrogen loading in the Suwannee River Basin and adjacent areas.  But each passing year has recorded increasing nitrogen loads to this region’s springs and rivers from expanding dairies and agricultural fertilizer use.

The Department’s 2025 plan requires an 85 percent nitrogen load reduction to groundwater within the Suwannee River Basin. To achieve this target, farms and communities throughout the basin will need to reduce their annual nitrogen loads from fertilizers and animal wastes by an estimated 40 million pounds.
Despite the critical condition of the springs in the Suwannee River Basin, state government has given themselves a deadline of 2038 to achieve this required nitrogen load reduction goal. No progress with achieving this nitrogen load reduction goal is evident following the first 8 years of plan implementation.

How Much Milk is Too Much?

Florida’s dairy pollution history provides some insight into the workings of Florida’s government.
In the 1970s and 1980s farm based nutrients flowing into south Florida’s Lake Okeechobee (i.e., from the Kissimmee River, Taylor Creek, Fish Eating Creek, and Nubbin Slough) nearly tripled, leading to eutrophication and algal blooms in the lake and to downstream water quality impairments in the Everglades National Park.

North Florida dairies are milk factories and have a corporate responsibility to protect their neighbors and the environment (John Moran photo).

North Florida dairies are milk factories and have a corporate responsibility to protect their neighbors and the environment (John Moran photo)
At the same time, the federal government initiated the 1986 Dairy Termination Project. This program was undertaken to reduce excess milk supply (and boost milk prices) by paying dairy farmers to slaughter or export their entire dairy herds and committing themselves to leave farming for at least five years.
In 1987 the Florida Department of Environmental Protection used this program to pay for dairies to move out of south Florida to help reduce their contributions to the increasing nutrient pollution in Lake Okeechobee. One news article indicated that 32 of 51 dairies in Okeechobee County took advantage of the payout and left.
Dairies in the Suwannee Basin in north Florida experienced a notable expansion in the late 1980s, about the same time as the government’s south Florida dairy buyout. Within three decades north Florida dairies outnumbered south Florida dairies with 91 dairies and 38,388 dairy cows in the seven counties comprising the Suwannee River Basin (Lafayette, Gilchrist, Suwannee, Alachua, Jefferson, Madison, and Levy counties).

Mature Holstein cows wait their turn at the milking machines in a Florida dairy (John Moran photo).

The move of dairies from south to north Florida was made possible by federal and state funding, access to cheap agricultural land in north Florida, low populations of mostly rural neighbors, and ideal growing seasons. There was only one caveat – rainfall in north Florida is less predictable and dairy farmers could not count on a successful grain crop for their cows every year.

There are 15 large north Florida dairy with an estimated 72,000 dairy cattle (John Moran photo).

Widespread access to water use permits from the Suwannee River Water Management District to pump large quantities of free groundwater and federal subsidies for irrigation equipment helped turn north Florida into the dairy cow and row crop capital it is today.

These row crop and dairy operations are not small family farms, but large corporate businesses made profitable by consuming the public’s groundwater resources for free with minimal requirements to protect groundwater quality and public health.

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)

The non-profit Springs Institute’s recent dairy report quantifies the harmful effects of dairy herds in north Florida. Four decades after the south Florida dairy buyout, mega-dairies are continuing their rapid expansion in north Florida.

The largest dairies, those with more than 700 reported dairy cows, are classified as CAFOs and require an industrial wastewater permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

There are currently 15 large CAFO-permitted dairies in north Florida, reporting an overall dairy herd of 72,000 cows. This number does not include another 36 non-CAFO dairies also in the Suwannee River Basin and their 13,058 cows, making an estimated, combined total of 85,000 dairy cattle in north Florida’s springs region.

There are 15 large north Florida dairy with an estimated 72,000 dairy cattle (John Moran photo).

Based on the rule-of-thumb that the nitrogen waste from one dairy cow is equivalent to the waste generated by 30 humans, the north Florida dairies produce a nitrogen waste load equivalent to 2.6 million people – a human population greater than Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, and Tallahassee combined.
Unfortunately for the regions springs and residents, this massive nutrient pollution load does not receive advanced treatment.

Why Florida’s Artesian Springs are Special and Worth Saving

North and central Florida are the epicenter of the largest concentration of artesian springs in the world. Our 1,000+ springs are home to a wide variety of aquatic plant communities and dependent wildlife, including manatees, otters, fish, alligators, and turtles.

A healthy spring, gin clear, dominated by a diversity of aquatic plants, and attractive for human recreation (John Moran photo).

When unpolluted, spring waters are as clear as the sky and the same blue color. Florida’s springs are the state’s best-kept secret summer recreational playground for rural and city folks.

Florida’s springs are so special that they are the beating heart of many of the state’s award-winning state parks such as Silver, Wekiwa, Rainbow, Wakulla, Ichetucknee, DeLeon, Volusia Blue, Lafayette Blue, Manatee, and many others.

In 2016 Florida’s government enacted the Florida Springs and Aquifer Protection Act creating a new water quality designation for 30 Outstanding Florida Springs, with the intention to restore and protect them from additional environmental degradation.
As early as 2000, with findings from the state’s Florida Springs Task Force and then formally in 2008 when the Florida Department of Environmental Protection adopted the protective nitrogen criterion for springs, state regulatory agencies were fully aware of the widespread nutrient pollution of the Floridan Aquifer and springs.

Fanning, a former first magnitude spring, has lost significant flow and has some of the highest nitrate-nitrogen concentrations of any of Florida’s springs (John Moran photo).

But when the Department reviewed their data in 2018, they found that 24 of those 30 outstanding springs were impaired by excessive nitrogen levels. The number of impaired Outstanding Florida Springs has risen to 28 in the past four years. Despite the state’s nitrate-nitrogen limit and their basin management plan, springs nitrogen pollution is getting worse (https://floridaspringsinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2022-FSC-BMAP-REPORT-10-18-2022.pdf).

Government Can Move Quickly When It Wants To, Or Not at All

Of particular concern in Florida’s karst region is the downward migration of nitrogen, primarily as inorganic nitrate-nitrogen, from fertilizers, animal urine and manure wastes, as well as decaying cow carcasses, into the underlying potable groundwater of the Floridan Aquifer.

Many of Florida’s lawmakers have never visited a healthy spring and need to be informed about their importance (John Moran photo).

The porous nature of the surficial sands and underlying limestones, and the potentially high recharge rate of rainwater through the sandy soils, result in incomplete nutrient assimilation in the crop root zone and rapid travel of remaining contaminants from the ground surface vertically downward into the unprotected aquifer.
In the Suwannee River Basin this contaminated groundwater subsequently travels downgradient by gravity through the porous limestone aquifer, across lines of declining potentiometric pressure, and naturally discharges through springs into adjacent spring-fed rivers.

Alternatively, some of this nutrified groundwater is extracted through agricultural crop irrigation wells.
A third potential migration pathway and human exposure route for nitrate in groundwater is through public and private water supply wells where nitrogen contaminated groundwater is withdrawn for human and livestock potable uses.

An unknown number of private wells are downgradient and likely impacted by dairy wastes (Karst Productions photo).

Based on recent data, the Springs Institute estimated that north Florida’s dairies currently produce a combined nitrogen waste of 20 million pounds per year. Following on-farm waste treatment and natural attenuation, a sizable portion of this nitrogen load, or about 2.1 million pounds per year, still reaches the Floridan Aquifer.
This excessive nitrogen load contributes to impairment of north Florida springs/river health and pollution of the regional Floridan Aquifer potable groundwater supply.
Groundwater monitoring in and around dairies has verified that nitrate-nitrogen concentrations are frequently elevated in monitor wells.

This analysis documents widespread incidences of nitrate-nitrogen concentrations above the nitrate-nitrogen human-health drinking water criterion of 10 ppm. Exceedance of this benchmark in drinking water may result in acute nitrate toxicity (“blue-baby syndrome” or methemoglobinemia) in babies and seniors.

Ongoing research worldwide indicates that nitrate-nitrogen concentrations, much lower than 10 ppm in drinking water supplies, may be implicated in a variety of chronic human health outcomes, including cancers and birth defects. The lowest safe level for nitrate in drinking water has been estimated as 0.14 ppm (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393511930218X#!).

A review of local public health records from the counties with the highest north Florida dairy cow populations and highest drinking water nitrogen concentrations, indicates that there is an above average incidence of colorectal cancer in the Suwannee River study area.

Excessive Groundwater Consumption by Dairies is Also an Issue

The large and smaller dairies included in the Springs Institute study consume an estimated 48 million gallons per day of potable groundwater for cow watering, cooling, washing, and crop irrigation.

Existing spring and river flows in the Suwannee River groundwater basin are already below regulatory minimum levels (e.g., Fanning and Manatee springs) due to regional and local groundwater pumping. Minimum flows in the Santa Fe and Ichetucknee Rivers, both tributary to the Suwannee River, are already below FDEP’s targets, and these rivers and their feeder springs are included in a regional groundwater flow recovery strategy that may cost an estimated $800 million (https://waterfirstnorthfl.com/).

In addition to unacceptable nitrate nitrogen pollution, groundwater withdrawals by these dairies result in lower spring and river flows, adding to the regional impairment of surface water resources.

A large dairy/cattle farm with multiple center pivots drawing millions of gallons of groundwater each day adjacent to the Suwannee River (John Moran photo).

What is the Most Viable Solution for these Environmental Tragedies

Avoidance is often the best solution for a difficult problem. Future dairy farms should be situated on less vulnerable landscapes than those comprising the unconfined Suwannee River groundwater basin. No new dairies should be allowed on vulnerable karst landscapes.

While the karst plains of the Suwannee River Basin are likely the worst possible place for dairies in north Florida, surrounding areas to the east are underlain by remnants of the Hawthorn Formation, a nearly impermeable collection of thick clay beds intermixed with sand, silt, and carbonate lenses. The Floridan Aquifer below these landscapes generally shows little to no signs of nutrient pollution.

This aquiclude underlies much of north Florida and large areas in northeast Florida are utilized for agriculture. An example of a dairy located on the Hawthorn Formation is the University of Florida (UF) Dairy Research Unit north of Gainesville.  Despite a dairy herd of more than 500 cows, groundwater sampling by the Springs Institute found no elevated nitrate-nitrogen in Floridan Aquifer wells.

Dairy experimental advanced waste filter-press treatment unit to help separate solids and reduce discharged waste load (John Moran photo).

Florida’s 2025 Suwannee River Basin management action plan relies on the use of Best Management Practices to achieve nitrogen reduction goals for non-CAFO dairies. However, existing research by the University of Florida and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection demonstrated that in karst areas, existing dairy Best Management Practices do not significantly reduce groundwater nitrogen pollution (https://waterinstitute.ufl.edu/faculty/graham/wp-content/uploads/WM811_Final_Report_7-10-2008.pdf).

There is no evidence that universal adoption of any dairy Best Management Practices will measurably reduce dairy nitrogen loads at the north Florida permitted and unpermitted dairy farms.

The only potentially viable technology options to achieve the Suwannee River Basin mandate for 85 percent nitrogen removal are (1) to collect all polluted waters from multiple dairies and truck or pump them by pipelines to one or more regional advanced wastewater treatment facilities designed to provide a high efficiency of nitrogen reduction, or (2) to provide advanced nitrogen removal technologies at each individual dairy farm.

These two options are feasible but very expensive, likely to cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year for the existing north Florida dairies.

The Springs Institute’s evaluation indicates that given the practical limitations of existing nitrogen load reduction methods for intensive dairies, the most expedient solution to nitrogen pollution in the Suwannee River Basin springs is to reduce the dairy cow herd size by 85 percent at these permitted and unpermitted dairy farms.
The necessary reduction based on the current estimated regional dairy herd is 72,000 cows.

FDEP should expeditiously enforce the existing Suwannee River Basin nitrogen reduction plan by requiring both permitted and unpermitted dairies to expeditiously reduce their nitrogen loads to the aquifer. A new dairy buyout program is needed in north Florida.

Next Steps

In summary, the problem of dairy groundwater pollution has grown to a monumental scale in north Florida. Due to lax oversight by state and federal agencies, the population of dairy cows in the Suwannee River groundwater basin now overshadows the nitrogen waste generated by humans in Florida’s largest cities.
Florida’s government has spent millions of dollars developing and implementing “action plans” and springs “restoration” projects to avoid taking decisive action to rectify this massive public and environmental health disaster. Costing hundreds of millions of dollars, these regulatory efforts have not stemmed the continuing rise in groundwater and spring nitrate concentrations and their resulting environmental harm.

Dairy best management practices do not remove additional nitrogen and are not the solution for the pollution problem.

The capital and operational costs of advanced treatment requiring additional basins, forced aeration, and chemical addition to achieving low nitrogen loads is likely prohibitive. State mandated dairy herd reduction needs to be carefully considered to achieve the Suwannee Basin BMAP nitrogen reduction goals in a reasonable time frame.

While dairy products are essential for human nutrition, dairy pollution must be curtailed for environmental protection and human health (John Moran photo).

Given the known links between elevated nitrogen concentrations in potable groundwater and human cancers, the Florida Department of Health should conduct an epidemiological investigation of private and public drinking water supplies around all the north Florida CAFO and non-CAFO dairies. State and federal agencies must work together to lower the 10-ppm compliance level for potable groundwater nitrate concentrations to better protect public health.

The non-profit Florida Springs Institute concluded that the State of Florida has been negligent and ineffective at controlling and minimizing the pollution caused by dairy operations in the north Florida springs region.

Dairies, both large and small, are industrial milk factories. Like other for-profit corporations, dairies that are negatively affecting the environment and public health need to be accountable and avoid onsite and off-site impacts to neighboring landowners and protected aquatic resources.

The residents living in the Suwannee River basin and the springs they used to enjoy should not be held hostage by promises from the State of Florida. Basin management plans to reduce nitrogen loads to the groundwater by 2038 are not evidence of actual progress towards springs restoration and protection of public health.
A comprehensive dairy buyout would have immediate and lasting benefits throughout the north Florida springs region.