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Abstract: Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Permit Application Boundaries. The EAA Basin is located between the Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades Protection Area. The EAA Basin encompasses approximately 474,000 acres of highly productive agricultural land, mostly sugar cane with crops such as winter vegetables, sod, and rice making up the remainder. An Everglades Works of the District (EWOD) Permit is required for the landowners or entities within or discharging to drainage basins in the EAA Basin that ultimately drain to the Everglades. Generally all lands are required to apply for an EWOD Permit. An EWOD Permit is an approval of a best management practices (BMPs) plan, and of a discharge (water quality and quantity) monitoring plan where applicable. The specific Works of the District (WOD) regulatory program responsibilities include verifying implementation of the BMPs required under the permit, ensuring that the discharge monitoring plans and resulting data are reasonably representative of the permitted basins, ensuring compliance with WOD permit conditions, and assessing that the EAA is in compliance with the Everglades Forever Act reduction of 25% of Total Phosphorus load in comparison to a baseline period before the WOD regulatory program was in place. In order to obtain a permit, EAA landowners submit applications including a BMP Plan and discharge monitoring plan for each hydrologic unit included within the permit (a Permit Basin), a description of land uses and crops, parcel ownership, and a description of their water management system. Applications for renewal are submitted every five years. This application boundary is digitized into GIS Application Arc Map for the county in which the application is located in. Once the application has been reviewed and issued, the application becomes a permit with a permit number.
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Purpose: Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) Unit Areas are generated in western Palm Beach and eastern Hendry counties by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD).
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Supplemental Information: There are 187 farms in the EAA that have SFWMD permits to discharge to the main EAA canals. These permits are for specific farm areas and specific intake and discharge locations. The discharges are pumped outflows from the EAA farms, and the maximum flow for each pump is defined in the permit (there are 292 permitted pumps). Typically, the maximum pump discharge is equal to 1.5" per day, and the average permitted discharge is ¾"-NGVD/day. The irrigation inflows are either pumped or are regulated by gated structures. The permit stipulates that farm runoff volume and Total Phosphorus (TP) concentration shall be measured using approved methods and reported to SFWMD. SFWMD maintains a data base of daily average discharge flows and discharge TP concentrations. EAA farms utilize best management practices (BMPs) to control the runoff with the intent of retaining at least 25% of the TP load on the farm.
A Python script runs daily, this script joins the feature class RIM.PRSTF_EAA_UNIT_AREA with the Oracle-GENP database,REG.REG_GIS_WOD_UNIT_AREAS_DTL_VW .The join is one-to -one and main field is Unit Area ID. The feature class RIM.PRSTF_EAA_UNIT_AREA stores the geometry of each water year for each unit area/basin. The result of this script is the feature class RIM.PRERR_EAA_PERMIT that represents the current application using the current water year; The water year is defined by the period of time starting on May 1st of this year until April 30th next year.