Beneath the Pink Underwear

Ironically Stierheim could see this coming years ago. He also saw the possible repercussions. In his 2000 letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, the then-county manager noted that granting licenses to the mining companies "has the potential to increase the risk of water quality contamination at the wellheads and result in the necessity for upgrading the water treatment plants to treat for disease."

The unexpected results of the red dye test could not have come at a worse time for the county. It's still struggling with its most basic problem: water supply. On June 10 WASD will present its master plan to the county commission's operations and environmental committee, and in July, WASD will show the plan to the commission. Its 250-plus pages are designed to reassure the commission that the water supply is in good shape until 2020. But among environmentalists, there are already rumblings that the plan is littered with half-truths and suspicious calculations. Its most noticeable weakness is that it relies on unproven technology like the aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) system, designed to capture water in the wet season, inject it into the ground, then recover it for use during the dry season. ASR may seem like a Spielberg film, but it's how the county hopes to make up for an expected water shortfall in the coming years. What's more, as in the case of red dye, environmentalists are feeling left out of the process. "Short of litigation," says Alan Farago of the Sierra Club Florida Chapter, "I don't see how we can get any input on this."