Water tax rates to go down in Lee, Collier next year

The South Florida Water Management District governing board Thursday tentatively approved its 2018-19 budget of about $813 million. 

District governing board members must vote again on the budget later this month.

Revenue from property taxes next year is expected to be $277 million, with another $337 million coming from state lawmakers. 

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The rest of the money comes from reserves, district revenues, the agriculture privilege tax — which is expected to bring in $11 million — and other sources. 

The property tax rate would be 29.36 cents per thousand dollars of home value.

According to district records, a home valued at $150,000 with a $50,000 homestead exemption would be taxed $29.36, down from $31 last year. 

Collier County is a separate taxing unit, and the same home there would be taxed $24.40, down from $25.45 last year. 

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The district is basically the historic Everglades, including 16 counties and stretching from just south of Orlando to the Florida Keys. 

For Southwest Florida the big project is the Caloosahatchee River reservoir, which will likely receive $146 million, or about one-fourth of its $600 million cost. 

The district "will be doing the contract for the dam around the reservoir by the end of this year, and construction is set at 2022," district spokesman Randy Smith said.  

The Caloosahatchee reservoir is an original Everglades restoration project and was first approved in 2000. 

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It will be able to draw 170,000 acre-feet of water off the Caloosahatchee, store that water and have it available for release during the dry season. 

"There is a lot of water we need to capture and treat our own watershed, independent of Lake Okeechobee," said Rae Ann Wessel, with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation. 

A 2015 University of Florida Water Institute study says the Caloosahatchee River watershed needs about 400,000 acre-feet of storage. 

"I think it's a combination of all of the planning projects that we've got going on, which includes the Caloosahatchee reservoir and the work north of the lake," Smith said. "So I think when all of these projects are combined, that's where we're going to see the numbers that are close to what the UF study is talking about."

Connect with this reporter: Chad Gillis on Twitter.