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First Coast farms to get $525,000 in funding to reduce water use, pollution

Tree Town USA is one of three farms on the First Coast that will split $525,000 from the state and the St. Johns River Water Management District. The goal is to reduce water use by 109 million gallons per year in Flagler, Putnam and St. Johns Counties as well as reduce nutrient loading -- or pollution run-off. They're issues farmers across the state deal with.

FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. -- "We do a lot of magnolias," Tony Ramos explained as he drove a pick-up truck through the Tree Town USA farm in Bunnell, Florida. He is the Operations Manager there.

He said at 665 acres, this farm is one of the largest nurseries in Florida.

'If you go to any Home Depot and buy a 5-gallon fruit tree-- peach, apple, plum -- they came from this site," he said.

It, like other farms, has a permit to use so much water. He said Tree Town USA in Bunnell uses 700,000 gallons a day.

"There's very little that leaves the property because it was designed to capture everything that we put out. We recapture and use it," Ramos explained.

He also said the farm has an intricate canal system that captures rainwater. So the rainwater flows from the canals into retention ponds on the property, and all of that water can be used to water the plants. Sometimes when there's a lot of rain, they don't even have to use the well water.

But still, this farm wants to find better ways to use less water and send out fewer nutrients into the nearby waterways.

"The system we have now is an old irrigation system," Ramos said.

Tree Town USA is one of three farms on the First Coast that will split $525,000 from the state and the St. Johns River Water Management District.

The goal is to reduce water use by 109 million gallons per year in Flagler, Putnam and St. Johns Counties as well as reduce nutrient loading -- or pollution run-off. They're issues farmers across the state deal with.

Tree Town USA will use the money to retro-fit its sprinkler heads with more efficient ones.

"It will cut down on watering time, watering consumption. It will cut down on diesel we use to run the pumps. Cut down on electricity and labor and fewer nutrients that might be leaving the property," Ramos predicts.

Besides saving money, Ramos says the project will help the farm do the right thing ... and to him, that means "when we leave this earth, we want everybody who comes here to find it the way we found it."

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