Jim Waymer

FLORIDA TODAY

I knew it was crazy dry, but a recent airboat ride on the slow-flowing St. Johns River really hammered that point home.

I grabbed a GoPro and an iPhone and hit the river's upper basin to take a look, with Ken Snyder and Ed Garland of the St. Johns River Water Management District. Snyder is a field program supervisor. Garland is a district spokesman.

The river was about as low and motionless as I've ever seen it, resembling a smooth plate of black glass.

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The airboat skidded us over water lilies and spots where the river level was so low that finger-like sandbars stretched as far out as the middle of the channel.

We saw alligators galore, crowded into a much thinner St. Johns. Every minute, it seemed, another gator torso or two submerged right in front of us as the boat hummed along right over them, and the birds skedaddled toward nearby trees.

The Melbourne area gets about two-thirds of its drinking water supply from the St. Johns (via Lake Washington), and the city is about 4 inches below normal rainfall for the year, according to the National Weather Service.

Florida's longest river begins its in west Indian River County, flowing north to Jacksonville, where it empties to the ocean.

The river's upper basin had been drained and ditched for farms, especially during the 1940s to help feed the troops during World War II. And by the early 1970s, more than 60 percent of the basin's marshes were gone. Those are the river's natural filters, cleansing out pollutants and excess nutrients that trigger algae blooms.

The water management district recently completed more than $250 million, 30-year replumbing of the river's upper basin, creating large storage areas and water control structures. The project was the largest wetlands restoration of its time and is considered a model for Everglades restoration.

Contact Waymer at 321-242-3663 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com Follow him on Twitter@JWayEnviro and at facebook.com/jim.waymer

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Stay tuned: We'll be delving more into how runoff from farms, homes and other sources are impacting the river.

It was a fun ride. So kick up your heals like I did, check out some highlights of the video I shot, and I hope you enjoy the ride, too.