Capacity: Capacity represents the ability to treat, move or reuse water. Typically capacity is expressed in million gallons per day (MGD).

Central and Southern Florida (C&SF) Project: The system of canals, storage areas and water control structures spanning the area from Lake Okeechobee to both the east and west coasts and from Orlando south through the Everglades to Florida Bay. It was designed and constructed during the 1950s and 1960s by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to provide flood control and improve navigation and recreation.

Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP): The 30-year, multi billion dollar, state federal partnership encompassing 68 project components to restore the South Florida ecosystem by improving the quantity, quality timing and distribution of water flows within the system.

Consumptive Use Permit (CUP): A permit issued by the SFWMD under authority of Chapter 40E-2, F.A.C., allowing withdrawal of surface or ground water from the regional system for consumptive use.

Control Structure: A structure designed to regulate the level/flow of water in a canal or water body. Gates, spillways, weirs and dams are water control structures.

Cubic Feet Per Second (CFS): The rate of discharge representing a volume of 1 cubic foot passing a given point during 1 second and equivalent to 7.48 gallons per second or 448.8 gallons per minute.

Cynobacteria: Blue-green algae.

Demand: The quantity of water needed to be withdrawn to fulfill a requirement.

Desalination: A process that treats saline water to remove chlorides and dissolved solids, resulting in the production of fresh water.

Discharge (or Flow): The rate of water movement past a reference point, measured as volume per unit time (usually expressed as cubic feet or cubic meters per second).

Dissolved Oxygen: The concentration of oxygen dissolved in water, sometimes expressed as percent saturation, where saturation is the maximum amount of oxygen that theoretically can be dissolved in water at a given altitude and temperature.

Drainage District: A local drainage, water management or water control district that is created by special act of the legislature and authorized under Ch. 298 F.S., to construct, complete, operate, maintain, repair and replace any and all works necessary to implement an adopted water control plan.

Drawdown: The vertical distance a water level is lowered resulting from a withdrawal at a given point.