Northpinellas: Water storage study funded

Water storage study funded

A review in Tarpon Springs will consider adding tanks and pumping reclaimed water into the aquifer.

By CANDACE RONDEAUX, Times Staff Writer

TARPON SPRINGS -- The Southwest Florida Water Management District has agreed to pick up half the cost of a $70,000 study to determine the future of the city of Tarpon Springs' reclaimed water system.

The feasibility study's aim is to help the city figure out the best way to expand its storage for reclaimed water -- waste water which has been treated enough to be used for irrigation, though not for drinking -- and to reduce the amount of reclaimed water discharged into the Anclote River.

The city dumps about 1-million gallons a day of treated reclaimed water into the river. Ideally, the city would like to end that practice altogether by adding up to 10-million gallons of storage for reclaimed water, said Tarpon Springs waste water superintendent Ray Page.

The Swiftmud study will investigate ways to add storage to the city's system by adding ground storage tanks or ponds.

It also will explore the possibility of storing the highly treated waste water in an aquifer, a method that has recently come under fire from environmentalists who say the practice could contaminate drinking water.

More than 1,000 Tarpon Springs residents are tapped into the city's reclaimed water system. Residential and commercial costumers use an average of 1.2-million gallons of water a day. About 45 to 50 percent of the city's total water flow is dedicated to reclaimed water use, Page said.

"In this day and age it is vital to protecting valuable ground water supplies that we increase our reclaimed water supply," Page said. "By reducing the demand on drinking water and recharging the ground water table with irrigation by reclaimed water, it will help protect the environment."

Swiftmud plans to pay for $35,000 of the study through the Pinellas-Anclote River Basin Board. The city will cover the other half of the study's cost.

The city has the ability to store up to 2-million gallons of reclaimed water, but water management experts and city officials say that's not enough.

"The problem with reclaimed water and water supply in general is finding adequate storage," said Swiftmud spokesman Michael Molligan. "We're realizing that we have limits on the amount of potable water that's available, so we're looking for new types of storage."

One of those possibilities is storing reclaimed water underground. That's not the same idea as pumping untreated water underground, a proposal that died in the Legislature as a result of public opposition two years ago.

Storing reclaimed water in the brackish portions of a community's aquifer is a relatively new idea. The reclaimed water is pumped underground to form a storage bubble in an area of the aquifer that does not contain drinkable water.

The state has been at the forefront of the technology with about 100 aquifer storage and recovery wells in Florida. Fifteen communities in southwest Florida are in the process of conducting feasibility studies or constructing reclaimed water aquifer wells, including one in northwest Hillsborough County, according to Swiftmud officials.

Though reclaimed water is treated under strict federal guidelines for quality, critics of aquifer storage of reclaimed water say the potential for contamination of groundwater supply, which supplies 90 percent of the state's drinking water, is way too high. Members of the Sierra Club and other environmental groups have been especially critical of tests run as part the feasibility study in northwest Hillsborough County, saying recent test results indicate some groundwater has been contaminated.

Scott Randolph, an attorney with the Tallahassee-based Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation (LEAF), questions whether the practice meets the standards of the 1996 amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act, a federal law which sets national standards to protect citizens from drinking bad water. Worried that reclaimed water could enter into areas where drinkable water is stored, LEAF recently released a statement that said the feasibility studies should be more controlled, using only potable water in new aquifer storage recover wells.

"These aquifers were not designed to meet drinking water standards," Randolph said. "We just don't think it should be done."

City and Swiftmud officials, however, caution against drawing any conclusions before the feasibility study in Tarpon Springs has even begun.

"There's a couple of different options that we're going to look at to get the most for our dollar," Page, the city's waste water expert said.

Aquifer storage wells for reclaimed water could be used in combination with above-ground storage tanks or not at all, he added.

"There's no one beautiful answer," Page said, "Every one of these options has plusses and minuses."

Swiftmud also has agreed to pick up half of the $60,000 tab for the city to install a remote control system that will monitor and regulate flow of the city golf course's reclaimed water storage pond. The golf course uses about 150,000 gallons of reclaimed water a day on average but that use can peak at 275,000 gallons a day during Florida's dry months.

The goal of the new system is to eliminate the nightly competition for reclaimed water between the golf course and the hundreds of residents and businesses that irrigate their lawns with reclaimed water. Swiftmud hopes to connect an additional 450 customers to the reclaimed water system as a result of the water saved by the new monitoring system at the golf course.

-- Staff writer Josh Zimmer and researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Candace Rondeaux can be reached at (727) 445-4182 or rondeaux@sptimes.com.