We are already drinking dinosaur pee so why not wastewater??
The water comes in from sewage pipes as smelly sludge.
It weaves and churns its way through the wastewater treatment plant, and at the end of a 15-hour cleaning process, it flows out of a faucet at the other end.
Howard Coggin grabs a cup, fills it up, and lifts it toward the summer sky.
The water in the cup looks nothing like it did when it first arrived. It’s no longer brown and murky. It no longer reeks.
“It’s perfectly clear,” Coggin, a wastewater treatment operator with Polk County, said during a recent tour of the vast facility in North Lakeland.
For decades, wastewater plants throughout Florida have been using technology to clean tons of sewage a day that is then distributed to nearby golf courses, parks, and homes for irrigation. The finished product is not currently pumped back into households for drinking and showering.
That could change in the near future though. With studies suggesting that Florida’s fresh drinking water supply could run out by 2035 because of population growth, Polk County is among the latest government bodies to tap into a program aimed at studying whether water flushed down toilets can be cleaned for consumption.
Grossed out? The concept shouldn’t make residents queasy as it merely speeds up the natural water cycle and is safe, experts say.
“There is a natural stigma by people that shy away from drinking ‘reclaimed’ water because of its origin, a wastewater plant, even though it would be treated to the same standards as groundwater,” said Ryan Taylor, a deputy county manager with Polk County.
Potable reuse water has already been introduced in some states and is being researched in many others. Across Florida, cities like Tampa and Daytona Beach have been studying recycled wastewater for years.
Astronauts drink reclaimed water inside the International Space Station. And some environmentally conscious beer companies have been putting treated wastewater into their brews.
The potable reuse water concept has emerged as a priority for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. While it’s unclear when the first drop will arrive in residents, Florida legislators recently signed off on bills that allow government bodies to begin taking steps closer to implementation in an effort to conserve water.
According to the DEP’s website, “The amount of fresh water on the planet does not change. Through nature, all water has been used and reused since the beginning of time.
“This natural process is known as the water cycle. Using advanced technology to recycle water merely accelerates a natural process,” according to the DEP. “Potable reuse is highly treated recycled water that can be used for drinking, cooking and bathing. The purification techniques use proven technology that makes the water safe.”
First, it must be studied
Polk County needs to add some additional treatment infrastructure to its Cherry Hill Production Facility in Lakeland before the study can begin.
To help with the construction of technology that’ll remove TOC, pathogens, and pollutants from the sewage, the county is partnering with the Southwest Florida Water Management District, which will pay half of the $1.5 million costs.
The first phase of the study is expected to start by the summer of 2022 and play out over the next 14 months, said Tamara Richardson, Polk County’s utility director.
“We want to see what it will take to get this water up to drinking water standards,” she told The Ledger. “And naturally our reclaimed water from that plant (used for irrigation) is already close to drinking water standards. It’s very good quality water. This (pilot program) is just taking it a step further.”
The plant will treat about ten gallons of water a minute, which will be used for sampling throughout the process, Richardson said. After 14 months of data gathering and fine-tuning, a second study will be done.
That amount of studying is necessary for a project like this, Richardson said.
“It’s a big deal; it’s new to our area,” she said, adding that other agencies will want to inspect the water to ensure it’s safe for consumption before rollout. “The DEP wants to look at it, the Water Management District wants to look at it, and we want to look at it.”
She added, “Once we do both of those studies and everyone is comfortable, and if we decide it’s feasible, and we decide that it makes sense economically and technologically, we will take it back to the (County Commission) and they will decide if they want us to pursue using it.”
The commission approved the study program at its June 1 meeting.
Public education is needed
Drinking water already “has a bad rap,” according to a statewide study completed in 2020 by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Of the 1,980 respondents, nearly half – 47 % – said they feel that drinking water is unsafe, according to the study.
As more and more Florida cities and counties move toward introducing potable reuse water, experts and officials emphasize the importance of educating the public about the process.
Peter Grevatt, the CEO of the Water Research Foundation in Denver, Colorado, has been studying reusable water for years.
Getting the water clean enough for safe consumption is the easy part, he said. The bigger challenge is getting the community on board.
“That is exactly what water utilities who want to move in the direction of instituting a potable reuse program really need to focus on,” Grevatt told The Ledger. “The question is not nearly so much around: are the engineering technologies available? It’s much more a matter of: Is the public going to be comfortable with this operation?”