{"id":12148,"date":"2021-06-15T20:01:50","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T00:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=12148"},"modified":"2021-06-15T20:02:10","modified_gmt":"2021-06-16T00:02:10","slug":"polk-county-has-a-pilot-program-that-will-test-drinkable-treated-wastewater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2021\/06\/15\/polk-county-has-a-pilot-program-that-will-test-drinkable-treated-wastewater\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk County has a pilot program that will test drinkable, treated wastewater"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the population climbs towards one million and water resources become strained, Polk County officials approved a pilot project<\/a> to study whether wastewater treatment plants can produce drinkable water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are not running out of water,\u201d said Tamara Richardson, Polk County utilities director. \u201cWe\u2019re running out of cheap water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Richardson, the county has to rethink its water sources due to new modeling and more people, especially in the northeast region<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is booming,\u201d she said. \u201cWe really see it during times like, in April and May when it\u2019s hot and people are starting to water, and it\u2019s not raining yet. We can really see the strain on our water and reclaim water systems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why the county is looking into using treated wastewater for drinking water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s already used for irrigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going on your lawns where your children play,\u201d Richardson said. \u201cIt\u2019s very good quality water. There\u2019s nothing wrong with it. There\u2019s nothing harmful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the reuse water is used for drinking in the future, it will be treated to an even higher standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

To find out how best to do that, the county commission recently approved a $1.5 million pilot study to take place on the site of the new Cherry Hill Water Production Facility in Lakeland, which is still under construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That facility opens in July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pilot study will start in a new building on the site next March and take 14 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The treated wastewater would not be provided to customers as drinking water for at least 8-10 years, after rigorous testing and governmental approval, Richardson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to have to get over the “yuck factor” because at some point we will need that water, and you will need to drink it,\u201d said Commissioner Bill Braswell.<\/strong> \u201cLook where your water comes from anyway: it\u2019s a hole in the ground. It goes through all the dirt and the clay and all the bugs and whatever else, and it gets down in the aquifer, and then we drink it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Braswell said managing growth is the main mission of the county board of commissioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is opposed to a proposed one cent sales tax aimed to widen roads and lessen traffic congestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe ultimate solution would be a moratorium on residential building permits. If you want to slow people down moving here, don\u2019t let them build houses. It\u2019s just that simple,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some water districts in Texas<\/a> use direct potable reuse water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are currently direct potable reuse pilot projects in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Oregon and Virginia, according to the county.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the population climbs towards one million and water resources become strained, Polk County officials approved a pilot project to study whether wastewater treatment plants can produce drinkable water. \u201cWe are not… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[559,560],"class_list":["post-12148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-pilot-program-that-will-test-drinkable","tag-treated-wastewater"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}