C FACTOR
Water Supply and Alternative Sources: I Ain’t Ready! Patrick “Murf ” Murphy
President, FWPCOA
I
am not ready for one more strawberry field to be plowed and excavated for 2,500 singlefamily dwellings. Over three-quarters of the nation’s midwinter strawberries come from Plant City, and it’s been known as the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World for as long as I can remember. I am also not ready to see a series of wetlands “mitigated” and pasture lands stripped to put in thousands of townhouses, condominiums, and million-square-feet warehouses. I always considered mitigation as punishment for those who did what they shouldn’t have done to our wetlands, which now seems like a blessing to allow ruining the wetlands. I was not ready for Senate Bill 64 and its deadline of Nov. 1, 2021, for submittal of plans to stop surface water discharge. I was offended to be lumped in with nonadvanced wastewater treatment facilities meeting the Grizzle-Figg Act discharge limitation. I’ve
done a Level II Water Quality-Based Effluent Limitation (WQBEL) study that has morestringent loading requirements, making our facility limits even tighter than the Grizzle-Figg numbers. Plant City just finalized both its water and wastewater master plans, agreeing that the population of Plant City (currently at just 40,000) will double by 2025, and triple by 2045. This means that we will need two more water plants and a new wastewater plant quickly. It took over five years to design and build the currently expanded wastewater plant, so that doesn’t give us a lot of time to waste—and we need to get the funding! There are estimates that 1,000 people are moving to Florida each day, and its population will increase to nearly 26 million by 2030. By that time the state is projected to use 7.7 billion gallons per day of water, which is 1.3 billion gallons per day more than is currently used. In my opinion, I’m not the only one not ready! In speaking to some regulators, they are not ready, senators and state representatives are not informed enough, and consumers are not aware of how water and wastewater plants operate now. They are concerned with how much their water bills are currently and may not understand the issue until all the lakes are bone dry. Operators and engineers are going
48 February 2022 • Florida Water Resources Journal
to need to fight for what’s right to truly have alternative sources of water supply.
Water Reuse News First off, kudos to all the members of the Potable Reuse Commission (PRC) who work so diligently to address water issues in Florida. Its mission statement includes “develop a framework for potable reuse implementation in Florida to augment future water supply and support water quality initiatives” and “advice elected officials and regulatory agencies on statutory and regulatory challenges and present consensus based solutions.” This provides the underlying statutory framework for the implementation of potable reuse as an alternative water supply option. The first draft of Chapter 62-610 of the Florida Administration Code (F.A.C.), Reuse Of Reclaimed Water and Land Application, had to be reworked, and at this time (late December 2021) it is still not finalized. It is posted on the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) website. The first joint Public Workshop for Potable Reuse Rulemaking was held Jan. 14, 2021, via a GoToWebinar (thanks to COVID-19). The second joint workshop was held June 2, 2021 (also via GoToWebinar), and covered the updates to Chapters 62-610, 62-625, 62-550, and 62-555 F.A.C. in response to the previous comment period. It’s hard to read a room when you’re not in the room, but the workshop went fast. Chapter 62-550 F.A.C. and Chapter 62-555 F.A.C. are still in rulemaking and the revisions will update the chapters to be consistent with other Title 62 chapters, clarify current language, and identify the requirements for implementing treated reclaimed water as a source for public water systems. These are not easy tasks, and the proposed revisions would have to support, and be consistent and compliant with, the Florida Clean Waterways Act of 2020-150, Florida Statutes 403.064, Reuse of Reclaimed Water. Our friends at FDEP have a difficult job, and we must encourage and help them however we can to have this move forward in a realistic, feasible, and attainable way. The potable reuse rulemaking link on the FDEP website is https://floridadep.gov/water/ domesticwastewater/content/water-reusenewsrulemaking-information.
