Water & Energy

Reclaimed water project goes residential in Cape Coral Shutterstock.com

By KEVIN KILBANE | The Municipal

Jeff Pearson has advice for municipalities in the many areas of the United States facing water supply concerns because of drought or other issues:

“Start thinking about using reclaimed water, because it will be the way of the future,” said Pearson, utilities director for the city of Cape Coral, Fla., a fast-growing community in the southwest part of the Sunshine State.

Cape Coral dedicated its most recent reclaimed water project Aug. 5: the Southwest Pine Island Road Irrigation Tanks and High-Service Pump Station. The $11.4 million project included constructing two 5-million-gallon storage tanks to hold reclaimed water. The tanks also collect rain that lands on their roofs and funnel it into storage. The pumping equipment can fill the storage tanks for temporary holding of treated reclaimed water and also pump out that water for irrigation use at city homes and businesses.

The site, which was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, passed its first test when it successfully survived Hurricane Ian. Ian caused massive damage Sept. 28 in the Cape Coral area.

Pearson said the city began planning ahead for water supply management in the 1990s. The city now pumps reclaimed water to more than 70,000 residential and commercial properties for irrigating lawns and landscaping, making it one of the largest residential reclaimed water systems in the country based on number of users, according to Pearson and Melissa Mickey, city communications manager.

Irrigation consumes about 50% of all water used nationally, Pearson noted, so reclaiming and reusing water lessens the demand on the water source from which a community draws to produce drinking water.

Reclaimed water usually consists of sanitary sewer water that has gone through a wastewater treatment process to remove nutrients, contaminants and pathogens. Most reclaimed water gets recycled for use irrigating residential, commercial and agricultural land or for industrial cooling processes, said Barbara Martin, director of engineering and technical services for the American Water Works Association. Reclaimed water also can be pumped into the ground to recharge a community’s water supply.

Water reclamation has been growing nationally, with facilities treating and reclaiming water in 43 of the 50 U.S. states, said Martin, who is based in Denver. The recently passed federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act also provides $1 billion over five years for water reclamation programs in Western states.

Despite the progress, the United States can do more to reclaim water and to make existing water supplies more sustainable, Martin said. Currently, wastewater treatment plants around the country process about 33 billion gallons of wastewater per day. Estimates say about 2 billion to 3 billion gallons per day of that treated wastewater gets reused as reclaimed water.

Cape Coral began planning the Southwest Pine Island Road Irrigation Tanks project about 2014 because it needed more reclaimed water to serve residents and businesses included in large city water, sewer and irrigation system expansion projects, Pearson said.

Residential and business customers had used an average of 30 million to 32 million gallons of water per day for irrigation before Hurricane Ian.

Cape Coral meets that need by recycling the treated water flowing out of its two water reclamation facilities and supplementing it, as needed, with freshwater from the 300 miles of canals around the community. To conserve water, residents using sprinkling systems also must limit watering of lawns and landscaping to four hours twice a week during the night.

While some wastewater treatment plants release treated water into a nearby stream or lake, “we haven’t discharged any treated wastewater to the Caloosahatchee River since October of 2008,” Pearson noted. Cape Coral’s water reclamation efforts also help protect the adjacent Charlotte Harbor National Estuary by preventing too much freshwater from flowing into it, he added.

Using reclaimed water also saves money for the city and residents. Cape Coral hasn’t raised customers’ water rates since 2013, though they likely will see a 3% increase in the 2023 fiscal year. Nationally, customers’ water rates increase an average of 5.5% per year.

Using reclaimed water also means Cape Coral hasn’t needed to build larger water treatment plants to produce drinking water, Pearson said.

With construction permits for new residential and commercial buildings averaging 5,000 to 6,000 per year in the past, Cape Coral takes a proactive approach to the community’s water needs, Pearson said. For example, planned projects include constructing a connector pipeline that will allow Cape Coral to purchase and receive up to 6 million gallons of reclaimed water per day from nearby Fort Myers, Fla.

“We’re diversifying our sources to keep up with the explosive growth we’re experiencing right now,” Pearson said. “Especially with climate change, you want to be more resilient. And at the end of the day, that’s pretty much what this project (Southwest Pine Island Road) does for

The city of Cape Coral, Fla., dedicated its Southwest Pine Island Road Irri-gation Tanks and High-Service Pump Station in August to help with storage and distribution of reclaimed water, which residential and business customers use to irrigate lawns and landscaping. Cape Coral has one of the nation’s largest residen-tial reclaimed water distribution systems, based on the number of users. (Photo provided by city of Cape Coral) Pumps at the new Southwest Pine Island Road Irrigation Tanks and High-Service Pump Station in Cape Coral, Fla., can move reclaimed water into storage or send it through a distribution system of purple-colored pipes to residential and business users for use watering their lawns and landscaping. (Photo provided by city of Cape Coral) us. Anytime you can store water, that helps you to be more resilient because storage is the key to reliability. You don’t know when it’s going to rain again.”

Learn more

• Potable Reuse 101: An innovative and sustainable water supply solution,” by the American Water Works Association, https://www.awwa.org/Portals/0/AWWA/ETS/Resources/PotableReuse101.pdf?ver=2018-12-12-182505-710 • Water Reuse Cost Allocations and Pricing Survey,” by the American Wa-ter Works Association, https://www.awwa.org/Portals/0/ AWWA/ETS/Resources/AWWAReuseSurveyReportMay2019_WEBRES.pdf?ver=2019-10-07-151457-847