David Derr
ADA Board of Directors
The following is a summary from newspaper clippings across the country.
Desert Water & Ice has a field day in Casa Grande, Ariz. Water delivered to this community was contaminated with a dangerous bacteria. The only place in town to get "good" water was Desert Water & Ice, which has a reverse osmosis unit. They sold every drop they could make.
There is more to the Tampa Bay project than a large RO plant. While the RO plant will provide relief for the area, which is committed to providing 46 MGD of new water by the year 2002, it is but one part of the plan. Also planned is a reservoir in Hillsbourgh County, expansion of the Cypress Bridge Wellfield, a new well field near Brandon and pumping excess water from the Hillsbourgh and Alafia rivers and Tampa Bypass canal.
Also of note on this project is PB Water's termination of its agreement with the Trinidad Company to provide technical support. The agreement was canceled after the Trinidad Company and Ionics became partners to build an RO plant on the island nation. Ionics is one of the four bidders for the Tampa Bay desalination plant. Even though Tampa Bay Water’s counsel found no conflict of interest, PB Water still ended the agreement for business reasons.
GET YOUR PERMITS IN ORDER BEFORE BUILDING! - Dublin, Calif., is in a quandary after opposition from about 75 Sierra Club members. As part of a project to re-charge the aquifer by injecting purified wastewater back into the drinking water aquifer and selling that water to Zone 7, Dublin built an RO plant to treat it’s wastewater. However, they do not yet have their permit to inject the water, which they expect to get, and have lost their customer, Zone 7. Zone 7 had planned to buy the water at $ 500 per acre foot until a protest by the Sierra Club members at a recent Board Meeting. Now they can only sell the water for irrigation purposes at $ 50 per acre foot. It costs $1,100 per acre foot to process the wastewater. The plan, known as "Clean Water Revival", was to inject pure water into the drinking water aquifer from an RO plant which used the wastewater as its source, and pump it back out of the ground about a year later and blend it with other sources before delivery. The plan would have lowered the amount of discharge from the wastewater plant which in turn would allow more water to be used.
OVERKILL IN SAN DIEGO – This city’s plans to use wastewater as a source of drinking water has some researchers concerned that unknown biotech and medical waste may find their way into the drinking water supply. To offset these concerns, the city plans to use five intensive treatment processes, of which MF/RO is one; along with UV, changing Ph’s, and finally blending.
Some Under-the-Sink Filters Do More Harm Than Good - If you have an Omni OT-2 or Franke UF, get rid of them. The faucets are made with a brass alloy which contains lead that can leach out into your drinking water.
Plans to build the Taunton River Desalter got a boost when Aqua-Source bought Bluestone Energy Services. Privatization of the project may lead the local communities to join together in the formation of a regional water plan. Privatization eliminates the need for a new local board to run the facility. Current plans call for a five MGD desalter expandable to 10 MGD.
ICE CREAM ANYONE? Large dairy farms in West Texas and New Mexico are using RO to extract water from milk before being sent to the ice cream factories. The result is a lowering of transportation cost by 66%.
PLANT EXPANSION – The city of Melbourne, Fla., is expanding it’s existing 5.0 MGD RO plant. Built in 1994, the plant is playing an ever increasing role in meeting the city’s water needs. Water for the RO plant is drawn from the Floridian Aquifer at an average depth of 850 feet with a chloride content of 500 ppm.
Irving Moch, Jr.
ADA Board of Directors
Much news is coming out of the Tampa Bay region recently as reported by the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune. The West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority has been reborn as Tampa Bay Water in a move to make the board more regionally balanced and responsive to the area’s water needs. The bids for the 10 to 50 million gallon per day sea water desalination project seems to be weekly undergoing changes as the 4 bidders are being asked to restructure their tenders to make comparisons among them easier to evaluate while the desired plant’s capacity and location are being finalized.
In the meantime, the 10 million gallon per day brackish water research facility planned for Pinellas County has been canceled. Bowing to voter displeasure of not being fully involved in the plant’s planning and environmental impact, the county commissioners after much debate killed the project.
Across the nation, San Diego is discussing a number of projects. The San Diego Union-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Long Beach Press-Telegram and Wall Street Journal all have articles noting the many sources for improving the city’s drinking water problems. The solutions range from sea water desalination to repurification of sewage water. A panel of experts have concluded that San Diego’s $154 million project to turn "toilet water into tap water" is safe. This panel was convened by the National Water Research Institute to independently review the city’s 2002 plan to purify sewage water and add it to raw water drinking water in a local reservoir. The wastewater will first be filtered, run through reverse osmosis, treated with softeners, disinfected and then blended with imported water. Needless to say, the pro and con movements are polarizing.
On a more even keel, Cape May, New Jersey this September started a $5 million 2 million gallon per day brackish water plant, enough to support the city’s ever growing summer population. The year round residents amount to 5,000 and this number grows to 30,000 on a beautiful summer day on the Jersey shore. The existing wells are being over pumped during this population explosion with the result that the wells are becoming salty. The membrane desalination plant will solve this problem. The raw water supply is from a deep aquifer, well below the existing fresh water containment area. To pay off the loan, the city plans to charge users an extra $1.25/ 1000 gallons, on the average an added $50 to $100 to the annual water bill. The Cape May Star and Wave, Newark Star-Ledger and The Press of Atlantic City reported favorably on these developments.
In other news around the nation, The Rock Island Argus reported Monmouth, IL will have to remove radium from its water supply to meet EPA requirements. In East Hampton, NY, the resident are complaining about "murky salty water" which may be coming more from an aged distribution system than a raw water supply. The Santa Rosa Florida Utility System is examining the deep well injection of wastewater. The problem must be solved before the state will allow the utility to sell more sewer taps along the fast growing Gulf Breeze peninsula. Desalting and reuse of sewer water is rapidly becoming a national discussion topic.
John E. Potts
ADA Board of Directors
It was interesting to read through about 60 articles around the nation to see what was going on in the field of water desalting. A majority of the articles were on the Tampa Bay seawater desalting project. This is the largest and most significant project currently being considered in this country. Tampa Bay Water, formerly West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority, is committed to building a large seawater desalting facility to augment its supply of drinking water for the Tampa Bay area. A decision will be made by January 1999, but actual implementation may have to wait for a long time if the threats of lawsuits come true. It seems as though any of the potential developers that does not win has threatened to sue.
Water supply to the City of Knoxville, Ill., is high in radium, and City fathers are looking into ways of reducing these elevated levels. They are considering five options, four of which involve blending with other sources of water to reduce the radium levels. Treatment by reverse osmosis is one option but does not seem to be gaining much support.
Residents in Livingston County, New York, are being faced with elevated levels of nitrates in their private well systems. County health officials have urged all residents to have their water tested and pointed out that in severe cases of contamination, only reverse osmosis will be effective in reducing nitrate levels.
The Rio Grande Valley, with Brownsville as its largest city, is in the midst of a historic drought. This area has always depended on water from the Rio Grande River which is diminishing while demand for fresh water is increasing. One alternative being considered is desalting of brackish groundwater or desalting of water from the Gulf of Mexico. It is likely that desalting will play a role in the future water supply for this area.
The City of Brockton, Massachusetts, is moving toward negotiations with two potential suppliers of desalted water to augment the City's supplies. Their only other option appears to be getting water from the state authority; however, City officials do not seem to trust the state in this issue.
The Town of Palm Beach, Florida, continues to consider developing desalting as their source of water supply ending a decades long reliance on the City of West Palm Beach. If this program moves forward, it would require the Town of Palm Beach to develop 10 to 16 mgd of desalted water.
