The 2004 Florida Legislature directed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP) and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) to evaluate the use of
reclaimed water to augment groundwater using the canal systems of southeast Florida. The
legislature recognized that the discharge of reclaimed water into canals may provide an
environmentally acceptable means of supplementing water supplies and enhancing natural
systems, but also that there are water quality and quantity issues that needed to be better
understood. This part of the study involved the proposed recharge of the SFWMD regional
canal system using highly treated reclaimed water to maintain canal levels and recharge the
Biscayne aquifer during the dry season, thereby reducing demands on the Everglades and Lake
Okeechobee.
Eight wastewater treatment facilities (WWTF) were selected for evaluation primarily because of
their location and large wastewater flows. In this study three different treatment alternatives for
wastewater were evaluated for potential canal discharge of reclaimed water. First, the modified
Bardenpho configuration (Alternative 1), a biological nutrient removal (BNR) process was
evaluated to achieve advanced wastewater treatment (AWT) standards (5:5:3:1) (BOD5, TSS,
TN, TP). Second, a membrane biological reactor (MBR) technology was evaluated to provide a
higher effluent quality than AWT, and was configured to incorporate BNR (Alternative 2). And,
third, reverse osmosis (RO) membranes were incorporated after MBR to provide the highest
quality effluent (Alternative 3). The results of the evaluation showed that Alternative 2 provides
slightly better removal of nitrogen and phosphorus than Alternative 1, but Alternative 3
involving the use of RO after AWT and MBR removes nitrogen and phosphorus down to
extremely low levels important for avoiding canal water quality enrichment.
The study also evaluated the use of the SFWMD's South Florida Water Management Model
(SFWMM) to determine the affect of reclaimed water discharges and the ability of reclaimed
water discharges to coastal canals to reduce discharges from the SFWMD's regional system,
which includes Lake Okeechobee and the Water Conservation Areas. This study suggested that
both water supply and environmental benefits were enhanced but that additional modeling
would be necessary to confirm these benefits. Includes 2 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 3.5 MB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 44 |
| Published : | 06/01/2006 |
