DAYTONA BEACH — Daytona Beach voters are going to have a decision to make in November on what they want the city to do with the wastewater that swirls down toilets, urinals and kitchen drains and then gets processed at a city treatment plant.
At their March 18 meeting, city commissioners voted unanimously to put a measure on the Nov. 3 ballot asking voters if the city should prohibit treated wastewater from being used in the city’s potable water supply or injected into the aquifer.
If more than half of voters don’t want that recycled water coming out of their taps, then a ban on transforming wastewater into drinking water and funneling it into the aquifer would be added to the City Charter to enshrine the prohibitions.
The only way to get it back out of the City Charter would be another ballot measure asking voters to remove it, or a new state law that would override it.
The Volusia County Council shot down a similar measure on a 4-3 vote at their Feb. 17 meeting.
That county government measure also proposed a charter amendment question about wastewater be put on the Nov. 3 ballot. It would have asked voters whether the county should ban the process of recycling treated wastewater into drinking water and injecting that treated wastewater into the aquifer. It would have applied only to the county’s utility service area, not countywide.
What do Daytona residents think about recycled wastewater?
Daytona Beach city staff members aren’t working on using recycled wastewater for drinking water, and potable reuse is not in the city’s 20-year outlook. But some local residents still want to put protections in place now.
“There is no excuse for us to ever have to do this,” said Daytona beachside resident Jenny Nazak.
“It feels like we have to keep building to the point we have to drink our own sewage water,” said Daytona Beach resident Rich Yost.
Local resident Greg Gimbert said state legislators could override any limits the city puts in place.
“There’s only a narrow path left to restrict sewage water,” Gimbert said.
Local resident Catherine Pante asked commissioners to at least pause any ban on water use and discharge until a city study on options to comply with the state’s upcoming discharge restrictions is complete. The tighter state restrictions will go into effect in six years.
Currently, any of the cty’s reclaimed water that’s excess or doesn’t meet Public Access Reuse standards is discharged into the Halifax River.
During the 2021 Florida Legislative Session, a law was passed that will prohibit some surface water discharges to the Halifax River beginning in January 2032. That leaves the city with six years to develop new systems and places to send 8 million gallons of reclaimed water every day.
The Utilities Department is working with an engineering consultant to determine the city’s options to comply with the law. Three of the options being considered include underground injection of reclaimed water that could be prohibited by the proposed charter amendment.
If an underground injection well is found to be highly cost-effective, the inability to pursue such an option could lead to the need for a significant rate increase in order to pursue a less cost-effective option, city officials have cautioned.
What is reclaimed water and is it safe?
The city of Daytona Beach collects and treats wastewater from more than 100,000 customers throughout Daytona Beach, South Daytona, and portions of unincorporated Volusia County.
Part of that wastewater is made up of the “blackwater” from toilets, urinals, and kitchen drains, while the remainder of the wastewater is considered “gray water.” Gray water is the used water from dishwashers, washing machines, bathroom sinks, showers and baths.
“The city treats this combined wastewater at one of two city-owned and operated water reclamation facilities, both of which meet Advanced Wastewater Treatment standards and have done so since the late 1990s/early 2000s,” Eric Smith, the city’s deputy utilities director, wrote in a Feb. 26 memo to the city manager and city attorney.
Smith went on to write that the water produced at those reclamation facilities has undergone treatment for high-level nutrient removal — specifically nitrogen and phosphorous — along with remaining solids and pathogens.
“This is an important distinction to make as the water produced by the treatment process no longer contains blackwater but instead meets the definitions of reclaimed water,” Smith wrote.
The reclaimed water produced at the city’s water reclamation facilities is used as irrigation for residents’ yards, businesses’ landscaping, portions of the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University campus, Daytona State College campus, Bennett Swamp for wetland rehydration, LPGA Golf Course, Municipal Golf Course and Pelican Bay North Golf Course.
You can reach Eileen at Eileen.Zaffiro@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Voters to decide if treated wastewater makes it into Daytona taps
Reporting by Eileen Zaffiro-Kean, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
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