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The 2004 Florida Legislature directed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection(DEP) and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) to evaluate the use ofreclaimed water to augment groundwater using the canal systems of southeast Florida. Thelegislature recognized that the discharge of reclaimed water into canals may provide anenvironmentally acceptable means of supplementing water supplies and enhancing naturalsystems, but also that there are water quality and quantity issues that needed to be betterunderstood. This part of the study involved the proposed recharge of the SFWMD regionalcanal system using highly treated reclaimed water to maintain canal levels and recharge theBiscayne aquifer during the dry season, thereby reducing demands on the Everglades and LakeOkeechobee.Eight wastewater treatment facilities (WWTF) were selected for evaluation primarily because oftheir location and large wastewater flows. In this study three different treatment alternatives forwastewater were evaluated for potential canal discharge of reclaimed water. First, the modifiedBardenpho configuration (Alternative 1), a biological nutrient removal (BNR) process wasevaluated 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 ahigher 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 highestquality effluent (Alternative 3). The results of the evaluation showed that Alternative 2 providesslightly better removal of nitrogen and phosphorus than Alternative 1, but Alternative 3involving the use of RO after AWT and MBR removes nitrogen and phosphorus down toextremely 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 reclaimedwater 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 thatboth water supply and environmental benefits were enhanced but that additional modelingwould be necessary to confirm these benefits. Includes 2 references, tables, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 06/01/2006 Number of Pages: 44File Size: 1 file , 3.5 MB