- November 23, 2024
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Soon, the average homeowner will be paying about $4.61 per month more on our utility bills. The extra money, in part, will be used to build a $10 million zero-liquid-discharge (ZLD) facility at Water Treatment Plant 2.
But what exactly is a ZLD? And why do we need one?
I asked those questions of Public Works Director Richard Adams and Environmental Specialist Brian Matthews recently, and I learned there are two important reasons. First is a matter of meeting the demands of stricter regulations. Second is that it will help us save water.
Located on Citation Boulevard in Palm Coast, Water Treatment Plant No. 2 is designed to deliver up to 6.38 million gallons per day of treated water from eight wells. (It doesn’t work at maximum capacity every day, but for the purposes of this column, we’ll pretend it does). The plant treats the raw water through a membrane filtering system, and out comes drinking water.
Well, most of it is drinking water. A portion of the water entering the filtering process does not go through the membrane. About 1.2 million gallons have to be discharged because of high concentrations of minerals. The highly mineralized water flows through a pipe four miles north, and into a canal near the intersection of Royal Palms and Belle Terre parkways.
Think of that: 1.2 million gallons of fresh water pumped out of the wells and then, basically, wasted. It becomes diluted and flows slowly into Graham Swamp.
The ZLD would change that process. According to Adams and Matthews, the new system will recover and treat those 1.2 million gallons per day to drinking water, producing a zero liquid discharge.
And so, while the city wouldn’t have elected to spend the $10 million now if the regulators hadn’t changed their interpretation of the permitting and insisted that the city change its discharge methods, the new ZLD seems to be the responsible thing to do for water conservation, regardless.
“It’s being forced upon us in the rules, but we’re trying to make lemonade out of lemons,” Adams said. “The initial goal was to solve the permitting issue, but ultimately, we’re going to get more water out of it.”
More water is a big deal. If you remember, the city was a regional leader a few years ago in designing a desalination plant. At that time, the state said Palm Coast was on track to run out of water and that the city had to find a new water source.
And so, thanks to the technology of the ZLD, the city has found an alternative water source: the 1.2 million gallons of well water it was already discharging (at full capacity) every day. It’s possible that a desalination plant could still be in Palm Coast’s future, but the ZLD will buy us “quite a few years,” Adams said.
That might not necessarily make it easier to pay your higher water bill in the coming years, but it hopefully puts it in context.
