The City of St. Petersburg has the most extensive water reclamation system of any urban area in the United States. During 1997, it delivered an average of 20 million gallons daily of highly treated wastewater to more than 9,000 residential and commercial customers throughout the city. This includes all six of the golf courses in St. Petersburg.

Thus, you can understand my surprise when I read in the News Journal Aug. 13 article and Aug. 14 editorial that in St. Petersburg the treated wastewater being discharged into deep injection wells could be reused for irrigation on golf courses.

On the driest days of the year, St. Petersburg reuses nearly 100 percent of its treated wastewater, leaving little capacity for further expansion of the system. On the wettest days, however, sometimes less than 10 percent of the wastewater is reused because of reduced demand and increased flows. On an annual average, approximately 25 million gallons is pumped into injection wells.

To prevent discharge to Tampa Bay and Boca Ciega Bay, the city relies on 10 deep injection wells to safely discharge the excess into a saltwater formation approximately 1,000 feet beneath the surface. The reuse/deep well combination makes St. Petersburg the largest city in the United States to achieve "zero discharge" into surface waters.

Because of our water reclamation system and other conservation efforts, the city's potable water usage has been reduced almost 15 percent since the late 1980s, even though our population has increased.

Wastewater undergoes substantial treatment at the city's water reclamation plants. When the treatment is complete, the wastewater is cleaner by far than the extremely saline water in the injection zone, and of higher quality than the less-saline water closer to the surface.

In other words, deep well injection actually results in improved water quality in the subsurface.
The development of our $110 million reuse/deep injection well program has contributed to a dramatic improvement of the water quality in Tampa Bay, once considered one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States.

Today, the marine environment is thriving where 20 years ago the water was nearly "lifeless." To resume effluent discharge to Tampa Bay could impede the ongoing, dramatic improvement of water quality.

Without the deep well backup to our water reclamation, St. Petersburg's utility customers would have to spend between $50 million to $100 million to retrofit treatment plants for disposal into Tampa Bay, an expensive reversal in the public policy for surface water protection. Operational costs would increase more than $2 million annually.

Finally, as for "ponding" the surplus effluent and lettering it seep back into the water table, please be advised that St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, is one of the most densely populated areas in Florida. There is no available land to build percolation ponds. However, the city currently has a study underway to determine the feasibility of aquifer storage and recovery of reclaimed water. If successful, this would alleviate the supply shortfall we periodically experience during the spring dry season.

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