Daily Loaf

Tampa City Council Reclaimed Water Workshop
Tampa City Hall
Thursday, May 28, 2009 @ 9:30 a.m.
(The public is welcome to participate)

Tampa’s water issues have been in the news a lot lately and many of you have expressed your passionate feelings on the subject. We’re in the middle of a water crisis. We have the tightest restrictions in Florida meanwhile we are discharging 50 million gallons (mgd) of water into the Bay daily!

Confused yet? It’s understandable.

How did we get here? While it’s easy to point fingers, that won’t help us solve our problems. We need to learn from our mistakes as a City and move forward.

This Thursday, Council hopes to “turn the page” towards a new era of common sense water conservation by addressing the following issues:

• Doubling the size of the existing STAR reclaimed water distribution system to include future retail customers in Virginia Park, Sunset Park, Westshore and along the Bayshore to Ballast Point.

• Expanding the reclaimed water system to include new large wholesale customers (e.g. airport, International Plaza and downtown users).

• Partnering with Tampa Bay Water and other government agencies to expand reclaimed water to New Tampa and possibly Pasco County.

• Additionally, the City may require that customers with curb access to reclaimed water use that for irrigation instead of drinking water. The city may also penalize the so-called “water hogs” for overuse of drinking water for irrigation.

If approved, these projects will offset the current use of more than 40 mgd of drinking water. They will be built in phases over the next decade and Tampa’s share of the cost is estimated at $130 million.

Hopefully, when completed the City will maximize the use of its reclaimed water for irrigation and have enough drinking water for future generations while preserving water quality in the Hillsborough River.

Please join us at this workshop and give us your input.

For more information, or to provide your input by email, please contact me at: John.Dingfelder@tampagov.org.

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