When it comes to water, Fort Lauderdale is a tale of two colors: One is a dream vacation destination of turquoise-hued ocean vistas. The other is a chamber-of-commerce nightmare of yellow-tinged drinking water pouring out kitchen and bathroom faucets.
The drinking water is embarrassing but perfectly safe to drink, city leaders say. It looks kind of gross, visitors think.
Some hotels place notices in guest bathrooms to alert startled visitors that “there is no harm associated with the yellow coloration of the water.”
An Oakland Park contributor to a forum on the social news site Reddit said “when I was first looking at apartments I thought people just had peed and not flushed because of the slight yellow tinge.”
Even the mayor acknowledges the water color isn’t what it’s supposed to be.
“When I fill my water bottle at the gym, it comes out a different color than the water that was there to begin with,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said.
Social media is littered with people asking why the city’s water is yellow.
The answer is tannins — an organic material — in the region’s underground water supply, officials said. Other South Florida communities have had to deal with the problem, including Boca Raton, Tamarac and Pembroke Pines, with some fixing the problem with new treatment plants.
The yellow coloration “occurs naturally in regions across the nation where water passes through marshlands and flows through peat soil,” city officials said. The city’s water comes from the Biscayne Aquifer.
Fort Lauderdale’s water doesn’t affect just people living in or visiting the city. Its water utility also serves all or parts of Port Everglades, Oakland Park, Wilton Manors, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Davie, Sea Ranch Lakes and Tamarac.
The color problem is connected to city’s main Fiveash Water Treatment Plant, built in the 1950s, which is on its last legs and needs to be replaced soon. The city’s smaller Peele-Dixie plant, which underwent an extensive rehabilitation project a decade ago, produces clear water.
The Peele-Dixie plant primarily serves the southeastern and central areas of the city, depending on how much water is being used, officials said. People in those areas might not see a color problem.
The Fiveash plant uses a lime-softening treatment system, which makes the water more susceptible to coloration, while the newer Peele-Dixie plant uses a nanofiltration technology that is far superior at removing color, city officials said.
Consultants were hired to investigate a different filtration process at the Fiveash plant, but they concluded the granular activated carbon system they looked at wasn’t feasible.
The process would be too expensive — about $100 million a year — and probably wouldn’t have gotten rid of all the discoloration, anyway, they said.
Trantalis expects a planned Fiveash replacement plant, which could cost more than $200 million to build, should solve the yellow water issue once and for all. “I ask for the people’s patience. We’re doing our best,” he said.
