When it comes to having enough drinking water for its growing population, South Florida may have an answer — and it’s a rock mine.
Broward County and a half-dozen of its cities are willing to pay to turn a Palm Beach County mining pit into a reservoir that they’ll be able to tap to increase their water supply for more than 40 years. Miami-Dade County also is considering the idea.
Without the reservoir, government water utilities would have to find other ways of satisfying residents when they need more water than the utilities are allowed to draw from the Biscayne Aquifer.
The planned $161-million reservoir could store 4.6 billion gallons of water — a big drop in South Florida’s bucket — and provide 35 million gallons of water a day.
Fort Lauderdale commissioners agreed Dec. 17 to secure a 3 million-gallon-a-day share of the C-51 Reservoir to be constructed out of the mine owned by Palm Beach Aggregates near Wellington, which mines limestone for use primarily in road construction.
The city will have to pay $13.8 million toward the reservoir’s construction and about $110,000 a year for operations and maintenance.
“I think this is an insurance policy we’re buying,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said.
The state, which has provided a $30 million loan toward the reservoir’s construction, also expects it to provide environmental benefits.
The reservoir will take water from the C-51 Canal, which runs through the middle of Palm Beach County, diverting its nutrient-rich fresh water runoff from flowing into the brackish Lake Worth Lagoon. It’s that runoff that has contributed to harmful algal blooms in the lagoon.
“Every gallon of water that’s captured by the reservoir is kept from being discharged into the Lake Worth Lagoon,” said Ernie Cox, the reservoir’s project manager for Palm Beach Aggregates.
Instead, the reservoir will supply water to a canal system that seeps into the ground and recharges the Biscayne Aquifer. The governments that are paying for the construction of the reservoir — at $4.6 million for each million gallons of daily capacity — will then be able to draw more than their current permits allow.
About 850 million gallons of water is currently drawn by South Florida utilities each day, treated and delivered to residents, businesses and farms, Cox said.
Broward County is buying a 6 million-gallon-a-day share of the future reservoir for $27.6 million. In addition, Sunrise is purchasing 5 million gallons a day, Margate 2 million gallons a day, Hallandale Beach and Dania Beach 1 million gallons a day each, and Pompano Beach in January is expected to finalize a 2 million-gallon-a-day allotment.
That’s a total of 20 million gallons, which combined with the state loan and finalizing financing, will allow construction to start in September and have water available to be delivered by September 2022, Cox said. There’s a possibility Miami-Dade County could take up the remaining 15-million-gallon daily capacity.
Adriana Lamar, governmental affairs chief for Miami-Dade’s water and sewer department, said “the remaining C-51 project supply is actively under consideration as one source of additional water to meet [the county’s future] needs.” A decision will likely come in the next few months, Lamar said.
Local water utilities have been restricted since 2006 with how much water they can draw from the Biscayne Aquifer.
Fort Lauderdale agreed to go ahead and join now in part because officials feared the city might be locked out in the future if others took up the rest of the reservoir’s daily capacity.
The city still has other options once it reaches its limit from the Biscayne Aquifer. It can pump water from the deeper Floridan Aquifer, but city consultants said the Floridan would be more expensive to draw from and its water would require much heavier treatment than that coming from the reservoir.
The city may have an interest in the project’s larger second phase, which could provide an extra 150 million gallons of water a day, but there is no assurance that portion will ever be built. The second phase might also be targeted for environmental purposes and might not be available for drinking-water use, Cox said.
