WPB water supply got boost from treated sewage water

WEST PALM BEACH — The City of West Palm Beach came so close to exhausting its water supply in May that it made an unprecedented decision to pump millions of gallons of treated sewage water onto well fields that supply 150,000 customers.

With a critical need for drinking water, utility managers skipped percolating the effluent through a filtering marsh for two years. The so-called reuse water was put directly onto the city's well field after being blended with millions of gallons from old quarry pits at Palm Beach Aggregates in western Palm Beach County - water not intended for direct human consumption.

The plan evolved out of urgent necessity after water managers April 3 ordered the city to stop pumping from Lake Okeechobee, which was dangerously low. During dry times, Lake O often is used to replenish Clear Lake, the source for the city's water treatment plant.

The city wasn't ready to handle a historic drought without backup water from Lake Okeechobee, said Mayor Lois Frankel. Its new state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant that recycled wastewater was still being tested.

"Changing a system cannot be done overnight," she said. "We got a little bit blind-sided."

The city routinely puts out notices when there's a boil-water alert, or even a change in water's taste, smell or color from a chemical-treatment adjustment. It announced and enforced grass-watering restrictions as the crisis mounted. But the public wasn't informed about the change in treatment of recycled sewer water.
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