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Project logo — The Coquina Coast Seawater Desalination Project now has an official logo, as plans take shape to build a plant off the coast of Flagler or St. Johns County.
BEACON PHOTO/PAT HATFIELD
Talking desal — League of Women Voters of Volusia County program director Ann Smith, Jorge Aguilar of Food & Water Watch, League program coordinator Maritza Patterson, senior Malcolm Pirnie Associate Scott Shannon and League President Sandy Horikami pose for a photo after Shannon and Aguilar presented the pros and cons of of the Coquina Coast Seawater Desalination Project Jan 16. Shannon also went over plans for the project at the West Volusia Summit on Jan. 23. Look for an interview with Aguilar in an upcoming edition of The Beacon.
Desalination could become the wave of the future
By Pat Hatfield
posted Feb 4, 2010 - 2:37:24pm
Water — where to get it, how much it will cost, and how to pay for it — is consuming much time and energy among West Volusia cities and the county.
Under orders from the St. Johns River Water Management District to find water from somewhere other than the aquifer, municipal eyes have turned not only to the St. Johns River, but to the ocean.
This series of articles will explore the pros and cons of desalination plants, like Coquina Coast, that may be built in Flagler County. We'll share the views of engineers, environmentalists and utility specialists.
We'll start with the discussion at a recent meeting in DeLand.
Water worries and plans for the Coquina Coast seawater desalination plant were major topics at the West Volusia Summit — a gathering of elected officials and staff — in DeLand Jan. 23.
A week earlier, members of the League of Women Voters of Volusia County and the public heard pro-and-con presentations about the proposed plant to be built off the Flagler County or St. Johns County coast, north of Volusia County.
At the summit, professional engineer and senior associate Scott Shannon of Malcolm Pirnie Inc., lead engineers on the project, detailed why the plant should be built. Shannon also spoke to the West Volusia Summit group.
Malcolm Pirnie Inc. was hired by a consortium of Central Florida cities: Palm Coast, DeLand, Mount Dora, Leesburg, Bunnell and Flagler Beach; along with the now-defunct Water Authority of Volusia; and Flagler, Marion and St. Johns counties; plus the Dunes Community Development District and the St. Johns River Water Management District.
The idea of an ocean-based plant has been scrapped in favor of a shore plant, Shannon said.
"The water is shallow here," he said.
Locating a plant offshore could give rise to uncertainty about the effects of briny discharge, storm damage to facilities, and the like.
Shannon said the need for the alternative water source is here, and desalination plants now produce 14 billion gallons of water per day worldwide.
In the first phase, a plant with the ability to produce 25 million gallons a day will be needed before 2020. That date is a few years later than the St. Johns River Water Management District originally told municipal water suppliers they would need water sources other than the aquifer. The deadline was moved because new projections show the Central Florida population growing less quickly.
By 2050, a plant generating 80 million gallons a day will help supply East Central Florida's need for drinkable water.
That first deadline is coming up quickly. It will take about four years to design and build the plant, which could pipe water to Ocala, Leesburg, Mount Dora, DeLand and other customers.
Cost an issue
The desalination process involves forcing pressurized water through membranes that filter out salt and other matter to create potable water. It requires a lot of energy, usually in the form of electricity.
"Energy is a big question mark," Shannon said.
He estimated water will cost $4.50 per thousand gallons, plus around 70 cents for transmission, or around $5.19 per thousand gallons, with the plant built and operating. Currently, the City of DeLand's household rate for 1,000 gallons of water is $1.71.
Shannon's price estimates do not include the cost of debt to finance the plant's construction.
It will cost around $539 million to build the initial 25-million-gallons-a-day facility, and around $1.35 billion for the completed facility that would produce 80 million gallons per day. The construction estimates include the cost of transmission lines.
Shannon said his company is working with Florida Power and Light to identify energy sources. Grants would help pay the cost of construction.
Coming up: Interviews with Jorge Aguilar of Food & Water Watch, who told the League of Women Voters Coquina Coast is not the solution, and an engineer who helped build desalination plants in Saudi Arabia.
Reader Comments
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As near as I can see, Florida has more fresh water than it knows what to do with. Where is the shortage?
Look at a climatology map, and you will see that Florida (Volusia and Flagler Counties in particular) receives more rainfall than any other place in the United States, with the exception of the coastal areas of the States of Washington and Oregon and the Gulf States between western Florida and Louisiana. Look at a satellite picture of the State of Florida, and notice all of the lakes in the state. One of my former meteorology professors once quipped, “If you removed all of Florida’s lakes, the state would be about the size of Rhode Island.” According to an article entitled, "At Least 36 U.S. States Face Water Shortage," Florida dumps millions of gallons of fresh water into the ocean every year to avert flooding. In another article entitled, "Experts Fear Much of U.S. Could Face Water Shortage", ". . . the state [Florida] dumps hundreds of billions of gallons a year of treated wastewater into the Atlantic through pipes - water that could otherwise be used for irrigation."
Mark Twain once said there are three kinds of lies: Lies, **** lies, and statistics. The idea that Florida doesn’t have adequate fresh water supplies is a lie that rates right up there with statistics!
This issue is bigger than Volusia and Flagler Counties and the State of Florida. According to a report published by the U.S. Geological Survey, in the year 2000 the United States used more than 148 trillion gallons of water—that’s almost 500,000 gallons per person. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I use that much water in a year. Most of this water was used for big-business commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing purposes. Producers of bottled water in Florida export over a million gallons of water every day—that’s more than 365 million gallons a year! So big business uses all the water, and they expect us citizens to pay for it? We can’t do that; we have already had to pay to bail out the greedy, corrupt, big-business financial sector in this country. Big business has exported our high-paying jobs overseas, and big business has encouraged illegal aliens to come to this country to accept low-wage jobs. The impact: a lower our standard of living for U.S. citizens. So asking us to pay for more big business greed is throwing salt into a wound that is already unacceptably painful. If big business needs to use so much water, require them to hire U.S. citizens to build desalinization plants to meet their water needs.
Floridians (and Volusia and Flagler Counties in particular) don’t need desalinization of ocean water. What we need to do is the following: Quit exporting bottled water (If our water resources are allegedly so critically low, we certainly should not be exporting water!), effectively utilize the massive fresh water resources we already have, eliminate unnecessary irrigation for such things as the stupid use of Saint Augustine grass (Elimination of unnecessary irrigation would resolve up to 75 percent of our wasted water resources), require the Saint Johns Water Management District to accomplish the district’s core mission, as stated in the district’s name—manage water resources. The district does a great job of measuring water usage and dictating requirements; they need to use their expertise to come up with cost-effective solutions that benefit Florida citizens—not just big business and other special interest groups.
Michael Wright
Former Air Force Meteorologist and Member of the Orange City Water Sustainability Committee
We are been sold this line of bs with great efect.The costs of producing potable water from desalinating plants is a coarse of last resort. That is, when the public starts shooting one another for lifes essential requisite. It is only sustainable when we are near zero water available. The cost of carbon fuel to produce water is unsustainable.Why is it that every appliciant who requests a CUP from the SJRMD usually gets on for no cost. They are dished out to golf courses for irigation of their golf turf, they are issued out to developers to irrigare their landscapes, they are issued out to fern growers (who employ illegal below the minimum wages therefore they are not sustainable operations. Export these industries to Mexico or elsewhere). They are issued out to sod farmers to grow St. Augustine grass foe all our lawns (ban St. Augustine grass because it is non sustainable and not drought resistant. They are issued out to developers who build more cookie cutter homes in our wetlands and recharge areas. They are issued out to plastic water bottlers free of charge so they can bottle it and sell back to us who darn well pay for the infrastructure involved.
When we address all these everyday wastes then we can start looking at new ways to creat water H owever let us not be led by the nose by greedy developers who want the current residents of Volusia invest in more unnecessary infrastructure to support their greed. Wake up Vulosians. Tell these asses to wise up and beging to conserve the water we watse already. Florida wastes more water than any other state I know of.........
Yet here we are granting CU's left right and
Bussines's can not afford this increase in water bills, and the environment will be hurt by the tons of greenhouse gases emmited to
generate the megawatts of electricy to power this.
Oh well I guess we will keep giving our tax dollars to these people. According to them our taps should have run dry 20 years ago, but alas when I turn on the fawcett, WATER!
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