Among WateReuse Florida’s vision and goals is engaging and supporting young professionals and students to enhance their potential and achievement. In doing so, WateReuse Florida has been providing annual $1,000 scholarships for over a decade at three Florida universities (Florida, Central Florida, and South Florida) to support junior and senior year students that have expressed interest in pursuing a career in water resources, water reuse, water supply, treatment or desalination and who have a research project or topic that is germane to the issues facing water reuse or desalination.

Our stage of growth as a section now allows us to increase our support in perpetuity with our first named scholarship. On June 29, the WateReuse Florida board approved a motion to establish a named endowment with the University of South Florida. Generated income from the endowment will now be disbursed annually as a scholarship of $1,000 to a deserving student. Going forward, our plan is to continue to work toward a similar outcome with the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida while we continue to provide a $1,000 annual scholarship as before. Many thanks go to Mark Elsner, a charter member and current adviser to our board, who guided us through this stage of the process.

WateReuse Florida is also planning to host a webinar entitled “Navigating the PFAS Waters from a Water Reuse Perspective” to take place Sept. 13. We all have received proposed regulatory limits for drinking water for the pervasive “forever chemicals” known collectively as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). As the PFAS regulatory framework is finalized, a webinar that incorporates the unique perspective of water reuse is needed and will cover the current thinking of how best to monitor and manage PFAS with a look toward the future. This brief 90-minute webinar will cover the PFAS challenges from regulatory, agriculture, and utility perspectives in Florida. Be on the lookout for additional details on the webinar and we hope you plan to attend.

Michael Sweeney, Ph.D. 
WateReuse Florida President 

The WateReuse Association develops tools and resources to educate ratepayers, elected officials, and other stakeholders about the safety, reliability, and benefits of incorporating water recycling into a community’s water management strategy. The Association recently partnered with the Florida Section to develop Florida’s two-page Profile in Reuse, which features simple facts, figures and case studies that can be shared with everyone from policymakers to students.

Florida’s first water reuse system began operating in Tallahassee in 1966. Today, Florida has more than 380 systems supplying more than 900 million gallons a day of beneficial reuse. Reclaimed water is used to irrigate more than 6,000 acres of edible crops, more than 500 golf courses, and for more than 1,000 schools and 500,000 residences. It is also used for industrial purposes such as cooling towers and power plants. Visit the WateReuse Florida webpage to download a PDF of Florida’s Profile in Reuse.

The City of Pompano Beach installed approximately 6 miles of reclaimed water pipeline to distribute 0.34 million gallons of reclaimed water per day to meet the irrigation demands of approximately 475 homes and other green spaces in Pompano Beach, Lighthouse Point, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea and Broward County, previously irrigated primarily with private well water. This project helps mitigate saltwater intrusion and protects the environment and public water supply. This is part of the City’s ongoing reclaimed water distribution expansion efforts and assists Broward County Water and Wastewater Services in complying with ocean outfall requirements. A $500,000 alternative water supply grant from the South Florida Water Management District and Florida Department of Environmental Protection supported this project.

Randy Brown, Utilities Director for the City of Pompano Beach, was recently recognized by the Florida Water Environment Association as the OneWater Professional of the Year at the Florida Water Resources Conference. The OneWater Professional of the Year Award recognizes a water resource professional who has set an extraordinary record in Florida of achievement in advancing the practice of the OneWater concept by making, designing and/or implementing reuse or water resource policy or projects at the local and the regional levels. Randy serves on the WateReuse Florida Board of Trustees, co-chairs the Regulatory & Legislative Committee and is a Past President of WRFL. Congratulations Randy!

Florida Water Reuse Week promotion and education efforts included several posts on social media throughout the week of May 14-20, 2023. Posts experienced a range of engagement (5-10%). The post with the highest impressions, purple pipes in Pinellas and St. Petersburg, had 929 views and the Water Reuse in Florida by the Numbers post had the highest engagement of 10.37%. Our section gained 60 new followers during our Florida Water Reuse Week campaign and we now have 1,082 followers on our LinkedIn page.

On the heels of the success of the webinar on Senate Bill 64 in March and the Reuse Summit in April, the New Technology and Innovation Committee is diligently working on bringing another topical webinar to its members in the Fall. The webinar titled “Navigating the PFAS Waters from a Reuse Perspective” will be held Sept. 13, noon-1:30 p.m., and will include industry leaders who will share updates on federal regulations, challenges in agricultural reuse, and strategies in utility planning to stay ahead of the PFAS regulations. Registration is open here.

The next committee meeting is scheduled for July 28, 9-10 a.m. Contact committee co-chairs Pranjali Kumar at pkumar@carollo.com or Jason Mickel at jmickel@pascocountyfl.net if you’d like to join the meeting or the committee.