Tours
The 2025 WateReuse Symposium will feature opportunities to tour many of Tampa Bay region’s most innovative water recycling plants and natural restoration efforts. Please select the tours and times that you’re interested in when submitting your registration.
TECO Manatee Viewing Center & Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant Tour
Sunday, March 16, 10 am – 3:30 pm (Maximum 25 participants, includes lunch)
Wednesday, March 19, 11 am – 4:30 pm (Maximum 25 participants, includes lunch)
This tour includes stops at both the TECO Manatee Viewing Center and the Tampa Bay Desalination Plant.
Tampa Bay Water’s Seawater Desalination Plant is located next to Tampa Electric’s (TECO) Big Bend Power Station, which withdraws and discharges up to 1.4 billion gallons a day of seawater from Tampa Bay to cool the power plant. The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant captures some of that warm seawater to provide up to 25 million gallons per day of drinking water to the region. At the Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant, seawater that comes into the plant goes through a rigorous pretreatment process, and then undergoes reverse osmosis to remove salt. The end product is high-quality drinking water that supplies up to 10 percent of the region’s needs.
At Tampa Electric’s Manatee Viewing Center, there is a lot to see and do! The TECO discharge canal is a state and federally designated sanctuary that provides manatees critical protection from the cold. In the winter months, manatees leave colder waters to return to this warm and welcoming refuge. TECO built the Manatee Viewing Center to allow the public to view these unique, gentle animals. Visitors can explore boardwalks overlooking the area where manatees gather and visit a newly remodeled education center to learn about the plant-eating, warm-blooded “gentle giants.” Manatees often swim in water less than six feet deep, where underwater vegetation is most abundant.
Pasco County: 4G Ranch Wetlands
Tuesday, March 18, 8 am – 12 pm (Maximum 20 participants)
After 40 years of groundwater withdrawals to provide water supplies to the Tampa Bay area, the Central Pasco County region faced limited water supply availability as well as impacts to freshwater habitat.
To address this critical issue, Pasco County partnered with the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) and the Phillips Family to design and construct an award-winning infiltration wetland system that utilizes reclaimed water to recharge the aquifer, augment drinking water supplies, protect water quality, create and recover lakes and wetlands, and increase water reuse capacity at the 4G+1 Ranch.
The Pasco County Master Reuse facility includes 15 organically shaped wetland cells, with a total footprint of 176 acres, that receive up to 5 million gallons per day of reclaimed water. These wetlands do not have an outlet or surface discharge, so water is managed via infiltration to provide groundwater recharge and water supply benefits. The topography of the site, combined with detailed planting plans, maximizes habitat diversity by creating different ecotones across the cells that range from deep open water to shallow wetlands, islands, and rookery areas and habitat for birds.
This technical tour will include a short presentation on the reuse facility at the beautiful 4G+1 Ranch and an ecological tour through the wetlands on the Ranch’s custom-made buggies.
Se7en Wetlands & Polk County DPR Pilot
Wednesday, March 19, 12 pm – 5 pm (Maximum 25 participants)
Visit two unique water reuse projects on one tour.
Se7en Wetlands is a constructed wetland treatment system made up of 1,640 acres of marshes, swamps, uplands, and lakes which provide tertiary treatment for all The City of Lakeland’s wastewater and excess Polk County reclaimed water. Water circulates through the seven wetland cells, eventually flowing to one of Tampa Electric Company’s power stations for beneficial reuse or discharging to the North Prong of the Alafia River, which flows to Tampa Bay. The wetland has been in operation for over 30 years, providing water quality treatment and habitat for wildlife, including many imperiled species. Each habitat is different and supports a wide array of plants and animals, including the American alligator, wood stork, bobcat, sandhill crane, gopher tortoise, and many more species. Monthly bird surveys document the seasonal variations in bird populations with over 150 avian species documented at Se7en Wetlands. The site also features almost 9 miles of hiking trail and a variety of outreach activities that involve the public in the unique functions and services that Se7en Wetlands provides to the community.
Polk County’s Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) Pilot is designed to demonstrate that the direct potable reuse process can produce drinking water that meets or exceeds federal and state standards and provides an option for increasing the county’s water supply in the future.
The Upper Floridan aquifer that supplies water to Polk, and four other areas in Central Florida, is under tremendous strain. At our current rate of use, Polk will need an additional 21 million gallons of water per day by 2040. Like so many communities where water supply does not meet the population’s demand and a lack of groundwater availability threatens natural resources, Polk County Commissioners must continue to examine options to supplement potable supply.
Through a joint agreement with the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the county built a potable reuse facility to conduct a pilot project at the Cherry Hill Water Production Facility in the Northwest Regional Utility Service Area. Reclaimed water is transferred from Polk County’s Northwest Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility to the Cherry Hill Water Production Facility, where the DPR site is separate from the water production facility.
At the DPR facility, the pilot project further treats the reclaimed water through a series of processes, utilizing a multi-barrier treatment approach that includes technologies such as enhanced coagulation, advanced oxidation, ultrafiltration, granular activated carbon, and UV disinfection that can run at a flow rate of 10-20 gallons per minute. This process scrubs the reclaimed water to remove any remaining trace chemicals, pharmaceutical residue, hormones, bacteria, protozoa and viruses.