In a December 2004
Key West Citizen news' article, Jim Reynolds
Executive Director of the FKAA announced that starting
on December 1st five percent brackish water will be
blended with the drinking water and water supplied to
the Keys. This "will keep the Keys' daily water use at
17 million gallons a day,"
In November of 2003 we
posted an item on a test to be conducted by the
Florida Keys Aquaduct Authority in December of 2003 on
drinking water in the Florida Keys.
"Water,
Water Everywhere and not a drop to drink"
The above quotation
attributed to author Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772&endash;1834) was made famous in his work, The
Ancient Mariner. Part ii., but what has that to do
with Duck Key and the Greater Florida Keys? Potable
water in the Keys is piped by the Florida Keys
Aqueduct Authority and traditionally its source has
been the Biscayne Aquifer.
The Florida Keys
Aqueduct Authority (FKAA) recently conducted a test
by blending up to 6 percent of the brackish water
from Floridan Aquifer with the pristine water of
the Biscayne Aquifer which residents are use to
drinking.
The source of this
water according to Jim Reynolds, executive director
of FKAA is a 1,500 foot deep well that has been
drilled "and we have to do flow tests and pump a
lot of water out of the well to see how it reacts."
The water which apparently could not be dumped on
the ground or put into a sewer system had to go
someplace. "The only place it can go is in the
water plant," Reynolds said.
For more on this
mixing of water, read Anne
Henson article
from the Upper Keys Reporter.
December
2004
In a December 2004
Key West Citizen news' article by Laurie Karnatz
quoted Jim Reynolds, executive director of the FKAA ,
"We will
still meet all primary and secondary drinking water
standards", Reynolds said. "We did a test about a
year-and-a-half ago to see how much we could blend
and no one noticed the difference. I couldn't tell
a difference. "
The addition of the
brackish water is necessitated by the fact that the
FKAA has exceeded its permit with the South Florida
Water Management District for water pulled from the
aquifer. South Florida Water Management has refused to
increase the Aquaduct Authority's water allocation.
The FKAA has plans to
build a desalination system to remove salt from the
brackish water. The system should be in operation by
2008 or 2009.
The article goes on to
quote David Fernandez, Key West Utilitiy's Director
who had comments on "turning watsewater into drinking
water."
"When you
think about cities that live on rivers and streams,
it's common place for them to be drinking other
people's discharge," he said. . . . "The realities
are people are doing it everywhere, but they mix it
with river water and they don't necessarily admit
what they're doing."
. . .
"Reynolds and
Fernandez said that there had been discussions of
reusing the estimated 4 million gallons of treated
wastewater per day that the city pumps into a deep
well off of Fleming Key."
. . .
"Reuse, if it ever
happens, likely will be limited to flushing
toilets, washing cars and watering lawns, said
Fernandez."
