How WFNF was chosen and desalination was rejected –SRWMD 2025-01-01

This document appears to show the process by which SRWMD, SJRWMD, FDEP, JEA, and three other water utilities decided on Water First North Florida (WFNF), their plan to pipe treated wastewater from Jacksonville into the Suwannee River Basin.

Thanks to Amy Brown, SRWMD Deputy Executive Director, Water Resources, for sending this document.

A copy of the document is on the WWALS website, and images of each page are below.

The discussion below is my opinion and nobody at SRWMD is responsible for it.

How WFNF was chosen and desalination was rejected, SRWMD, SJRWD, JEA, FDEP, et al., January 2025

Notably missing from the options that were considered is wells at wetlands below planted pine plantations, as proposed by Dennis J. Price, PG, back in 2016. No reason is given for why.

Page 34 has a summary of why desalination was rejected:

Desalination (for comparative reference- not recommended for further study): Several desalination alternatives were considered in the evaluation. Desalination at Coquina would desalinate ocean water from the east coast in the Jacksonville area and pump it to the conceptual recharge area. Desalination at the Gulf Coast would desalinate water from a location on the west coast and pump it to the recharge area. The Pumping Replacement alternative would desalinate saltwater from the Jacksonville area and replace groundwater as a water supply for all four participating utilities. The desalination alternatives are not recommended for further evaluation because of:
1) High capital and operation and maintenance cost, partly due to the treatment process itself, and partly due to the high cost of brine disposal,
2) Managing brine disposal incurs significant technical and regulatory challenges,
3) Replacement of all four participating utility groundwater pumping with desalinated seawater would not meet the full MFL requirements, and
4) Ocean desalination does not address the requirements of Senate Bill 64 to put reclaimed water to beneficial use.

Let’s address each of those four points:

6.2.2 Observations and Discussion
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The cost of desalination has gone down drastically over time, and there is no reason to believe it will not continue to do so over the dozen-year timeframe of WFNF.

Graph Historical Economies of Desalination, 2020-03-01 –Mayor, Beatriz. (2020). Unraveling the Historical Economies of Scale and Learning Effects for Desalination Technologies. Water Resources Research. 56. e2019WR025841. 10.1029/2019WR025841.
Indeed, brine disposal is a problem, but one that numerous desalination plants around the world seem to manage, including the 41 in the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) that produce about 292 million gallons a day of drinking water.

Map: Desalination Facilities Using Brackish Groundwater and Seawater in South Florida, 2023-01-01 — SFWMD
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Yet the table on page 7 says about desalination that, “Full MFL goals could be met based on current modeling and careful selection/design of recharge sites and methods”.

Table ES.2 Summary of Short-Listed Alternatives

Also note that table shows desalination, for the same 40 mgd as WFNF, would produce more benefit to the Santa Fe and Ichetucknee Rivers.
SB 64 is JEA’s problem, not a problem of the Suwannee River Basin. The same page continues about SB 64, but it’s still not the Suwannee Basin’s problem.
How about have JEA clean up JEA Buckman and its other wastewater plants to drinking water standards, and feed that back into Jacksonville’s drinking water, thus meeting SB 64 and reducing Jacksonville’s groundwater withdrawals? That would benefit both JEA and the Suwannee Basin.

Note the pullquote on page 9:

Ultimately, the principal goal of this Partnership is to provide full recovery and prevention flow benefits to the Lower Santa Fe and Ichetucknee Rivers, thereby addressing the impacts from all water users, including utilities.

So SB 64 is at best a secondary goal.

Without worrying about SB 64, pine plantation wetland wells might address Suwannee Basin MFLs at far lower cost than WFNF. We would know more if that option had been considered.

I am not a hydrogeologist nor an expert on desalination. Now that this document is public, perhaps some such people will weigh in. It would have been good if independent review had already been happening.

On page 13, there is no indication the public was told about this year-long series of meetings, much less invited to them:

Decision-makers from the Partnership used a series of facilitated workshops to discuss the technical outcomes at each step of the process (Table 2.1). Through progressive, data-driven screening, workshop dialogue, and consideration of both individual and collective value of alternatives, the Partnership was able to move from over 800 initial alternatives to the four alternatives identified for additional study.

Table 2.1 Workshops with Sponsor Organizations
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Notice on page 27 that while “Water that is injected via recharge wells directly into the USDW will need to meet drinking water standards,” water fed into wetlands or sinks will not have to meet drinking water standards. That’s the loophole in SB 64 that JEA is using for WFNF.

That page does say nitrogen and PFAS will have to be dealt with. I’m looking forward to seeing evidence of how JEA will do that.

Meanwhile, JEA remains under an FDEP Consent Order for its Buckman wastewater plant exceeding limits on several contaminants.

See below for images of each page of North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan Project Conceptualization Partnership, January 2025, and PDF of the document is on the WWALS website.

-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can help with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable, water in the 10,000-square-mile Suwannee River Basin in Florida and Georgia by becoming a WWALS member today!
https://wwals.net/donations/

North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan Project Conceptualization Partnership, January 2025
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