Broward County blocking plan to reduce ocean sewage dumping

Broward blocking clean sewage plan

The plan would reduce the amount of treated sewage flowing into the ocean, conserve water and save millions. But a local water district’s proposal to build a high-tech sewage treatment plant on the edge of the Everglades faces a difficult road.

That’s because the North Springs Improvement District is locked into a perpetual contract to send its water and money to the Broward County treatment plant that dumps the partially treated sewage into the ocean. That plant treats wastewater to a lower level of cleanliness than the proposed plant and discharges it through a pipeline into the ocean.

The county’s ocean discharge pipe is one of five required to be shut down by 2025 under a state mandate to stop the waste of fresh water and end what many say is an egregious source of ocean pollution. North Springs says the proposed plant, which would treat about 2.5 million gallons a day, or more than 10 percent of what goes into the ocean, deserves the county’s support.

“Instead of dumping the water in the ocean, we can recharge our wetlands with good water,” said Rod Colon, district director of operations. “We want to take all that wastewater and do something environmentally sound.”

Alan Garcia Broward County’s water and sewage director, said there’s no hard scientific evidence that sewage discharges harm coral reefs. Broward’s Mayor Sue Gunzburger has said in the past, “If there’s anything we can do to avoid meeting that standard by 2025 Broward wants to do it. It’s a very expensive, unfunded mandate that I don’t think would make much difference when it comes to the ocean.”

Maybe they should read: Disease from human sewage is killing Caribbean corals.

This is the same Broward County that will host the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force meeting in Fort Lauderdale, October 18-21.  See: “National Attention Focused on Florida’s Coral Reefs”

Read Sun Sentinel news article: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/fl-sewage-pollution-20110827,0,4960178.story

Also see: Broward sewage must somehow be different than the poop in the Keys