Lake Placid using reuse water

It has been a long time – 9 years – since Lake Placid began working on a water reuse system.

The advanced wastewater treatment plant to reuse and treat wastewater for irrigation is basically complete. The plant is located on the north side of town next to the maintenance facility.

"It's about time," said Gary Freeman, director of utilities. "I've been here 9 years. The whole time has been trying to get reuse.

The last part was pretty hard because they (the Lake Placid Town Council) stopped it one time," he added. "The water management district called me and said 'you don't want to do that because you won't get as much water when you want your drinking water permit.'"

Lake Placid received a grant totaling about $1.3 million from the Southwest Florida Water Management District for the project. The town put up about $500,000.

"The water we're taking out of the ground is the pristine water," Freeman said Monday. "We want to preserve the pristine water so we don't use too much."

Recycling water is helpful for the environment because it is being used to regenerate the water back to where it came from to recharge the original water source that will eventually be used again for dinking water in the future.

Reuse water is "extremely regulated" and many standards have to be met, Freeman said.

Irrigation of the medians on U.S. 27 is the only place the town is now using reuse water.

"We have a permit to irrigate only there, nowhere else," he said. "We can't get go anywhere else. Say another development next door wanted it, we would have to go through an addendum or an addition to the permit we have and then get that approved.

"The process takes so long, one of the reasons, is all the scientific stuff you have to do to prove that it is going to work – literally prove it though calculations," he added.

Water management districts are strongly encouraging reuse water. State law requires reuse in water resource caution areas.

The caution areas are places where water is either scarce or contaminated, according to the water management district. Highlands County is one of those areas.

"When you go to get a water use permit for potable water, they want to know what kind of reuse you're doing and how much you're doing," Freeman said.

Freeman doesn't believe anyone else locally is doing as much with reuse water.

The reason the Lake Placid plant is called "advanced" is because it has filters, according to Freeman. He explained that the plant didn't have to have filters, "but we built the filters into the plant when it was designed specifically for reuse back in 2002."

A ceremony will be held early this summer to mark the occasion of the plant going online.

By then approximately 90 percent of the water Lake Placid uses for irrigation will be reuse water.

"It's quite an achievement," Freeman said. "It's pretty exciting."