Panel: Utilities outline progress, costs and technical barriers to meeting Senate Bill 64 reuse goals

At a meeting of the Environment and Natural Resources Committee, state and local wastewater officials described progress and remaining challenges implementing Senate Bill 64 (2021), the law that directs utilities to eliminate nonbeneficial discharges of domestic wastewater to surface waters by 2032.

The Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Water Resource Management presented statewide totals and implementation milestones, while representatives from small coastal cities and large utilities described competing options — reuse, deep-well injection, regional transfers and groundwater recharge — and the financing and permitting barriers those options pose.

John Coates, director of the Division of Water Resource Management at the Department of Environmental Protection, told the committee that utilities’ approved plans indicate roughly 500 million to 600 million gallons per day of previously nonbeneficial discharges are targeted for elimination statewide. “Already, something just shy about 176,000,000 gallons per day of nonbeneficial discharges have already been eliminated,” Coates said. He added that much of the remainder — “some 3 to 400,000,000 gallons per day” under utilities’ plans — is expected to be retained in beneficial uses or allowed as limited wet‑weather discharge under the statute’s exceptions.

Coates reiterated statutory performance expectations in the implementation guidance: where reuse is proposed as the primary solution, a facility must achieve roughly a 90% annual average reuse rate and may allow limited wet‑weather backup discharges. He also described five statutory categories under which ongoing discharges may continue if they provide direct ecological or public‑water‑supply benefits, citing examples such as groundwater recharge and wetland hydration.

Smaller coastal utilities said geography and scale limit reuse options. Bill Freeman, city engineer for Flagler Beach, described a constrained footprint on a barrier island, a currently planned 1.5 million gallon per day advanced treatment plant and limited local reuse opportunities. Freeman said the city’s only near-term reuse customer is a roughly 40‑acre golf course on the opposite side of the Intracoastal Waterway and that connecting additional subdivisions or expanding reuse distribution will be costly and logistically complex.

Steve Swan, city engineer for Atlantic Beach, said his city upgraded its plant to advanced treatment in 2014 but still averages about 1 million gallons per day of discharge to the St. Johns River. Swan said extending reclaimed water distribution across a compact, built‑out right‑of‑way would cost an estimated $30 million to $35 million; bulk transfer estimates from the larger neighboring utility (JEA) were approximately $51 million.

Rob Zamacharo, chief water systems officer for JEA, described a multi‑pronged approach in a large, regional utility: public access reclaimed water, an indirect potable reuse pilot and a larger North Florida regional recharge project. “In total we treat about 80,000,000 gallons per day of wastewater,” Zamacharo said, and JEA’s portfolio of reuse and regional projects represents investments measured in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

Jeff Greenwell of Hillsborough County described an existing saltwater‑intrusion barrier program that the county began before the 2021 law and is now scaling up to meet the statute. Greenwell said the county expects to spend tens of millions of dollars per well and that capital planning must begin years ahead of construction to meet the 2032 horizon.

Representatives of the Florida Rural Water Association urged flexibility for smaller systems. Alicia Keeler asked the committee to consider hardship provisions, funding mechanisms and regionalization options so that utilities that cannot afford full 90% reuse immediately are not penalized while they implement incremental or regionally coordinated approaches.

Department and utility speakers repeatedly identified permitting timelines, siting constraints, drilling capacity for deep injection, and capital finance — not lack of will — as the primary barriers to rapid implementation. Coates said annual reporting to the legislature and frequent engagement between the DEP and utilities will be essential to track progress and resolve permitting and technical questions as plans evolve.

Committee members did not take formal action on the implementation discussion; the record reflects an informational panel and public testimony from utilities and trade associations.