Cooper City staff outline $100M-plus water and wastewater overhaul; consultants to return with replacement schedule

Cooper City utilities staff on Monday gave the City Commission a detailed briefing on the city's water and wastewater systems, outlining aging equipment, operational limits set by permits and interlocal agreements, and the next steps for a multi-decade master plan that staff estimates could total "somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and $20,000,000 in expenditures."

The presentation, led by Akano Bridal, the utilities director and city engineer, explained how raw water is drawn from the Biscayne Aquifer and treated through the city's nano-filtration plant, and described the wastewater collection and treatment process that ends with effluent either sent to an injection well or delivered to the City of Hollywood. "The raw water well pumps located 30 to 60 feet underground extract water from the aquifer," Bridal said.

The briefing said Cooper City has six Biscayne wells (two at the plant and others at separate addresses), storage tanks totaling about 3,500,000 gallons, roughly 145 miles of water distribution pipe and 91 miles of gravity wastewater mains. Daily finished-water average production is listed at 3,020,000 gallons; the plant has a permitted maximum of 4,500,000 gallons per day despite higher pumping capacity on paper. "We cannot pump more than that. That's one of the regulations that we have," Bridal said.

Why it matters: staff told commissioners the plant contains…