Lame Miami Herald Editorial – (correction in post) by geniusofdespair

Today the MiamiHerald said the reuse price tag could be $1 billion. Guess again Herald. The price tag could be as steep as $3.6 billion to build a plant to treat about 300 to 350 million gallons per day to the HIGHEST standards. By the way, this would make it the biggest reuse plant in the United States. (SORRY, THIS POST WAS A DECIMAL POINT OFF YESTERDAY -- I AM FIXING IT 12/20). I did check sources but I guess they also were off too. I must admit that Gimleteye questioned my math (and rightfully so) yesterday.

Miami Dade has secondary treatment now and has to go to drinking water standards (Filtration and UV disinfection) by next year with the Consent Order with the Department of Environmental Protection. The SFWMD suggested, since you are going to a higher level just to inject it underground -- why not go an extra step and clean it all the way, to go in the environment - over ground.

Let me qualify this blog by saying: I think we need reuse but at the highest standards -- without safety being a tradeoff to economics.

I am including a chart from Engineer Andrew Salveson, an expert on water treatment. (Hit on it to make it larger.)

Here is the problem.

Doug Yoder, Assistant Director of County Water and Sewer said it best: You can’t use tap water for your fish tank, it kills the fish. And, reuse water - even cleaned to the highest standards - has trace amounts of hormones, etc. (from our pee) in it. We don’t know what these compounds will do to the critters in the environment. I would suppose Natacha Seijas couldn’t give a hoot. Hey wait a minute: She is the head of the County Committee overseeing the environment!

And the dopey Miami Herald, in an editorial today, said don’t recall her. She will put her dirty little fingers all over this reuse issue and taint it to be sure. That is why I am going to the highest of Salveson's numbers. If not for Seijas, I might have settled on $2.1 billion - the lower estimate from Salveson for the cleanest water.

You can’t use reuse water ecologically unless it is cleaned to a much higher standard than drinking water. Fish are in the water 24-7. Male fish in the St. Lucie Estuary are already showing signs of feminization. Thus, we have to go to the higher costs on the Salveson chart since that is what we are going to do with the reuse water: put it in the environment.

I applaud the county for going to reuse but it is just not as the Herald says. According to Salveson, getting the water clean enough for ecological use construction costs could be as high $12 per gallon.

This is exactly why we have so many cost overruns in the county. We need to do the research.

This could increase our unfunded infrastructure from $7 billion To $10.6 billion and don't we have to build a desalination plant too? As the Stupid Herald says in the editorial: we are expecting a 42% increase in the population in the next 20 years. Maybe they will pay for all the unfunded infrastructure?