CLEARWATER – The installation of fluoride delivery systems in two of the city’s water treatment plants should be completed sometime in March, the utility director said last week.
The new storage tanks and pumps are designed to increase the fluoride content in the city’s drinking water to 0.7 parts per million (ppm), which the federal government recommends to combat tooth decay.
While the city’s water doesn’t yet contain the recommended amount of fluoride, some of the chemicals are already in the water.
“The city’s water is already partially fluorinated from the water we get from the Pinellas County’s water system,” said David Porter, who is responsible for the city’s water quality.
Before installing the new fluoridation system, the city must first convert two of its water treatment systems to reverse osmosis systems (RO), which separate and remove salts and other ions dissolved under pressure for drinking water treatment.
“Reverse Osmosis No. 1 (RO1) will go online sometime in March; Reverse osmosis # 2 (R02) was built and went online in 2015, ”said Porter. “This means that two of our largest production facilities will provide fluorinated water.”
Converting a third water treatment plant to reverse osmosis will be put on hold pending a master plan for the city’s drinking water system, he said.
This third facility is the point where Pinellas County’s already fluorinated water enters the city’s drinking water distribution system, Porter said.
Clearwater’s water system also contains some naturally recurring fluoride in its wells, but if the fluoridation equipment in the two reverse osmosis units comes on they will bring Clearwater’s fluoridation levels up to federally recommended levels, Porter said.
Injecting fluoride into Clearwater’s sewage treatment plants is a straightforward process.
“There’s a chemical storage tank [in the facility] it says ‘Flouride’, ”he said. “You can get a fluoride compound in liquid form from a chemical supplier. You have it in the [storage] Tanks for you and you have a pump that, like any other chemical we have, doses into the water when it leaves the factory, ”Porter said. “Everything is measured automatically. As the plant fluoride increases, the amount of fluoride added is reduced. “
The fluoride injection systems at each of the two water treatment facilities cost $ 250,000 for a total cost of $ 500,000, Porter said.
Once Porter’s engineers have the new fluoride delivery systems up and running in late February and then fully operational in March, fluoride levels should remain stable at 0.7 ppm, Porter said.
Clearwater residents consume approximately 11.2 million gallons of drinking water every day, according to the Clearwater Utilities Department; around 80 percent are pumped from the city’s own and operated groundwater wells. The remainder will be bought from Pinellas County Utilities.
Clearwater’s wells are fed by the Floridan Aquifer. The vast, underground gulf is one of the largest sources of groundwater in the United States. It underlies all of Florida, South Georgia, and small parts of Alabama and South Carolina.
Porter, who served for many years as a consulting engineer for utility companies across Florida, came out of early retirement in 2010 to manage Clearwater’s wastewater treatment plants. In 2015 he became operations manager.
His department deals in depth with the network of pipes, pumps, filters and other devices that supply the city’s 110,000 residents with drinking water. The Department of Utilities already has a master plan for its wastewater collection and transfer system and is drafting a master plan for water recovery and sanitation facilities, Porter said.
“Much of what we have was built many, many years ago,” he said.
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