POLK COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — The Polk Regional Water Cooperative got a big boost Wednesday to ensure the county’s booming population has enough drinking water for decades to come.
“Holy cow,” said Polk County Commissioner George Lindsey, while holding a check for $305 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program.
It’s a loan that, combined with a $293 million grant from the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD), will go towards further development and construction of two lower Floridan aquifer wellsites in Lakeland and Lake Wales, plus a water treatment facility.
“The idea is we can pull water from deep and not impact the surface but that water is highly mineralized so you have to use a [reverse osmosis] system to treat it to drinking water standards,” said Brian Armstrong, executive director of SWFWMD.
Much of Polk County and the surrounding area’s drinking water comes from the upper aquifer.
The drilling project into the lower aquifer is a first for the Bay area.
“You drill really big and really deep wells, 3,000-6,000 feet deep compared to a 300 foot well in the upper Floridan,” said Armstrong.
SWFWMD projects Polk County needs to be able to produce 30 million more gallons of water a day to keep up with population growth in the next 20-30 years.
“There’s only so much that can be drawn from the upper Floridan aquifer,” said Commissioner Lindsey. “We gotta address this. We have oversubscribed the upper Floridan aquifer and we need an alternative water supply plan.”
Officials expect the lower aquifer water to be flowing through Polk County pipes by 2027.