In May 2021, residents in the town of Palm Beach were warned of a safety concern that resonates to this day.
The City of West Palm Beach, which supplies water to the town, notified its customers of a temporary contamination of cylindrospermopsin, a harmful toxin created by cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, in its treated water supply.
The water was not safe for young children or the elderly to drink, and boiling the water would not eliminate the bacteria, the city said.
Town Council President Bobbie Lindsay, speaking at a Palm Beach Civic Association forum on water quality on Thursday, said the water scare was a wake-up call for town officials and residents.
“This event demonstrated to all of us a vulnerability of our potable water supply, and its safety, and raised questions about whether the system we use today currently is capable of delivering long-term safe water,” Lindsay said.
Lindsay was one of four expert panelists at the forum, which examined the source and treatment of the town’s existing water supply and the source and treatment options available to Palm Beach in the future.
Questions about the quality of the town’s existing potable water supply, and how to secure a safe and reliable water source for the future, have taken on an added urgency as the town approaches the end of its 30-year water franchise agreement with West Palm Beach in 2029. Palm Beach is required to notify the city of its intention by October 2027.
Lindsay said ensuring a safe and clean water supply for residents is a principal responsibility of local government.
“It’s our job to make sure that the water that comes in here is fit to drink,” she said.
Michael Pucillo, chairman and chief executive officer of the non-profit Civic Association, moderated the program, attended by an audience of more than 140 people at the Mandel Recreation Center. In addition to the focus on water quality, the program was also a Welcome Back Community Update and the Civic Association’s first program of the 2024-25 season.
In addition to Lindsay, the panelists were Lisa Interlandi, policy director at the Everglades Law Center; John Potts, P.E., senior consultant for Kimley-Horn & Associates, the engineering firm that is a consultant to the Town of Palm Beach; and Michael Reiter, president of Michael Reiter & Associates global security firm, a member of the Civic Association’s Executive Committee and a former Palm Beach police chief.
The water that West Palm Beach provides to its roughly 120,000 customers in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach and South Palm Beach is a surface supply drawn primarily from the Grassy Waters Preserve, a 23-square-mile ecosystem in Palm Beach County. The city uses chlorination and other traditional methods to treat the water at its treatment plant beside Clear Lake at 1009 Banyon Blvd.
Palm Beach’s Town Council and Mayor Danielle Moore have said the town wants its future water supply to be treated with state-of-the-art membrane filtration, capable of removing all contaminants from the water (there are different types of membrane technology, including reverse osmosis, a superior treatment process that can convert seawater to fresh water).
Some officials are also questioning whether the town should continue to rely on a surface water system, which is vulnerable to blue-green algae and bacterial contamination, or opt for a groundwater system, which draws water from deep or shallow aquifers that are not exposed to surface-level bacteria.
The town has been in talks for about a year with two finalists for its future water supply – West Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach.
West Palm Beach has expressed interest in tapping into groundwater from the Floridan Aquifer in the future. It would have to build a membrane treatment system to remove salts from that brackish water for it to be potable.
Lake Worth Beach has expressed interest in entering into a water supply agreement with Palm Beach. The city relies solely on groundwater, drawing its supply from both the surficial (shallow) aquifer and the deep Floridan Aquifer. It treats the surficial water with traditional lime-softening and the deep groundwater with reverse osmosis, then distributes a blend of the two to its customers.
Its treatment plant, which produces five to seven million gallons daily, with a daily capacity for 17.5 million gallons, would have to be upgraded to essentially double its reverse osmosis capacity if it were to begin supplying Palm Beach’s water, which averages 10 million gallons a day.
Lindsay said Palm Beach expects both West Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach to provide within the next month “responses that are significant enough to be actionable by the town.”
Surface water supply
The surface water used by West Palm Beach is part of a large and complex system involving municipalities, agriculture, and sensitive ecosystems that include the Lake Worth Lagoon, Interlandi said.
It is overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District, which has permitting authority over water sources in this region.
During periods of drought, when water reserves at Grassy Waters cannot meet its supply needs, West Palm Beach relies on Lake Okeechobee as a backup source. The water travels through a canal network into Lake Mangonia and Clear Lake, where it is captured for processing at the city’s treatment plant at 1009 Banyan Blvd.
Water managers must balance the multiple needs of the region, including water supply, flood control, Everglades restoration and environmental protection, based on the current conditions of the system, which is vulnerable to flooding, drought, and storms, Interlandi said.
“Climate change has played a pretty significant role and caused some extreme weather conditions that can affect not just the quantity of the water but the quality of water,” she said.
Lake Okeechobee is a very large and shallow lake that has in recent years become more susceptible to algae blooms.
“Algae can have a very significant impact on whether that water is available as a source,” she said.
In August, water managers began implementing a new Lake Okeechobee system operating manual [LOSOM] that will result in a beneficial reduction in water discharges from the lake into the Lake Worth Lagoon, the St. Lucie River and the Caloosahatchee River.
“These are our estuaries that, when Lake Okeechobee [water levels get] too high, currently experience very [environmentally] damaging discharges,” Interlandi said. “This is because of toxic algae blooms in our waterways.”
At the same time, LOSOM calls for a 242 percent increase in water sent into the Everglades.
“These changes will have a huge impact in terms of improving our water management system,” Interlandi said.
As a result, however, Lake Okeechobee will be managed at a higher water level, a change that is more likely to result in more algae blooms.
“When there is an algae bloom in Lake Okeechobee, it really becomes unavailable as a water supply source for the City of West Palm Beach,” she said.
Excessive nutrients from fertilizers and other runoff in the lake’s watershed continue to wash into the lake. Among those nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus are major contributors to algae blooms. As a result, water quality is likely to be a problem in the lake for the foreseeable future, she said.
“That’s why it’s really critical that, as a town, we try to not rely on those surface water sources or try to make sure your treatment is sufficient to overcome those issues,” Interlandi said.
West Palm Beach water treatment plant
West Palm Beach’s water plant dates to 1901, when the water coming into the plant was of a much better quality and basically just needed to be softened, Potts said. Over the decades, the quality of the water coming into the plant has deteriorated, he said.
“It’s warm water with oxygen in it, and it’s a place where bacteria grows,” Potts said.
The bacterial contamination has two known carcinogens, he said. One is trihalomethanes, which occur when the water is chlorinated; the other is cyanotoxins associated with blue-green algae blooms.
The water is treated with chlorination, a lime-softening process, sand filters, and ultraviolet treatment that deactivates organic components.
“That is their current treatment process,” Potts said. “It is not suited to deal with some of the emerging contaminants which, because we’re on a surface water system, can be contaminated by things on the ground …”
Security vulnerabilities
Reiter spoke of the vulnerabilities of both surface and groundwater (aquifer) water sources to a potential malicious attack – a “bad actor” who would contaminate the water supply with a toxic substance.
“There are dangerous substances that would neither be detected nor neutralized by a conventional water system,” Reiter said.
A surface water system like that of West Palm Beach is extremely difficult to protect, Reiter said.
A network of canals carries the water from Grassy Waters into Lake Mangonia, Clear Lake and Little Clear Lake, immediately adjacent to the treatment plant.
Clear Lake is bordered by Okeechobee Boulevard, Australian Avenue, homes and businesses – none of which have any real barriers between them and the lake, Reiter said.
“The vulnerability of the surface water system, based on access, is much greater than a well (groundwater) system,” he said. “Well systems have to be protected as well, but there is limited access to those that can be easily protected.”
Little Clear Lake is fenced, but the remainder of the area is not. To the contrary, the city recently opened a recreational trail there for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Drones and aircraft also present a potential threat to the safety of water systems. Cyber attacks are frequent and increasing, Reiter said.
Reiter is part of a program for federal and private partners to address the utility needs of small governments. “I constantly see information coming across about cyber attacks from Russia, Iran and China,” he said.
Reiter noted that the Environmental Protection Agency has said all drinking water and wastewater systems in the United States are at risk of a cyber attack.
The great majority – 95 percent – of water systems in the United States are well (groundwater or aquifer) systems. They are also vulnerable to cyber attacks, he said.
“We all know you can survive without food for a period,” Reiter said. “You cannot survive long without water.”
Aquifer (groundwater) systems
The City of West Palm Beach has applied to the South Florida Water Management District for a permit to construct wells that would tap into the Floridan Aquifer to supplement its surface water system. The wells would be phased in over time with a goal of producing 10 million gallons per day within six to 10 years. The city currently uses 35 to 40 million gallons daily, depending on the time of year. The town of Palm Beach uses an average of 10 million gallons a day.
The permit allows West Palm Beach to fully replace its existing system with Floridan Aquifer water. That would be a massive project, and the permit for that extends until 2055, Potts said.
“There is a lot of staging and planning that has to go into completely changing your treatment and water supply” at a plant with a capacity to produce more than 40 million gallons of water daily, Potts said.
The surficial (shallow) aquifer system is largely off limits to additional water withdrawal because of the impact that could have on the Everglades and other environmental systems, Interlandi said.
The deep Floridan Aquifer contains brackish water that requires greater treatment than water taken from the surficial. But the Floridan Aquifer has advantages over the surficial, she said.
“There is a greater degree of certainty the water will be there,” Interlandi said. “It is less impacted by drought.”
The Floridan Aquifer is the water source that both Lake Worth Beach and West Palm Beach – and ultimately the Town of Palm Beach – will be looking to for the future, Pucillo said.
The Floridan Aquifer underlies the entire state of Florida and parts of four other southeastern states. It supplies water for 10 million people.
“It’s a huge aquifer,” Potts said. “It is a confined aquifer. It has no connection to the surface. Therefore, it is artesian and much more difficult to contaminate.”
Lake Worth Beach has permits to build 10 additional wells to draw from the Floridan Aquifer and room in its water treatment plant to expand its membrane treatment operation, Pucillo said.
Lake Worth Beach has a “much shorter path” than West Palm Beach toward upgrading its system to provide membrane-treated water to Palm Beach, Potts said. But it would still be a significant undertaking for Lake Worth Beach, which would have to double its water production capacity and add additional staff to operate the expanded system.
An eye toward the future
The EPA is investigating about 200 substances found in water supplies to determine whether they should be considered contaminants, Potts said. He said more contaminants will be discovered in the future.
Lindsay said most of the water treatment systems in the United States today are dated operations built in the post-World War II era.
With its ability to remove contaminants at the molecular level, Membrane treatment is best suited to meet current and future demands for safe and reliable water, Lindsay said.
“We are an industrialized country and there are lot of different things getting into water that we would like to remove to make it safe to drink,” she said. “The selection of our future water supply is very important,” she said.
Pucillo said he expects the Civic Association to host another forum on the water issue, exploring additional aspects including the structure and financing of a new water treatment plant and delivery system to Palm Beach.
“The Civic Association is deeply committed to exploring this issue and to educating the town on this issue,” he said.
Thursday’s forum was sponsored by The Innovate Palm Beach, which will operate the new cultural arts center expected to open at the renovated Royal Poinciana Playhouse building in 2025.
Glossary of terms from the water forum
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