19-03-2025
Bay County commissioners move forward with major expansion at the North Bay Wastewater Treatment Facility
BAY COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) – Bay County commissioners awarded A.C. Schultes of Florida a $16 million contract Tuesday to install 2 underground wells at the North Bay Wastewater Treatment Facility.
Each well will be approximately 2,000 feet deep and hold up to around 1-and-a-half million gallons of water. Commissioners say the wells will help keep up with the county's growth.
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'What's great about it is, is for growth and development for the county where, you know, we're growing so fast, we want to be able to have this in place so we can get this handled,' Commissioner Daniel Raffield said.
A new state mandate will require wastewater treatment plants to take the treated effluent out of the base system by 2030. The county is getting ahead of the game by installing the two new wells.
'First of all, it's mandated. We got to do something with this treated water. And if we can't land apply, we do have rainy seasons. And when it's wet, we've got to do something with it. We can't just turn the wastewater treatment plant, ask our residents, turn the toilets off. We have to have a method of disposing of this treated effluent. So therefore, the injection wells give us that added capacity and allows us to keep operating and no disruption of service in,' Commissioner Robert Carroll said.
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The project will take 600 days to complete. Carroll says the process is quite simple.
'They're going to go down below the aquifer and so during heavy rains or any time that we can't do land application on that reuse water, we're able to put it in the injection wells. It's a very safe method that's done on all over the state. It's approved by DEP,' Carroll added.
The funds are coming through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and the Supplemental Disaster Relief Act. Contractors will have to complete the project by December 2026.
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