Water for Food or Energy?
Research field site: Lakeland, Florida
Potential research question: (a) What are the trade-offs and synergies among food, energy, and water sub-systems in a given geographical context?
Background: The city of Lakeland (Polk County, FL) has two wastewater treatment plants, the Glendale Wastewater Reclamation Plant and Northside Wastewater Reclamation Plant. The Glendale Plant has a current capacity of 13.8 million gallons per day (MGD) annual average daily flow (AADF). The Northside Facility was expanded in 1996 to a capacity of 8.0 MGD AADF. Treated water from both facilities is pumped to two 1.5 MG storage tank and reused as cooling water for the McIntosh power plant. The treated water that exceeds the storage capacity is currently discharged to an artificial wetlands treatment system. Funded partially by the South West Florida Water Management District, a reverse osmosis plant was installed to treat the wetlands effluent to supply water to another coal-fired power plant and for blending with supercritical CO2 for deep aquifer sequestration. With rapid population growth, Lakeland is now facing the problem of meeting the water demand because of increasing urbanization and affluence. In addition, nearby strawberry farms rely on groundwater for irrigation (counties in this area produce a significant percent of the U.S.’s strawberries). Sinkholes caused by groundwater depletion have been a challenging problem in Polk and other counties. To meet this future demand, reclaimed wastewater is being considered as an alternative source for the public water supply (water), for irrigation of strawberry fields (food), or cooling water for local power plant (energy).
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