project overview > environmental protection
Protecting Florida’s coastal ecosystem is paramount to the project participants. To protect the environment, a number of scientific studies will be conducted to assess whether seawater desalination is a suitable choice for the project participants. Desalination will be pursued only if studies show the environment will be protected.
Seawater desalination can be done in an environmentally sound manner if several considerations are properly addressed.
Protecting aquatic animals is an important consideration in selecting and designing an intake system for a seawater desalination plant. The intake system collects raw water and conveys it from the ocean to the desalination plant’s intake system. The top-ranked intake options for a land-based facility include a screened intake with a pipeline, an off-shore infiltration gallery and radial collector wells. Each of these intake options can be engineered to minimize mortality to fish and aquatic life.
Radial collector wells are wells installed on the beach ridge that withdraw saltwater from beneath the ocean. In addition to having lower operating and capital costs, beach wells reduce impacts to marine life assocated with construction and direct intake.
Discharge Considerations
After the desalination process, there are two streams of water: one is drinking water or product water, the other is concentrated seawater or concentrate. The concentrated seawater has higher salinity after the desalination process than it did upon entering the plant.
One of the main concerns associated with a desalination plant is the effect of discharging the nearly twice-as-salty concentrate back into the environment. The project team will conduct computer models on the preferred discharge options to help design the best method for mixing and dispersing the concentrated seawater.
Additionally, if the plant is built, safeguards will be put in place to ensure the salinity of the concentrate is within permitted limits prior to leaving the plant, and permit conditions will require monitoring to assure continued safe operation.
Previous studies and designs on similar projects around the world have shown no impact in the dispersion area. In fact, the dispersion structures have become man-made habitats for many species once thought to be the most susceptible to even minute changes in salinity.
Northern Right Whale Considerations
The Georgia coast and Florida’s east coast are calving grounds for the Northern Right Whale, an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. The whales are typically found near Cape Cod in the first half of the year, then in the fall, a portion of the whale population, most of which are pregnant females, migrate south to Georgia and Florida to calve.
Should a desalination facility be built, care will be taken to protect the Northern Right Whale’s calving grounds and migratory patterns. Construction activities, should they occur in the habitat, will be scheduled around calving season using methods of construction that do not impact the whale habitat.
If permits are necessary in the Northern Right Whale critical habitat, officials must meet with whale experts and prove the proposed activity will not harm the habitat or the whales.
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