Tampa Bay Water is moving forward with a pilot program to evaluate treatment technologies to remove a group of forever chemicals known as PFAS from drinking water. The program will be carried out at the Tampa Bay Regional Surface Water Treatment Plant and includes two parts.
An interim pilot facility will test granular activated carbon and suspended ion exchange technologies over a 12-month period to evaluate their efficacy in PFAS removal. These systems can be easily connected to the plant with minimal modifications, allowing Tampa Bay Water to begin performance monitoring early and support readiness for compliance with EPA regulations.
At the same time, the agency is designing a permanent pilot facility at the plant, which will come before the board for construction approval consideration later. This larger system will copy several steps used in a full-scale treatment plant and will allow Tampa Bay Water to compare established and emerging technologies, improve treatment performance and study future water quality needs, including member-government requested total organic carbon (TOC) removal.
Conducting both efforts in parallel will allow the utility to gather critical information sooner while advancing the planning and design work needed to prepare for federal regulation compliance.
