Regional Water Quality

Providing clean, safe drinking water is a top priority at Tampa Bay Water. The drinking water we provide our member governments is safe: it meets or is better than all local, state and federal drinking water regulations.

We recognize the tremendous responsibility to provide our region with high-quality drinking water 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Water is vital not only to our health and well-being but to our economy and way of life.

Your drinking water comes from a diverse water supply network that is designed to be responsive to weather and environmental conditions, water quality and more. Your water is a blend of groundwater, river water and desalinated seawater.

Water Treatment

Three unique sources mean three different treatment processes to clean and disinfect drinking water. Proven technology, advanced disinfection, corrosion control and state-certified laboratories and operators ensure a high-quality product.

Groundwater requires less treatment than river water and seawater because nature does most of the cleaning for us. The Floridan Aquifer serves as a natural filter as water moves through it, leaving only the need to disinfect and stabilize water before we blend it with other sources.

Our river water treatment and desalination plants use multi-step processes for added safety. Both facilities strain water to remove fish and other large debris, then they each use a traditional treatment process where chemicals are added that cause small particles to clump together and settle out. At the surface water treatment plant the water is disinfected using ozone, one of the most powerful disinfectants in water treatment. The water is again filtered and disinfected with monochloramines before being blended with other sources and distributed to our members.

At the desalination plant, after the clumping process, seawater flows through progressively finer filters to remove any remaining matter. Highly filtered seawater is then forced at high pressure through reverse osmosis (RO) membranes to remove salt. Chemicals are added to stabilize the desalinated seawater, which is then disinfected with chloramines before being blended and distributed.

Quality tested, purity proven

The region demands, and Tampa Bay Water delivers, high-quality drinking water. A continual process of sampling, testing and monitoring assures that purity and quality.

Water quality standards

• 90+ local, state and federal drinking water parameters
• 13 parameters monitored more frequently than state and federal requirements
• 12 additional parameters met

Water quality assurance

• Hundreds of regional water quality monitoring sites
• More than 3,400 samples collected annually
• More than 63,000 water quality tests conducted annually in a state-certified laboratory

Protecting surface water, groundwater and Tampa Bay from contamination protects your drinking water, the environment, and saves money and energy. The cleaner the source water, the less treatment that’s required — which means less energy and fewer chemicals are needed to clean the water.

Microbiology

Learn how Tampa Bay Water's microbiology section in its State-certified lab helps provide clean, safe water to the Tampa Bay region.