The City of Gainesville is home to the University of Florida and the Florida Gators — and to an innovative water reclamation facility with an exemplary biosolids program.
The Kanapaha Water Reclamation Facility (WRF), owned by Gainesville Regional Utilities, is tucked away in the southeast corner of the city, where a landscape of student apartments merges with single-family homes. Further east, the city gives way to farmland.
Just 12 miles down the road from the Kanapaha facility, Class B biosolids are transported by tanker trucks for land application at the Whistling Pines Ranch where they supplement inorganic fertilizer. Biosolids from GRU’s Main Street Wastewater Treatment Plant are also land-applied there.
“Recycling biosolids is a sustainable, environmentally beneficial practice that improves and maintains productive soils and also reduces chemical fertilizer use,” says Paul Davis, utility engineer. Team effort is inherent throughout GRU. Biosolids from more rural neighboring towns, like Hawthorne, Waldo, and High Springs, are managed through the GRU plants.
“We take their waste activated sludge,” says James (Jamie) Hope, director of water reclamation facilities and lift stations. “It’s at 1 to 1.5 percent solids, and they have no way of thickening it. We charge them, but only to cover costs.”
Hope says the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), appreciates the practice because of the help GRU provides for the smaller communities who may not otherwise be able to recycle their biosolids. GRU also partners with the university and accepts thickened solids from an on-campus treatment plant.
