At the South County Water Reclamation Facility (SCWRF) in Naples, Fla., being a good neighbor isn’t just a nice idea. It’s policy. So when the Collier County Wastewater Department faced a 1996 Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) consent order to mitigate overflows in other parts of the county, representatives met with their peers in the parks and recreation department.
They decided to make the required update of the wastewater treatment plant and reclamation facility into a public expression of the good-neighbor policy, creating a park and nature preserve — now called Eagle Lakes — on 90 acres of county land a mile away.
The department serves the Collier County Water-Sewer District, which has some 52,500 customers within 75 square miles. The Wastewater Collections Department sends streams to two respective water treatment/reclamation facilities, South and North, with a combined capacity of 41.1 mgd.
The expanded version of SCWRF went on line in 1990. The Modified Littinger-Ettinger plant sits on 44 acres. Its flow moves from grit removal to one of 14 aeration basins or, during high flows, directly to an equalization basin.
From there, a mixed liquor splitter box divides flows to eight gravity sand filters, then to four chlorine contact chambers. Water enters a 6.6-million-gallon reuse storage tank, from which effluent pumps send 90 percent of the flow to customers for irrigation at golf courses, parks, homes and median strips in Naples. The rest is split between two deep injection wells during wet periods, or three holding ponds in Eagle Lakes.
From wasteland to welcoming
Eagle Lakes started off as a small site built by the utilities and parks and recreation departments with earth excavated during a plant update and expansion. Pond A covers 20.9 acres and Pond B 26.4 acres. Both are managed as natural habitat, and that includes regulating seasonal high and low water levels. Pond C, larger than the others, is a structured pond used for park and highway median irrigation.
It took about two years to construct the park starting in 1999. It received a wildlife preserve permit in 2002. Funding for development came from the parks and recreation budget. The utilities department maintains the wetlands through contractors.
The site originally included two soccer fields and a parking lot. It has evolved into a county park with sports fields, tennis courts, a playground and an administration building at the center of the site.
Starting between two baseball fields, an asphalt walking trail winds around all three ponds. Interpretive signage every 200 feet describes flora and fauna. The trail ends at a pavilion on a dock overlooking one of the ponds. There, visitors can see alligators, birds and other wildlife. The park also includes areas of native trees and other plants.
Nature preserve
The park attracts abundant wildlife, according to treatment plant administrative secretary Peggy Forsythe. “We’ve got alligators, deer and bobcat, and we’re starting to have iguanas,” she reports. The local Audubon Society has documented 125 bird species at the park, and the Collier County Natural Resources Department keeps bird-watching records. A bird species checklist pamphlet is available to visitors.
Least terns, a protected species, stop at the plant during their April-May migration. “They make a real mess on roofs and other spots, and sometimes they’ll dive-bomb people passing by if it’s nesting season,” Forsythe says. “But they’re protected, and so they’re undisturbed.”
Since the park functions mainly as a wildlife preserve, the DEP dictates how the land will be managed. The 15 SCWRF plant operations staff members don’t perform park maintenance, but they do monitor environmental conditions and check water levels.
Q. Grady Minor & Associates, an engineering firm, performs an annual visual inspection of berms that carry piping to the ponds, checks structural integrity, and surveys walking trails looking for worn areas that may need replacing.
In April or May, the firm inspects for exotic plants, marking any invaders for removal by a contractor supervised by the engineering division. Contractors also mow pond edges to keep them safe for public use.
Plant pride
The South reclamation plant itself is often used for local school and civic group tours. Plant manager Dale Waller says the county’s good-neighbor policy led to several recent improvements.
The most significant was the discontinuation of chlorine gas in 2005. “We felt if we were ever going to have good neighbor relations, we had to get rid of the potential for deadly chlorine gas leaks,” he recalls. The facility now uses liquid bleach for disinfection. “We also have double containment areas, so even if we had a bleach spill, it wouldn’t even kill any grass,” Waller says.
The plant also installed four odor-control scrubbing systems and covered the aeration basins. Shielded lighting provides illumination plant technicians need without bothering nearby residents.
Surrounding the plant is a 10- to 12-foot-high berm that buffers noise from plant equipment and provides a visual barrier. It is completely landscaped on the residents’ side, and a contractor maintains it weekly.
Public relations gains
Waller says municipalities considering nature preserve projects are headed in a good direction. “I’m sure the newspaper articles and pictures of the park reflect well on the county,” he says. “It’s a well-done park and habitat. We keep it beautiful. We’re all very proud of it.”
One point of caution: Waller advises taking a long view of the project in the planning stages. “Make sure you have funding available for all the permits, annual inspections and upkeep, because that’s where the expense really comes in,” he says.
Waller believes Eagle Lakes Park is one reason Collier County sees little or no resistance to requests for funding of the SCWRF. “We try to stand out as a good neighbor,” he says.
