City of Alachua staff, commissioners and workers for the Water Quality and Resiliency Improvement Project turned out for the unveiling of the city’s new water management facility on Wednesday. 

“A privilege to serve the community” is what Alachua’s Public Services Director Michael Carrillo called the facility at its grand opening, which featured commemorative water bottles with Alachua drinking water, as well as a ribbon-cutting and tour of the site located at 13144 NW 104th Terrace near Progress Park. 

The project aims to ensure water reliability and bring the city one step closer to doubling its current 3-million-gallon water supply capacity. A new operations building and wellfield will provide an additional 1 million gallons of daily capacity, while the entire plant is ready and able to treat two more wellfields for a 6-million-gallon total capacity once drilled. 

Vice Mayor Shirley Green Brown, interim City Manager Rodolfo Valladares, Carrillo and Alachua’s Engineering Supervisor, Tom Ridgik, gave remarks about the nearly decade-long project coming to an end. 

“Reaching this milestone provides us the ability to improve on something we’re already great at; providing our residents with clean, quality drinking water,” said Carrillo. “The city of Alachua is the ‘Good Life Community’ partly because of our culture and partly because of the basic services we provide that support that culture.” 

A week of water contamination and service outages from Hurricane Irma in 2017 at the city’s three wells, located near downtown Alachua, and increased growth, led to the start of the Water Quality and Resiliency Improvement Project. 

In 2021, the City Commission approved then-Director of Public Services Valladares’s proposal for the $485,000 project. Grants from the Florida House of Representatives and the Department of Environmental Protection supplied $375,000 in funding.  

Crews from Jacobs Engineering and Walker Architects broke ground in October 2023. 

Built next to the city’s groundwater storage facility and drilled 300 feet into the Florida aquifer, Carrillo said the new plant and wellfield can take advantage of Alachua’s existing infrastructure to provide fire flow for Progress Park and serve as a re-pump station for Turkey Creek. 

Valladares also said the location is environmentally friendly because, instead of pulling more water from the spring, it just changes where the city pulls from.  

Ridgik said the Suwannee River Water Management District wants the city to replace each gallon it removes from the aquifer in an effort to maximize conservation. He said the city is currently putting about 80% back. 

The new site also features the state’s first chlorine contact tank using computer-powered computational fluid dynamics for disinfection. At 275 gallons of water estimated per user per day, the wellfield’s additional 1 million gallons can serve around 3,600 more people. 

“If even one life breathes easier because of the work that we have done, we are truly succeeding,” said Valladares, who added that wastewater is the next utility the city will look to improve next.