C-23 Water Quality Project, Port St. Lucie

It is a Port St. Lucie Utility Systems project turning about 1,871 acres of former grove and a 315-acre impoundment at McCarty Ranch Preserve into seven shallow reservoirs filled from the C-23 Canal.

The city's C-23 project page gives the reason: more than 42.3 billion gallons of water flow from the C-23 Canal into the North Fork of the St. Lucie River each year, and the project is anticipated to keep up to 21% of the excess freshwater discharges out of the North Fork. Besides canal water, the reservoirs catch the property's own rainfall, an annual average of 53 inches, which reduces the need to discharge. The page describes the work as a water quality storage and treatment project and builds it area by area as grant money arrives, with each area to be complete and operational within 2 years of receiving its grant funds.

The city's Water Quality Initiatives page calls the same work the McCarty Ranch Extension Water Quality Project and says Port St. Lucie broke ground on it in late 2017. The preserve page gives its address as 12525 Range Line Rd., placing it west of I-95 and south of where Glades Cut Off Rd. meets Range Line Rd. (McCarty Ranch Preserve page). In the 2025 parks master plan the preserve totals 3,107 acres, with roughly 370 acres of it in water impoundments (Parks and Recreation Master Plan Update, 2025).

The Port St. Lucie project page lists 27,266 acre-feet, or 8.884 billion gallons, in total kept from entering the North Fork of the St. Lucie River, along with 55,000 pounds of nitrogen and 14,000 pounds of phosphorus removed annually.

The figures are from the benefits list on the St. Lucie River/C-23 Water Quality Project page, which also lists recharge of the local water table and a 21% cut in C-23 Canal discharges to the North Fork. The opening line of the same page says over 6 billion gallons of water will be kept from entering the North Fork annually upon completion of the project. The Port St. Lucie page puts annual operating costs at $180,640, covering fuel, mowing and monitoring.

For progress, the city's FY 2023-24 adopted budget reported that 9,957.47 million gallons had been held back to date, including rainfall and water pumped from the C-23 Canal, and that 34,680 pounds of nitrogen and 6,749 pounds of phosphorus had been removed (FY 2023-24 Adopted Budget Book, Utility Systems). Those are dated cumulative totals from that budget year, not current figures.

The Port St. Lucie C-23 project page lists five areas completed between July 2019 and September 2024, covering 210, 275, 280, 304 and 77 acres.

Each row comes from the area entries on the C-23 project page, which also lists annual total suspended solids reductions of 37,000 pounds at Area 1, 47,000 at Area 2, 48,000 at Areas 3 and 4 and 13,500 at Area 5. Actual costs are listed as $1,889,448 for Area 1, $2,577,525 for Area 2, $2,158,641 for Area 3 and $3,349,502 for Area 4. Area 1's schedule on the page runs from a South Florida Water Management District environmental permit on July 20, 2017, through City Council approval on October 9, 2017, a groundbreaking ceremony on December 12, 2017, and the start of pumping in July 2019, after a delay the page attributes to an unusually long wet season.

The city's FY 2023-24 budget listed Areas 1 through 4 as complete and said a contractor had been selected for Areas 5 and 6 (FY 2023-24 Adopted Budget Book). The Port St. Lucie project page as read on October 22, 2026 lists Area 5 as completed in September 2024 and has no entry for an Area 6.

Each completed Port St. Lucie C-23 area lists grants from state, regional or federal sources, including Florida Department of Environmental Protection Section 319(h) grants, South Florida Water Management District grants and legislative appropriations.

The C-23 project page lists the awards area by area. Area 1 received $952,103: $200,000 from the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) Cooperative Grant Funding Program under an agreement signed May 17, 2017, and $752,103 from an FDEP FY 2017 Section 319(h) grant; the page notes Area 1 was funded wholly or in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreement NF028 to Port St. Lucie Utility Systems. Area 2 drew an FDEP FY18 Section 319(h) grant of $644,020 among its $2,024,020 in funding received.

Area 3's grants on the same page include $1,162,047.32 from FDEP Section 319(h), $448,700 from the SFWMD Alternative Water Supply program, $193,939.50 from IRL Water Quality Improvement Projects and $180,000 in legislative money for design (St. Lucie River/C-23 Water Quality Project).

The Port St. Lucie project page lists two more areas, 7A at 234 acres with an estimated cost of $14 million and 7B at 252 acres with an estimated cost of $10 million.

For Area 7A, the C-23 project page lists funding received of $416,875 from an FDEP and legislative grant for design and a $1 million federal appropriation for construction, with projected pumping of 650,000 gallons and annual removal of 2,100 pounds of phosphorus and 8,100 pounds of nitrogen. Area 7B is listed with 700,000 gallons pumped and 2,200 pounds of phosphorus and 8,700 pounds of nitrogen a year; no funding is listed for it.

City documents give different cost figures for the next phase. The FY 2023-24 adopted budget described a Water Quality Restoration Project at Area 7, planned as a 234-acre storage impoundment at McCarty Ranch Preserve, for a projected $5.2 million, and said Area 7A had received a grant (FY 2023-24 Adopted Budget Book). The C-23 project page lists the 234-acre Area 7A at an estimated $14 million.

Port St. Lucie Utility Systems calls the C-23 storage project the precursor to a future alternative water supply, with a proposed surface water treatment plant at McCarty Ranch that would treat canal water to drinking water standards.

According to the C-23 project page, part of that treated water would go out for public consumption and the rest would be stored in deep aquifer storage and recovery wells, known as ASRs, to be recovered and distributed later. The page describes the plant as a proposed future facility.

The C-23 project is the present-day item on Port St. Lucie's Water Quality Initiatives page, which lists the Sewer Expansion Program and the $36 million Eastern Watershed Improvement Project as earlier initiatives.

The Water Quality Initiatives page says the Port St. Lucie utility served just over 10,000 wastewater customers in 1994 and now serves over 75,700, that nearly 32,700 septic tanks were never installed because of new construction requirements, and that over 10,300 aging or failing septic tanks have been taken out of service. The same page counts more than 13,580 septic systems still in service in the city's Utility Service Area.

The Eastern Watershed Improvement Project on that page combines stormwater management with water quality treatment areas and recreation in eastern Port St. Lucie. Fishing and paddling on the McCarty Ranch lakes, which the preserve page says span over 300 acres, are covered in the separate McCarty Ranch Preserve guide (McCarty Ranch Preserve page). Last verified: October 22, 2026, against fresh copies of the C-23 project page and its area entries, the Water Quality Initiatives history, the FY 2023-24 Utility Systems status and capital notes, the preserve page and the 2025 parks plan's preserve acreage.