Westport Wastewater Plant Upgrade in Port St. Lucie Florida

The Westport Wastewater Treatment Facility Upgrade is a $65 million City of Port St. Lucie project to improve treatment through enhanced nutrient reduction, with construction that began in January 2024 (Westport upgrade project page).

Every row above comes from the Port St. Lucie project page (project page). The page says the facility is implementing the Best Management Action Plan and Advanced Wastewater Treatment technology, and that its capacity of 6 million gallons per day ensures compliance with the latest Florida Department of Environmental Protection standards and Florida State Statutes (project page).

Westport is one of two Port St. Lucie wastewater plants. The residential customer service guide counts three water treatment facilities and two wastewater treatment facilities owned and run by the city (Utility Systems customer service guide), and the city's reclaimed water page names the two plants as Glades and Westport (Reclaimed Water page).

Since January 2024, work at Westport has centered on larger aeration basins, upgraded pretreatment, high-efficiency turbo-blowers, new electrical and filtration systems, and hardening against extreme weather, the Port St. Lucie project page says (project page).

• Expanded aeration basin facilities for improved biological treatment.
• Upgraded pretreatment systems to enhance processing efficiency.
• New high-efficiency turbo-blowers to optimize energy use.
• Advanced electrical and filtration systems for greater reliability.
• Infrastructure hardening to better withstand extreme weather conditions.

The five items above are the city's own list for Port St. Lucie's Westport site (project page). The page adds that the upgraded treatment will put reclaimed water used for irrigation through improved filtration, to keep nitrogen and phosphorus out of the St. Lucie River Estuary, and that the plant will support disposal either through deep injection wells or as irrigation-quality reclaimed water (project page).

For neighbors, the project page says the facility sits near Sawgrass Lakes and that construction is planned to limit disruption, with measures to reduce noise so the plant blends better into its surroundings (project page). The Port St. Lucie project page lists 772-873-6400 and 772-871-1775 as contact numbers (project page).

Port St. Lucie says Westport is implementing the Best Management Action Plan and Advanced Wastewater Treatment technology so that reclaimed water keeps nitrogen and phosphorus out of the St. Lucie River Estuary (project page).

Separately, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection describes its basin management action plans, or BMAPs, each as a framework for water quality restoration with a full set of solutions to reach the pollutant reductions set by a total maximum daily load (FDEP BMAP page). Those solutions can include permit limits on regulated facilities and wastewater and stormwater infrastructure; BMAPs are adopted by Secretarial Order and are legally enforceable (FDEP BMAP page). The department groups the St. Lucie River watershed and estuary with Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee as the Northern Everglades watersheds (FDEP BMAP page), a watershed that includes the estuary the Port St. Lucie Westport page names (project page).

For the term the Port St. Lucie page uses, Section 403.086, Florida Statutes, defines advanced waste treatment as treatment producing a reclaimed water product that contains, on a permitted annual average basis, no more than the concentrations in the table below, and that has received high level disinfection (section 403.086).

The same section lets the department waive or alter the phosphorus level in waters where phosphorus has been shown not to be a limiting nutrient or a contaminant (section 403.086).

Westport treats Port St. Lucie sewage and, with the Glades plant, turns part of it into irrigation water piped to golf courses and neighborhoods, which the city puts at more than 1 million gallons a day (Reclaimed Water page).

Golf and residential communities on the Port St. Lucie reclaimed water list include Tesoro Club, Copper Creek and the Veranda Gardens neighborhoods (Reclaimed Water page), and the customer service guide puts the city's reuse production capacity at 18 million gallons (MGD) a day (customer service guide). The lawn watering and reclaimed water guide explains how that supply fits the district watering rules.

Sewage reaches the plants through a long network. The Port St. Lucie guide says the city maintains 1,300 miles of sewer main, over 300 lift stations and over 8,200 manholes, and that wastewater moves from neighborhood lift stations to larger booster pump stations and then to one of the city's wastewater treatment plants (customer service guide).

Homes converted from septic also feed the plants: the Port St. Lucie septic to sewer program page says wastewater from a city sewer connection is treated at a city plant, may be recycled for irrigation afterward, and that the remaining waste is used for compost (Septic to Sewer Conversion Program). The septic to sewer conversion guide covers what a home pays to connect.

The Port St. Lucie Water Quality Initiatives page covers two other local efforts aimed at the St. Lucie River: the long sewer expansion program and the McCarty Ranch Extension Water Quality Project on the C-23 Canal (Water Quality Initiatives page).

The Water Quality Initiatives page dates the city's purchase of its utility assets to 1994, a year in which the Port St. Lucie utility had just over 10,000 wastewater customers, and reports more than 75,700 sewer customers since (Water Quality Initiatives page).

The same page records that the city broke ground in late 2017 on the McCarty Ranch Extension Water Quality Project, which the city says will keep up to 21 percent of nutrient-laden excess freshwater discharges in the C-23 Canal from reaching the North Fork of the St. Lucie River (Water Quality Initiatives page). The C-23 water quality project guide covers that work in detail.

The Westport project page says the $65 million upgrade is funded in part by a federal grant program, and the earlier dated FY 2023-24 adopted budget lists Westport nutrient upgrades among costs a 2021 bond issue was to finance (project page).

The City of Port St. Lucie FY 2023-24 adopted budget lists $30,635,000 in Utility System Revenue Bonds, Series 2021, issued in June 2021 (FY 2023-24 adopted budget). Among the costs those bonds were issued to finance, the budget names various upgrades to the Westport Wastewater Treatment Plant to meet new nutrient reduction requirements, alongside western reverse osmosis wells for the James E. Anderson water plant and a new deep injection well for the Prineville water plant (FY 2023-24 adopted budget).

The same budget book says the Water and Sewer Fund includes nearly $75 million in capital projects over the five-year planning horizon of FY 2023-24 through FY 2027-28, and that the fund will support the design of two water treatment four million gallon ground storage tanks to be constructed at the Westport Wastewater Treatment Facility, costing $12 million (FY 2023-24 adopted budget). That budget also lists the Westport Wastewater Plant and the Glades Wastewater Plant as separate operating units of the Port St. Lucie utility (FY 2023-24 adopted budget).

Last verified: October 22, 2026, for the Port St. Lucie Westport plant: the upgrade project page, the Reclaimed Water, septic program and Water Quality Initiatives pages, the utility customer guide, the FY 2023-24 adopted budget, the FDEP BMAP page and section 403.086, Florida Statutes.