Reclaimed Water and the PURE Project — Tampa, Florida

In Tampa, reclaimed water means sewage that has already been cleaned at the city's advanced wastewater plant and is then piped back out for irrigation. The City of Tampa Water Department defines it as highly treated and disinfected domestic wastewater reused mainly for lawns and landscapes, and states that it is produced at the Howard F. Curren Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant and must meet quality rules set by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. It is not intended as drinking water, and the reclaimed network is not connected in any way to Tampa's drinking water distribution system.

The Tampa system is color coded. Reclaimed pipes and fixtures, along with the reclaimed meter and the meter box lid on each property, are purple so crews and owners can tell them apart from potable lines. The city prices reclaimed water at $1.20 per ccf, a billing unit equal to 748 gallons, and frames it as a way to save Hillsborough River drinking water for homes, especially during Tampa's annual dry season from November to June.

All of it starts at the Howard F. Curren plant on Guy N. Verger Boulevard. The Wastewater Department says its staff collect, treat and dispose of more than 55 million gallons of wastewater per day from over 100,000 customers in Tampa and its immediate suburbs, through more than 225 pumping stations feeding a plant permitted for 96 million gallons a day. The replacement cost of that system is put at over $3.3 billion.

Only a fraction of the Curren plant's output is reused today. The city's facts of interest sheet for 2020 lists an average flow of 64.37 million gallons a day, against reclaimed reuse of 7.63 million gallons a day inside the plant, 2.25 million gallons a day for industrial reuse, 2.20 million gallons a day for STAR and 19,595 gallons a day of trucked irrigation. That year the plant's effluent averaged 2.4 mg/l of total nitrogen against a permit limit of 3.0 mg/l.

Tampa publishes what is in the purple pipes. The reclaimed water quality report, a rolling 12-month average for July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026, lists chloride at 264 mg/L, sodium at 322 mg/L, total dissolved solids at 1,471 mg/L, total phosphorus at 2.75 mg/L and nitrate-nitrite at 1.62 mg/L. The Water Department points gardeners to this report, updated every three months, because some plants tolerate reclaimed water better than others, and notes that its nitrogen and phosphorus can reduce the need for fertilizer on Tampa lawns.

Service depends on location: the Water Department offers an address lookup for Tampa's reclaimed water service area. Inside it, the city currently runs a limited-time Reclaimed Water Incentive Program that can waive the Water Department's application and meter installation fees. Without the waiver, those fees are $15 and $375 for a 3/4 inch meter, $15 and $445 for 1 inch, $70 and $695 for 1.5 inch and $70 and $890 for 2 inch. Approved applicants have one year from submittal to finish the work and pass inspections to keep the waiver.

The waiver does not cover permitting. A plumbing trade permit from the City of Tampa Construction Services Division, estimated at $124 for residential and commercial irrigation, is still required. The Construction Services page lists no plan review for this work and two inspections, a PLB-Reclaimed Water Verification of Completion Affidavit and a PLB-Final; projects may qualify for its Fast Pass same-day application. After city staff set the meter, the owner connects the irrigation system, installs a backflow preventer and rain sensor, and books a virtual inspection through the Vuspex app.

Billing changes once the purple meter is live. Tampa utility bills then show two meters, one coded WATER for indoor use and one coded RCLM for outdoor irrigation, and the sewer maximum or lawn credit is dropped, so wastewater charges follow indoor water only. Billing questions go to the Tampa Utilities Call Center at (813) 274-8811.

Reclaimed customers sit largely outside Tampa's watering limits, which matters while the Water Department reports a Modified Phase III (Extreme) shortage status effective April 3, 2026. According to the reclaimed water page, reclaimed customers may water any day and any time, but the city suggests a schedule to keep pressure steady: addresses ending in an even number, or letters A through M, on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; odd numbers, or N through Z, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Waste such as puddling yards or spraying sidewalks is still barred.

The Tampa list of uses is specific. Reclaimed water may irrigate lawns, landscapes and trees, water edible crops that will be peeled, skinned or cooked, and supply commercial water-cooled air conditioning. It may not be drunk, used inside the home, used to fill swimming pools, hot tubs or wading pools, connected to the drinking water system, or sprayed on produce eaten raw. A homeowner who also drinks from a private well may continue only if the well is at least 75 feet from the reclaimed irrigation area, under Florida Administrative Code rule 62-610.471(1).

PURE, short for Purify Usable Resources for the Environment, was the City of Tampa's proposal to find a use for the Curren plant water that is not reclaimed. The city opened a design-build solicitation, RFQ 21-C-00044, posted Friday, July 16, 2021, with qualifications due before 2 p.m. on Thursday, September 2, 2021. According to ABC Action News, the city said PURE would redirect up to 50 million gallons per day of highly treated reclaimed water from the Howard F. Curren plant that would otherwise go into Hillsborough Bay, purified to exceed federal and state drinking water standards.

The price and schedule were large for Tampa. ABC Action News reported city estimates that construction would have begun in 2024 at the earliest, finished no sooner than 2031, and cost between $484 million and $628 million. Sustainability and Resilience Officer Whit Remer told the station the city was weighing several options, among them keeping the Hillsborough River reservoir full at the dam, releasing reclaimed water below the dam, deep well injection and aquifer storage and recovery, and that no single project had been selected.

State law set the deadline behind PURE. Senate Bill 64, which passed 118 to 0 in the House and 32 to 0 in the Senate and was approved by the Governor on July 6, 2021 as Chapter 2021-168, amended section 403.064 of the Florida Statutes. It required wastewater utilities that discharge to surface water to file a plan by November 1, 2021, for eliminating nonbeneficial surface water discharge by January 1, 2032, which put the Curren plant's flow into Hillsborough Bay in scope for Tampa.

Opposition centered on potable reuse. In a unanimous vote, Tampa City Council halted any new funding for PURE in 2022; Council member Lynn Hurtak said she did not anticipate approving more money for PURE as it stood, and Council member Joseph Citro said Senate Bill 64 had forced the city to rush. Representatives of Friends of the Hillsborough River and the Tampa Bay Sierra Club told ABC Action News the drinking water option should be dropped. The council asked the PURE team to seek a ruling from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on whether the Tampa discharge is beneficial and to answer 17 stakeholder questions before a public workshop. ABC Action News also reported that versions of the idea had been proposed in Tampa for more than 10 years and rejected each time.