How Vero Beach Makes Its Water and Treats Its Sewage — Vero Beach, Florida

Vero Beach is one of the few places in Indian River County where tap water and sewer service come from a city utility rather than from the county. The City of Vero Beach Water and Sewer Department runs the whole chain: wells near Vero Beach Regional Airport, treatment, the pipes under city streets, the sewage plant on the Indian River Lagoon and a reclaimed water system for irrigation. The department's offices are at 17 17th Street, beside the treatment works it has operated on the lagoon shore for decades.

According to the Water and Sewer Administration page, Robert J. Bolton is Director of Water and Sewer. The department is split into working divisions that each publish their own inventory on covb.org: Water Treatment, Water Distribution, Meter Maintenance, Gravity Sewer, Lift Station, Wastewater Treatment, Wastewater Reuse and Process Engineering, plus the Lead and Copper Program. Those division pages are the most direct public record of how large the Vero Beach system is. The director's name was last verified: October 8, 2026, on the City of Vero Beach website.

All of the city's drinking water is groundwater. In January 2026, Vero Beach 32963 reported that the city utility draws its water from 26 wells, most of them on city land around Vero Beach Regional Airport. That acreage around the airfield doubles as the city wellfield, which is why the Meter Maintenance Division counts wellfield meters separately from customer meters.

The 26 wells tap two different layers. Seven reach the Floridan Aquifer, a deep reservoir sealed in rock, while the others pull from surficial aquifers only 80 to 100 feet below ground that refill with rain. As of January 2026 the city drew about half its water from the Floridan Aquifer and half from the shallow surficial wells, a split that shapes how Vero Beach treats its supply.

Shallow wellfield water near the airport goes through several steps. The same January 2026 report describes coagulation and nanofiltration to take out solids, lime treatment to reduce hardness, and disinfection with chloramines before the water enters the Vero Beach distribution mains. Brine left over from treatment is not sent to the Indian River Lagoon; it goes down a deep-injection well at the airport, described below.

The plant layout has changed over time. A water plant near the airport built in the 1950s once supplied all of Vero's drinking water, Vero Beach 32963 reported in February 2025, and that older plant has since been separated from the drinking water system and given a new job filtering canal water for irrigation.

Chloramines, a combination of chlorine and ammonia, are the normal disinfectant in Vero Beach mains. Once a year the city switches methods for maintenance. The Water and Sewer Administration page gives notice that from November 1 through November 20, 2026, Vero Beach will disinfect with free chlorine, with up to 3.5 ppm of free chlorine at times, and will resume feeding ammonia to form chloramines on November 21, 2026. The notice says water in different parts of the system may carry a mix of both for about a week afterward.

Testing for PFAS, the industrial compounds often called forever chemicals, became a local issue in early 2026. Vero Beach 32963 reported in January 2026 that EPA data showed 8.4 parts per trillion of perfluorooctane sulfonate in Vero Beach drinking water, above the EPA maximum of 4 parts per trillion. City officials told the paper the result reflected more stringent testing methods adopted in 2024 rather than an increase in contamination, and noted the city first tested for PFAS in 2013 and found none.

The city's response, as reported in January 2026, leans on the Floridan Aquifer. The plan is to drill three more Floridan wells near Vero Beach Regional Airport and blend 60 percent Floridan water with 40 percent surficial water, moving later to a 70/30 blend. A $250,000 study was comparing ion exchange and granular activated carbon filtration, with any new treatment not expected before 2028 or 2029.

Lead is handled under a separate federal rule. The Lead and Copper Program page states that Vero Beach is building an inventory of over 17,000 residential and commercial service lines, using records and small test pits beside meters where records are missing. The page notes lead pipes were banned in the city in 1976 and that city service lines are mainly plastic with a few copper pipes. The city owns the line from the main to the meter; the property owner owns the line from the meter to the building.

The division pages on covb.org put numbers on the buried system. The Water Distribution Division maintains 274 miles of transmission and distribution mains, 1,025 fire hydrants and associated valves, 11,967 service lines and 77 city owned reduced pressure backflow preventers. It also keeps 13 miles of reuse mains, the separate purple pipe network that carries irrigation water in Vero Beach.

Meters are counted by type. The Meter Maintenance Division lists 13,050 potable water meters on customer accounts, 154 reuse meters and 36 wellfield meters at the supply wells around the airport. The gap between the 11,967 service lines and the larger service line inventory of the Lead and Copper Program reflects how the two pages count lines, and the city does not reconcile the figures publicly.

The sewer side is mostly gravity. According to the Gravity Sewer Division, Vero Beach maintains 123 miles of gravity sewer lines, 48 miles of force mains and 2,660 manholes, and the division's stated goal is to limit infiltration and inflow, meaning groundwater and stormwater that leak into sewer pipes. Where gravity is not enough, pumps lift sewage toward the 17th Street plant. In Vero Beach the Lift Station Division maintains 118 electrical panels and 236 pumps on the wastewater transmission system.

Sewage from Vero Beach, Indian River Shores and the south barrier island flows to the wastewater plant on the Indian River Lagoon at 17th Street. Vero Beach 32963 reported in 2018 that the current plant, built in 1977, was designed to treat 4.5 million gallons per day and replaced a 1958 plant that treated 2.2 million gallons a day. Before that, a 1920s plant and a World War II era U.S. Navy facility discharged treated wastewater into a relief canal.

For most of that history, treated effluent from the 17th Street plants went straight into the Indian River Lagoon. That practice ended in 2010, when the Indian River Lagoon Act prohibited the discharges and Vero Beach invested in a deep-injection well at the airport that sends both wastewater and brine from water treatment thousands of feet underground.

The Wastewater Treatment Division describes its job as purifying and reclaiming wastewater from its service territory, and lists compliance with permits from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of that work. The plant's planned replacement at the airport, and how it is being paid for, are covered on a separate Digital Towns page about the Vero Beach sewer plant relocation.

Part of the treated wastewater at 17th Street does not go underground at all. The Wastewater Reuse Division produces and distributes reclaimed water for irrigation to conserve drinking water, under permits from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the St. Johns River Water Management District and the U.S. EPA. Lawns, golf courses and common areas on the reuse mains in Vero Beach and Indian River Shores use it in place of tap water.

John's Island, the large club community in Indian River Shores, was long the biggest reuse buyer. In 2025 the city built a different supply for it: water pumped from the Main Relief Canal behind the county government center, filtered at the 1950s plant near the airport, and sent through a pipeline under the lagoon from Gifford Dock Park to Bee Gum Point. Vero Beach 32963 reported in October 2025 that the pipeline is designed to deliver up to 3 million gallons a day.

Moving John's Island off reuse water frees capacity at 17th Street. Utilities Director Rob Bolton said in October 2025 that about 1.2 million gallons per day of reuse water would become available, but that Vero Beach would not expand the reuse system or take on new customers until the new Water Reclamation Facility, part of the One Water Campus near the airport, comes online, then expected in spring 2028.

The utility's territory is wider than the city limits. Vero Beach 32963 reported in July 2025 that the city provides water service on the barrier island south to the St. Lucie County line and north into the Town of Indian River Shores, along with mainland areas. In December 2025, the same paper reported that Vero Beach residents make up roughly 60 percent of utility customers, with the rest in Indian River Shores and unincorporated South Beach.

Service to the south barrier island is old. City Manager Monte Falls told Vero Beach 32963 in January 2023 that Vero Beach has served unincorporated residents on the island south of Castaway Cove since the 1950s. A 1989 Territorial Agreement with Indian River County maps that area into the city's water and sewer territory, and a franchise agreement approved in January 2023 commits south barrier island residents to Vero water, wastewater and reclaimed water service for at least 30 years.

That reach shaped how the island was built. In a 2021 presentation reported by Vero Beach 32963, Falls argued that city utility service let island developments close their own small package sewage plants, which is part of why most barrier island neighborhoods from Indian River Shores to the St. Lucie County line now drain to the 17th Street plant instead of private treatment units.