Water, sewer project for DeLeon Springs gets green light

Posted On: May 19, 2020

DeLeon Springs is getting a double dose of good news now that funding has been secured to bring central water and sewer lines to the U.S. Highway 17 corridor that runs through the center of this northwest Volusia community.

The Volusia County Council inked an agreement on Tuesday with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which has agreed to fund the $2.5 million project. Installation of sewer lines is seen as a critical step in protecting the delicate spring basin from nutrient pollution, and that’s why DEP is putting up the grant money. The county laid out the proposal for the pipeline during a community meeting in DeLeon Springs in February. Residents are elated that the project is now ready to move forward, Amy Munizzi, president of the DeLeon Springs Community Association, told the County Council on Tuesday.

“We’re just excited about our future again,” Munizzi told council members. “It’s been a win-win from the Florida level to the county level, the community level. It’s good government. It really is. It’s exciting to see.”

Connected to the St. Johns River through a series of lakes and creeks, the popular spring at De Leon Springs State Park was designated by the state Legislature in 2016 as an Outstanding Florida Spring. The designation provides an additional layer of protection to the spring shed. But it also comes with the responsibility to remediate the harmful impacts of pollutants, including nitrates that leak into the groundwater from agricultural and residential fertilizer use and traditional septic tanks and flow into the springs. The pipeline project is designed to provide central sewer service along the U.S. 17 strip and encourage the switch over to a more environmentally friendly treatment method.

“This project represents an essential step toward improving water quality within the spring basin by establishing a centralized wastewater treatment system and allowing the conversion of private wastewater package plants and conventional septic systems,” states a memorandum included in the County Council’s background information regarding the DEP grant. “This strategy will help reduce current levels of nutrient pollutants while providing much needed infrastructure to prevent additional nitrogen loading resulting from increased population within the priority focus area of the spring basin.”

Because the state has mandated adoption of a septic system remediation plan for the area surrounding the spring, Mike Ulrich, the county’s director of water resources and utilities, said doing nothing isn’t really an option. The community would still have to come up with a remediation plan on its own and find a way to pay for it.

“The folks that are in that community would have to bear the burden themselves. And that’s not something that’s really desirable,” said Ulrich. “They love their spring. They love their elementary school that is in this area. But it’s also a community that is very concerned about the impact of remediation of septic tanks as well – making sure that that cost isn’t inequitably shared for these state issues that are going on.”

The project entails the design and construction of 3-mile long water and sewer pipes that will connect to the City of DeLand’s utility lines at U.S. Highway 17 and S.R. 15A and run north along U.S. 17 all the way to McInnis Elementary School in DeLeon Springs. An agreement is in the works for the school to connect to the system, and other businesses along the route have also expressed an interest in hooking up. Since most of the territory is within DeLand’s utility service area, the pipelines will most likely be turned over to the city when they’re completed and the city will become the service provider. Work on the pipelines is expected to be done by December of next year.