Daytona Beach city commissioners on Wednesday advanced a ballot question asking voters to approve a ban on using reclaimed water — treated, recycled wastewater — as a direct water source. The official term for that practice is direct potable reuse.
If approved by voters in November, the proposed charter amendment would prohibit the city from either adding reclaimed water to the city’s drinking water supply or injecting it into the aquifer.
As of February 2025, Florida rules allow for utilities to treat and distribute reclaimed water for drinking. At least three other states also have statewide rules in place allowing for direct potable reuse: Arizona, California and Colorado.
So far in Florida, more than a dozen potable reuse pilot projects have successfully launched, according to a letter the city received ahead of Wednesday's meeting from WateReuse Florida. Orange County Deputy Utilities Director Kerry Kates currently heads up the state chapter of a national trade group focused on advancing water reuse.
In the letter to Daytona Beach, Kates cautioned city leaders against advancing a ban: “We respectfully encourage consideration of the long-term implications of prohibiting these practices outright.”
Central Florida’s water demands are rising along with regional growth. By the year 2050, Volusia County’s total water demand is projected to spike 24%, rising to more than 100 million gallons a day (MGD), according to the St. Johns River Water Management District.
To meet the growing need, the state is encouraging local governments to increasingly rely on alternative water supply strategies like potable reuse.
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Additionally, state law requires municipal wastewater systems to stop discharging reclaimed water into surface water bodies by the year 2032.
“A local ordinance that prohibits potable reuse or the use of highly treated reclaimed water for aquifer replenishment would significantly limit the range of available solutions that utilities may rely upon to meet the state’s requirements,” Kates wrote in the letter to Daytona Beach.
Ultimately, all water is recycled. And according to water engineers and scientists, advanced water treatment technologies make reclaimed water perfectly safe to drink.
But for some in Volusia County, it’s too hard to imagine ever overcoming the “ick” factor of drinking what was once sewage, or “blackwater.” Greg Gimbert has been rallying fellow critics of the idea, to help him advocate for enacting local bans on the practice before utilities can fund and build treatment facilities.
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For Gimbert, Wednesday’s unanimous vote in Daytona Beach marks a major step in the right direction.
“The (growth) pressure will always be here. But we are not obligated to accommodate everyone,” Gimbert said. “Are we going to grow to the natural limit? Or are we going to have no limit? Because once they start putting it in the aquifer and conjuring the notion of unlimited water, there is no limit.”
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Several others who spoke at Wednesday’s meeting cautioned against advancing the ban. Catherine Pante urged commissioners not to make a “permanent policy decision” until engineers have finished analyzing all the city’s options for complying with the state’s looming discharge restrictions.
Also, banning potable reuse wouldn’t stop the existing problem of PFAS contamination, Pante said. She said water tests conducted at her home earlier this year confirmed the presence of those forever chemicals, which are associated with serious health risks.
“Pausing a ban does not commit us to potable reuse,” Pante said. “It simply ensures an open, science-based process (and) allows the study to be completed. Share the numbers publicly and then decide.”
A five-year update to the region’s water supply plan, currently underway, is due to be finished next year.
