What’s the Issue?
The safety of our drinking water in South Santa Rosa County depends on the quality of the water that is released into the East Milton Wellfield Protection Area (WPA). The Florida Department of Environmental Protection recently issued a permit to the City of Milton to release millions of gallons of treated wastewater onto the wellfield via a sprayfield.
We know that this wastewater contains PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) , also known as “Forever Chemicals, which have been linked to deadly cancers and other serious health issues. “Forever chemicals” get their name because unlike most waste, they never decompose into their base elements. They are dangerous and they persist indefinitely. There is not currently a limit for PFAS in wastewater but there is now a limit in drinking water, and the City of Milton’s wastewater effluent results indicate PFAS 11 to 35 times above limits set by the EPA for drinking water standards.
What Can Be Done?
We need to demand that the City of Milton and Santa Rosa County – and all communities – protect our drinking water. They can do this by working together to ensure that appropriate technology is used to remove PFAS chemicals from any wastewater discharged into the WPA. Alternately the City could relocate a portion of the sprayfield out of the WPA.
The Threat of PFAS
Forever Chemicals
Not only do PFAS chemicals persist in the environment, they persist inside people’s bodies. Meaning that it accumulates over time to higher and higher levels. Toxicological research shows that PFAS can harm hormonal, immune and reproductive systems in people, especially in children, and can increase the risk of various cancers. In 2022, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lowered its drinking water “health advisory level” for two of the most common PFAS chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, to near zero, levels too minute for current technology to detect.
Some Background on our Drinking Water
Of all the qualities that sustain and nurture us wherever we live, clean, safe drinking water is perhaps the most essential. Without it, nothing is possible. We have all seen what happens to communities where the quality of their drinking water has been compromised.
For the people of South Santa Rosa County, safe and secure drinking water is provided by the Fairpoint Regional Utility System (FRUS). It draws the water that sustains our families, our communities, our businesses, our way of life from an underground aquafer that today is safe and wholesome. However, this does not mean the aquifer is unthreatened.
This aquifer is fed in part by surface water that slowly filters through the earth above it. This natural filter is the East Milton Wellfield, and the Santa Rosa County Commission has designated it as a specially protected area.
In 2023, the Santa Rosa Board of County Commissioners transferred 100 acres of land to the City of Milton for the city to use as a disposal site for a new wastewater treatment facility. About one-third of the 100 acres that have been given to the city is within the Wellfield Protection Zone. The City of Milton treats wastewater from industrial parks as well as NAS Whiting Field which are known sources of PFAS. In addition, the new plant will help serve an anticipated 32 percent increase in population expected over the next 10 years. It is expected that the new plant will discharge up to 8 million gallons of treated wastewater a day. Current plans will not adequately remove PFAS from this wastewater.
We need the County and the City of Milton to work together to ensure that PFAS “Forever Chemicals” do not enter our drinking water supply through the Wellfield Protection Zone.
Sign our petition to ensure Santa Rosa residents
will be drinking clean water for generations to come.
Save Our Drinking Water is a public education project of the citizens and local water utilities that make up the Fairpoint Regional Utility System.