St. Augustine, FL

The engineers at WET Engineering have been providing continuing engineering services to North Beach Utilities (NBU) for over ten years. Our contract includes providing plan review services, water and wastewater treatment facility design and permitting, consumptive use permitting and compliance reporting, and infrastructure design. North Beach Utilities (NBU) is a small, private utility that serves the Vilano Beach area.

As part of the continuing contract, WET Engineering recently provided permit renewal services for the wastewater plant. The plant had a limited permit capacity due to the contribution of concentrate flow from the water plant. At the time of the renewal, the wastewater plant was approaching 80% or the permitted capacity. Because the plant is challenged by minimal land availability and its close proximity to the ocean, it was imperative that the permitted capacity be increased to match the design capacity of the plant. During the renewal process, WET Engineering evaluated both the water and wastewater plants, and worked with FDEP and NBU to establish a more realistic concentrate flow limitation.

In addition, WET Engineering developed methodology for monitoring the concentrate / effluent blend and revised the flow monitoring to allow NBU greater flexibility in their plant operations. By increasing the permitted capacity, an unnecessary and expensive wastewater plant expansion was avoided. In addition to the recent permitting services, WET Engineering has provided engineering services to support NBU’s annual update and renewal application to the St. Johns River Water Management District for their current Consumptive Use Permit. The consulting services included the compilation of water consumption data, providing water use projections, reviewing water quality data, and evaluating conservation efforts. The project was challenging due to significant discrepancies between the metered flows exiting the water plant and the individual meter readings from customer accounts. Instead of the expected losses in the distribution system, NBU’s customer accounts revealed more water was being sold than produced. WET Engineering worked with NBU to replace flow meters and to evaluate the system to determine where the discrepancies occurred.

In addition, WET Engineering has also provided plan review and engineering support services to NBU. Recently, WET Engineering provided recommendations to NBU regarding excessive infiltration in the newly installed sewer system at Vilano Town Center. NBU used these recommendations to insure the system was repaired prior to taking ownership of the system.