Reclaimed Water and the PURE Project in Tampa, Florida

In Tampa, reclaimed water is highly treated and disinfected wastewater from the city's advanced wastewater plant, piped back out mainly for watering lawns and landscapes.

The City of Tampa Water Department states that reclaimed water is produced at the Howard F. Curren Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant and must meet water quality requirements established by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The city says it is not intended for use as drinking water, and that the reclaimed distribution system is not connected in any way to Tampa's drinking water distribution system.

The Tampa system is color coded. Reclaimed pipes and fixtures, along with the reclaimed meter and the meter box lid on each property, are purple to distinguish them from the drinking water system. The city prices reclaimed water at $1.20 per ccf, a billing unit equal to 748 gallons, and lists among its benefits saving drinking water for homes and essential uses and reducing stress on freshwater resources, especially during Tampa's annual dry season from November to June. The Water Department notes that Tampa's primary water source is the Hillsborough River.

All of Tampa's reclaimed water starts at the city's Curren advanced wastewater treatment plant, which the city permits for 96 million gallons a day.

The Wastewater Department, based at 2545 Guy N. Verger Boulevard, says its staff collect, treat and dispose of more than 55 million gallons of wastewater per day from over 100,000 customers in Tampa and its immediate suburbs, using over 1,800 miles of pipelines and more than 225 pumping stations. The replacement cost of that system is put at over $3.3 billion.

Only a fraction of the Curren plant's output is reused. The city's facts of interest sheet for 2020 lists an average flow of 64.37 million gallons a day, against reclaimed reuse of 7.63 million gallons a day inside the plant, 2.25 million gallons a day for industrial reuse, 2.20 million gallons a day for STAR and 19,595 gallons a day of trucked irrigation. That year the plant's effluent averaged 2.4 mg/l of total nitrogen against a permit requirement of 3.0 mg/l. These are the most recent figures the Tampa sheet shows.

Tampa publishes what is in the purple pipes. The reclaimed water quality report, a 12-month rolling average for July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026, lists chloride at 264 mg/L, sodium at 322 mg/L, total dissolved solids at 1,471 mg/L, total phosphorus at 2.75 mg/L and nitrate-nitrite at 1.62 mg/L. The Water Department points gardeners to this report, which it says is updated every three months, because some plants might not handle reclaimed water well while others can, and notes that its small amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus mean less fertilizer is needed on Tampa lawns.

A Tampa property inside the reclaimed service area applies for a city-installed purple meter and then connects its own irrigation system under a plumbing trade permit.

The Water Department offers an address lookup for Tampa's reclaimed water service area. Inside it, the city currently runs a limited-time Reclaimed Water Incentive Program that waives the Water Department's application and meter installation fees shown below. Approved applicants have one year from the date of submittal to complete all work and pass inspections to keep the waiver.

The waiver does not cover permitting. A plumbing trade permit from the City of Tampa Construction Services Division, estimated at $124 for both residential and commercial irrigation, is still required. The Construction Services page lists no plan review for this work and two inspections, a PLB-Reclaimed Water Verification of Completion Affidavit and a PLB-Final, and says projects may qualify for its Fast Pass same-day application. After the city installs the meter, the owner or a licensed contractor connects the irrigation system, and a virtual inspection can be done through the Vuspex app.

Billing changes once the purple meter is live. Tampa utility bills then show two meters, one coded WATER for indoor use and one coded RCLM for outdoor irrigation, and the sewer maximum or lawn credit is removed, so wastewater charges follow indoor water use only. Questions go to the Tampa Utilities Call Center at (813) 274-8811.

Tampa reclaimed water customers may water any day and any time, though the city suggests days by address and bars wasteful use.

That freedom matters while the Tampa Water Department reports a Modified Phase III (Extreme) water shortage status effective April 3, 2026. According to the reclaimed water page, updated August 7, 2026, the suggested schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday for addresses ending in an even number, or the letters A through M, and Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday for odd numbers, or N through Z. Waste such as puddling yards, spraying sidewalks or flooding driveways and streets is still barred.

The Tampa list of uses is specific. Reclaimed water may irrigate lawns, landscapes and trees, water edible crops that will be peeled, skinned or cooked before being eaten, and supply a commercial water-cooled air conditioning system. It may not be used for drinking, inside the home, to fill swimming pools, hot tubs or wading pools, connected to the drinking water system, or used on edible crops that will not be peeled, skinned or cooked. A homeowner who drinks from a private well may continue only if the well is at least 75 feet from the area irrigated with reclaimed water, under section 62-610.471(1) of the Florida Administrative Code.

PURE, short for Purify Usable Resources for the Environment, was the City of Tampa's proposal to find a use for the Curren plant water that is not reclaimed.

The city opened a design-build solicitation, RFQ 21-C-00044, posted Friday, July 16, 2021, with submissions due before 2 p.m. on Thursday, September 2, 2021; the listing was last updated March 14, 2022, and carries an award document. The solicitation document states that the PURE project would redirect up to 50 million gallons per day of highly treated reclaimed water from the Howard F. Curren plant that would otherwise be discharged into Hillsborough Bay, and gave a preliminary estimated construction budget of $350 million, depending on treatment options.

The city described two combinations of alternatives. Under Alternative Combination III, Tampa planned an aquifer recharge and recovery system in which advanced-treated reclaimed water would be treated to drinking water standards before injection, then recovered for delivery to the Hillsborough River Reservoir to meet Lower Hillsborough River minimum flows. Under Alternative Combination II, the city would discharge water treated to drinking water standards downstream of the Hillsborough River Dam for those minimum flows, sell 20 million gallons a day of reclaimed water to an interested entity, and install ten 5-million-gallon-a-day deep injection wells. The city stated that, if built, the project would provide a drought-proof alternate supply for minimum flows, improve water quality for Sulphur Springs, remove nutrients from going into the bay and achieve compliance with the newly revised section 403.064 of the Florida Statutes.

PURE was tied to a 2021 state law requiring Tampa and other utilities that discharge to surface water to plan to eliminate nonbeneficial discharges by January 1, 2032.

Senate Bill 64 passed the Senate 39 to 0, the House 118 to 0 and the Senate again 32 to 0 on concurrence, and was approved by the Governor on July 6, 2021 as Chapter 2021-168. It amended section 403.064 of the Florida Statutes, which requires domestic wastewater utilities that dispose of effluent, reclaimed water or reuse water by surface water discharge to have submitted, by November 1, 2021, a plan for eliminating nonbeneficial surface water discharge by January 1, 2032. The Curren plant's flow into Hillsborough Bay is the discharge the Tampa solicitation set out to address.

State funding for a PURE pilot did not advance on its own. House Bill 4821 of 2022 requested a $1,000,000 appropriation for a Tampa Water Quality Treatment Pilot for PURE; it was indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration on March 12, 2022, with a last action on March 14, 2022 referring to line item 1665A of House Bill 5001. As of October 2026, the address tampa.gov/pure opens the Water Department home page, which does not describe the project.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Tampa Water Department reclaimed water, quality report and about pages, the Wastewater Department overview and Curren plant fact sheet, Construction Services permit guidance, the PURE solicitation and its RFQ document, and the Florida Senate records for SB 64, HB 4821 and section 403.064.