Collier County spends $29M on water treatment infrastructure.

On Tuesday afternoon, the commissioners of Collier County unanimously decided to authorize infrastructure upgrades connected to water treatment at their northeast facility, totaling around $29 million, according to a recent article by Ryan Arbogast of NBC2.

“We feel fantastic. The county’s population is growing, and so is the water and sewer district. For the rooftops to reach there, we need water and sewer to be accessible. Years and years of money, time, effort, planning, and engineering have gone into it,” according to Matthew McLean, the county’s director of public utilities.

The financing is intended to be proactive as the region around Immokalee Road continues to grow; it will be solely derived from impact fees for new homeowners.

“We pay very close attention to those trends of population growth. We examine it over a 40-year horizon rather than just five or ten. The availability of water and sewer is taken for granted. Water leaves your home when you turn on the faucet, flush the toilet, and wash your clothes. On day one, that’s to be expected,” McLean stated.

Two sizable “deep injection wells,” which assist the county in conserving and preserving water during the rainy season, are among the proposed infrastructure enhancements.

The public utilities department of the county states that each of the wells will hold 16 million gallons of water and be about 3,000 feet deep.

The only use for deep injection wells, which are sunk incredibly deep, is to handle excess effluent from regional water reclamation facilities. There are seasons of the year when we receive a lot of rain, yet wastewater is still being received. We are constantly thinking about conserving water,” McLean stated.

The county states that work on the facilities will start as soon as feasible. Three years are anticipated to be needed to finish the project.

This article originally appeared on NBC2