Miami-Dade County and Florida Power and Light (FPL) officials Wednesday celebrated the opening of a new facility aimed at making the Turkey Point power plant more resilient.
The new “Clean Water Recovery Center” is the product of a public-private partnership between the county and FPL.
“Through this project, we are giving new life to water,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said during Wednesday’s commissioning ceremony.
What would have been wastewater that got treated at the county’s South District Wastewater Treatment Plant and released into the ocean is now pumped via an 8-and-a-half mile pipe system into FPL’s Turkey Point plant near Homestead.
READ MORE: Homestead nuclear reactors to continue operating into the 2050s'
The treated wastewater gets a second cleaning through the new system where nutrients and solids are removed and the water is clarified. Then, it’s used to cool off Turkey Point’s natural gas power generators.
“This is part of the largest water infrastructure project in Florida’s history,” Levine Cava said. “We’re repurposing highly treated wastewater from our South district wastewater treatment plant and instead of just throwing it away, discarding it, we’re putting it to work.”

The water recovery center reuses an average of 10 million gallons a day, and is capable of processing up to 15 million gallons daily.
Officials at FPL and the county say the project is mutually beneficial. It allows the state’s largest electric utility to reduce the amount of water it pulls from the Floridan aquifer, which provides Floridians with drinking water. The facility also helps Miami-Dade County meet standards set by the state’s Ocean Outfall legislation, which calls for local governments to reduce the practice of discharging wastewater into the ocean.