This story has been corrected.

Millions of dollars in upgrades to the DB Lee Water Reclamation Facility in Melbourne will better prepare the city for handling sewer main breaks and their negative effects on the environment, city officials said.

  • DB Lee Water Reclamation Facility gets $6M upgrade
  • Upgrades will help prepare for possible future spills, officials say
  • Work will also help facility use less energy

“The raw waste water is certainly a concern,” Director Eric Blackman said.

During the past several months, Brevard County residents have had to endure a number of sewer main breaks. In November, a construction crew hit a sewer main in Melbourne, dumping more than 300,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Eau Gallie River.

It left the city with a big, expensive job to clean up.

“Unfortunately, we all did pay for the price of that cleanup,” Blackman said.

Since then, upgrades worth more than $6 million were implemented to help the water reclamation facility better handle those situations when they  occur. The project, which took more than 20 months to complete, wrapped up this past week.

“One of the upgrades we did was to improve the screening process of that raw sewage,” Blackman said.

Specifically, their lab facilities are now better able to analyze sewer water and breaks to determine how high the levels are and more quickly react to spills when they happen.

The facility even saw upgrades to some of the sewer retention containers. Workers said they can now take in up to 7 million gallons per day. On average, they see about 4 million gallons of raw sewage daily.

City workers also upgraded the facility's generator system. It's now using less energy and saving thousands each month, they said.

The upgrades add up to the city being better equipped to handle future challenges presented by ongoing community growth, officials said.

“We depend on tourists and tourism here in Melbourne, and they don’t want to swim in last week’s tourist waste," Blackman said. "So we really do have an obligation to be good stewards for the environment and protect it for the future."

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the number of gallons of sewage the facility can and does handle each day. The facility can take in 7 million gallons and sees 4 million gallons daily, not 7,000 and 4,000. Also, Brevard County has seen several spills in recent months, but a previous version of this story said it was the City of Melbourne that had experienced several spills. The city has seen only one recent spill, in November.