Hillsborough County (County) is located on the west central coast of the Florida
peninsula. The City of Tampa is the County Seat. The County's Water Department
treats and delivers an average of 42 million gallons daily to its 115,000 customers, and
collects, treats and disposes of 26 million gallons of wastewater from 105,000 customers.
Reclaimed water use averages at slightly less than 13 million gallons per day by a
customer base of 12,300 residential and commercial customers. Demand for reclaimed
water is so strong that the County has had to initiate a waiting list for future expansion of
the reclaimed water system.
This paper discusses an educational program of the Hillsborough County Water
Department (Department) aimed at achieving a more efficient use of reclaimed water use
by its residential customers. This program was funded originally through a partnership
between the Department and the Southwest Florida Water Management District (District)
at $60,000 each for a total of $120,000. This paper also discusses the various aspects of this program, including how the County
anticipated issuing a change order to have its contractor develop the program as an
ongoing annual effort. The competitive bidding process was used to procure these
services, and the development of the program included the use of focus groups to review
early message and delivery vehicle ideas. Unique funding arrangements were required to
implement this program, to provide assurance to the County's bond holders that they
were not purchasing the awards involved in the two awareness programs which were
developed and initiated with the reclaimed water customer base. Finally, the paper
discusses the evaluation methods that were developed to measure the effectiveness of the
overall program. Includes table, figure.