SpaceX plans for an industrial wastewater treatment plant at Hangar X — a facility at property the company leases from Kennedy Space Center, where it processes Falcon 9 first-stage boosters — have some conservationists worried what the wastewater might do to the Indian River Lagoon.

It's not just the relatively small daily volume of freshwater discharge from the plant, they say, but the cumulative effect along the water basin that needs to be considered. Concerned citizens and local governments learned more, about and weighed in, on the project Monday during a public meeting at Cape Canaveral Library. 

Brevard County Commissioner Kristine Zonka wrote a Feb. 25 letter to DEP on behalf of the Commission, asking for a public meeting on the permit,

"due to the level of nutrient impairment of the lagoon, the recent and ongoing loss of seagrass habitat, the associated mortality of manatees and loss of marine life abundance, as well as local responsibility to reduce excess nutrient loads, and significant community concerns regarding the draft permit."

The Hangar X Roberts Road facility — located just north of the visitor's center at the northwest corner of Roberts Road and Kennedy Parkway North — would discharge 3,000 gallons per day of industrial wastewater to Oyster Prong, an arm of the Indian River Lagoon. 

"Brevard County and its citizens are working tirelessly to clean up this river," Nathan Slusher, a candidate for Titusville City Council, wrote in a letter to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, requesting a public hearing on the permit. "The citizens of Brevard are the ones who are fed up with the destruction of our lagoon due to discharge, spills, stormwater runoff, etc.," Slusher wrote. "The citizens are the power and the citizens of Brevard have the right to say what will or will not occur in the waterways of Brevard that no one is allowed to own."

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According to the draft DEP permit, the facility will consist of a 68,563 square-foot hangar and a 109,139 square-foot office building; two detention ponds on the western side of the site; and three cooling towers for the air-conditioning unit to keep the hangar at proper temperatures for operation. Two cooling towers will service the facility, while a third will provide redundancy. 

A mechanical cooling system for the hangar will operate using a fluid cooler, "which operates as a heat exchanger, to reject heat through evaporative cooling," the draft permit notes. Municipal water will be cycled over the heat exchanger coils multiple times before discharge into the on-site stormwater ponds. "During this process there is not an exchange between the municipal make up water and the process water .. The non-contact, non-process cooling water will not be chemically conditioned." 

The wastewater will be filtered using a ProMoss filter. The filter uses the natural properties of Sphagnum moss to improve water quality during cycling. The

filter lessens corrosion and prevents build-up of scale without need for chemical additives, the draft permit states. The filter also will absorb positively charged ions such as iron, manganese, calcium and zinc and stabilizes the pH of the water. The cooling water from the cooling towers will be discharged into the northernmost two-acre stormwater pond.

During peak rains, the pond could discharge into a 2.5 mile long canal that flows to Oyster Prong, part of the lagoon.

Laurilee Thompson, co-owner of Dixie Crossroads Seafood Restaurant in Titusville, laments the drastic declines in fish populations since her family opened the restaurant almost four decades ago. 

"We can't even get mullet from the Indian River Lagoon," Thompson said in her letter to DEP. "How can you justify adding even more freshwater to this imperiled estuary of national significance?"

SpaceX's permit application for an industrial wastewater plant at Hangar X

The permit application (DEP File No. FL0A00032-001-IW7D) and related application information are available at https://prodenv.dep.state.fl.us/DepNexus/public/electronic-documents/FL0A00032/facility!search

For information about the SpaceX Hangar project permit application, contact Katrina.Kasemir@FloridaDEP.gov or call (407) 897-4119.

Jim Waymer is an environment reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Waymer at 321-261-5903 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com. Or find him on Twitter: @JWayEnviro or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/jim.waymer

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