What Do You Do With 700,000 Gallons of Water?

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At the municipality where I work, one of the Olympic-size swimming pools I manage has to be drained this weekend so that we can start a renovation project. That means when the pool closes to the public Friday night, we have to find a way to quickly dispose of the 700,000 gallons of pool water before Monday morning when the construction crews arrive to begin work on the pool! Luckily, it won't be a big issue for us, because we have a storm drain located just outside the back pool gates that we can discharge the pool water into. We will bring in huge portable pumps from our Public Works Department and quickly drain the pool. The storm drain eventually empties into an urban creek before finally meandering its way to a manmade wetlands recharge area before eventually ending up in the Floridan Aquifer. Since our pool water is treated with chemicals to maintain proper sanitation levels, we just can't dump the water right away. We must first "zero out" the chemicals, meaning everything must be neutralized before discharging. The local water management district, who issued our discharge permit, will be monitoring and testing the discharge water to make sure we are in compliance. It's a shame that we must dump 700,000 gallons of water, but it's the only way we can renovate the swimming pool. At least we know the water will eventually find its way back into our aquifer. It's too bad we can't send all that water to drought-stricken California!