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Water Project Mired In Questions
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Published: May 15, 2008
TAMPA - John Wilcox and Tom Lash need $93 million and 12 million gallons of treated wastewater a day to build the largest reclaimed water project in Florida.
The project would ship 6 million to 20 million gallons of highly treated sewer water from Tampa and Hillsborough County to industrial and residential customers in eastern Hillsborough and western Polk County.
To get the money and water, though, they have to convince the Southwest Florida Water Management and the city that their nonprofit company will operate in the open.
The water district, which is being asked to help fund the project, wants oversight on how its money would be spent. The city wants control over how its wastewater would be priced.
And both the city and the district want the project transferred to public ownership as quickly as possible.
"One of the things that is going to make or break this deal from the city's perspective is will we have a clear path to public ownership," Tampa City Attorney David Smith said.
'All The Records Are Open'
Wilcox and Lash, the men behind Water Partners Inc., spent two hours Wednesday trying to quell concerns about the project. The group met with water district officials and representatives of Mosaic Co., Tampa Electric Co., and Hillsborough County.
Wilcox emphasized the company's documents would be public records and the bidding process would be open.
"All the records are open; you want them, you can have them," Wilcox said after the meeting.
Wilcox said the company has no problem transitioning to a public authority once the wastewater is flowing. But he said Mosaic and TECO objected to having a public authority run the project because they wanted to make sure their "goals and objectives are met."
Mosaic would provide land for a reservoir where wastewater can be stored during the rainy season. The company said it eventually will need up to 3 million gallons a day for its fertilizer manufacturing plants.
The partners also want to use the reservoir to recharge the aquifer, hoping the water district will then ease pumping restrictions in Polk County that have limited development there.
Bonds May Pose Challenge
TECO needs 6 million gallons a day by 2012 for an expansion at its Polk Power Station and another 6 million gallons in 2015 for a second expansion.
The city dumps about 55 million gallons of wastewater a day into Tampa Bay, which has gotten the city in trouble with environmental regulators. Hillsborough County can supply just the 6 million gallons a day needed for the first phase of the TECO power plant expansion.
Tampa's reclaimed water is critical for the second phase of the project, which includes supplying customers in Polk County and the power plant expansion. Smith said the nonprofit company will have a hard time selling bonds to finance the project unless Tampa's reclaimed water is on the table.
Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio said Monday the city wants to keep most of its reclaimed water for use in neighborhoods and for local industrial and commercial users.
On Tuesday, the Hillsborough County Commission voted unanimously to continue talks with the nonprofit.
Commissioner Jim Norman said Wednesday he supports the project in theory but has some of the same objections as the city and water district. "What disturbed me is you form a nonprofit like this," Norman said, "everything flows to the nonprofit and there are no public records and it's our money they're spending."
Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303 or msalinero@tampatrib.com.
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Reader Comments
Posted by ( JackNelsonSteward ) on May 15, 2008 at 8:56 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
It is time to seriously consider the use of reclaimed water here. Like all such changes to utility infrastructure, it will be expensive and disruptive at first. We need to be building houses with two water systems: one for potable water that goes to sinks and one for recycled water that goes to toilets, showers and irrigation sytems. That makes maximum use of what is becoming an increasingly scarce and expensive resource. It will, at least at first, make houses a bit more expensive, and the infrastructure required to deliver the water will require public financing and lots and lots of digging. Out in eastern Hillsborough County the process is already begun. Those purple pipes you see along the road out to Fishhawk are for reclaimed water.
In the interim we might sell our treated waste water and, ultimately, we should be designing re-use into our system. It is tempting to sell all of the reclaimed water to one or a few sources because it makes transmission easier and puts revenue in the system more quickly. If we are to make effective use of our water resource, reclaimed water must be produced and used on a much wider scale.
No matter how much water there seems to be in a sponge, if you put enough straws into it, you exhaust it. That's what we're looking at with the aquifer.
Now is a great time to begin to recycle water.
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