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Water District Mostly Quiet On Plans For Pasco Landfill

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By STEVE ANDREWS | News Channel 8

Published: February 11, 2009

Visit the Southwest Florida Water Management District's Web site (www.swfwmd.state.fl.us) and click on Green Swamp. A picturesque presentation, complete with sounds of birds, as well as a description touting the swamp's importance to central Florida's water supply pops up.

"The Green Swamp is really, in a sense, the hydrologic heart of central Florida,'' said Michael Molligan, the water management district's communications director. "Four major rivers flow out of the Green Swamp.''

The district deems the swamp so important it spent $76.3 million to buy 109,064 acres to protect this land and water resource for future generations. The district also protects an additional 27,635 acres through acquisitions, also known as conservation easements.

Yet the agency has made no public statements on a plan to put a 90-acre landfill about a mile and a half from the Green Swamp near Dade City.

"We don't have the ability as an agency to say you can't develop somewhere,'' Molligan said.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is expected to decide Thursday whether to approve or deny a plan by Angelo's Recycled Materials to build the landfill.

Molligan says the district has discussed the issue with DEP. He characterized the discussions as sharing concerns about whether the landfill would create problems for the aquifer.

"We discussed it with DEP, we've had discussions, they're well aware of the concerns,'' he said. "The fact that it is next to the Green Swamp."

DEP spokeswoman Pam Vazquez says other than the water-management district sharing with DEP its responses to citizens and groups who had contacted the district about the landfill, there's been little substantive discussion between the two agencies.

According to Vazquez, the agency has not provided DEP's Solid Waste Division any scientific information nor had it provided any documentation to DEP's Environmental Resource Permit Program.

Meanwhile, a consultant hired by Tampa Bay Water says there might be trouble for wells if the landfill leaks and contaminates the aquifer.

A Jan. 30 report by Thomas Farkas, group manager of hydrogeological sciences for PBS&J, noted the presence of several sinkholes.

"It is our opinion that the [sinkhole] features identified at the site increase the likelihood of contaminants, if released from the landfill, reaching the Floridan Aquifer and potentially impacting surrounding groundwater resources in the immediate area,'' the report stated.

Farkas wrote that it is unlikely that potential contaminants migrating off site would impact the Hillsborough River, a water supply utilized by Tampa Bay Water.

However he warned that "potential contaminants migrating off site through the Florida aquifer could flow in the direction of Crystal Spring and/or the municipal production wells located near the city of Zephyrhills.'' Farkas added "spring water discharged at Crystal Spring flows into the Hillsborough River."

Donald Polmann, director of science and engineering at Tampa Bay Water, says the agency's board will discuss the landfill at its Monday meeting.

"We're always concerned about any potential for impact to water quality in the region," Polmann said.

According to Polmann, the consultant's report calls for more engineering work to determine water flow direction beneath the landfill.

"The applicant would have an understanding which way it would travel and put monitoring wells in so if there is a leak, they would know right away,'' he said.

News Channel 8 reporter Steve Andrews can be reached at (813) 221-5779.

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