Watchdogs Look Over Desal Plant

APOLLO BEACH - Representatives of the Apollo Beach Civic Association got a gander at Tampa Bay Water's newly reopened desalination plant last week.

Two association members were former leaders of the now-defunct Save Our Bays, Air and Canals, one of the staunchest opponents of the project before it was built. They said they feel better about the plant now that it has been revamped by a new operator, American Water-Pridesa.

"I was impressed with the whole operation," said Jeanette Doyle, adding that Tampa Bay Water staff spent a few hours answering questions and explaining how the water treatment process works.

"It's still the wrong place for the project, but they seem to have made the best of it," said Dominick Gebbia, former SOBAC president.

He said it probably will be years before environmental effects, if any, can be detected.

Barbara Compton, the association president, said she was impressed with the technology involved in turning saltwater into something people can drink. The staff was courteous and knowledgeable and promised to be open to questions if they arise, she said.

"As far as the good and bad of it all environmentally, I think only time will tell," Compton said. She was not associated with SOBAC.

During the plant's permitting stage, SOBAC lost a 2001 legal challenge to the project at Tampa Electric Co.'s Big Bend Station, based on concerns about increased salinity and other potential environmental harm to Hillsborough Bay and neighborhood canals.

The desalination plant operated in fits and starts beginning in 2003. Problems with clogged filtering membranes shut down the plant in 2005, and Tampa Bay Water hired a new company to fix the problems. The facility reopened for full production in December.

Gebbia said SOBAC was not opposed to seawater desalination as a way to make drinking water but thought scientific evidence indicated other locations would have been better for the environment.

He and Doyle said they remain concerned about the potential for increased salinity and other environmental harm from desalination plant discharges of brine and chemicals into the Bay.

Tampa Bay Water officials could not be reached for comment by deadline Thursday. In the past, they have said studies indicated the discharges pose no significant environmental threat.

The plant is expected to yield 25 million gallons of drinking water per day and discharge up to 19 million gallons a day of brine left after processing. Tampa Bay Water officials have said they plan to pursue expanding the plant to produce up to 35 million gallons a day.

Richard Boler, an environmental scientist who oversees water quality monitoring at Hillsborough's Environmental Protection Commission, said Thursday that his agency is gearing up to resume a scaled-back version of water quality checks in the Apollo Beach area.

The sampling had been part of an independent monitoring program initiated when several Tampa Bay Water projects in Hillsborough County were in preliminary stages. Funding for that program was eliminated last year amid countywide budget cuts, but EPC's executive director, Rick Garrity, said his staff managed to salvage some aspects of it, including sampling around the desalination plant.

Boler said EPC collected data from round-the-clock monitors in the Apollo Beach area for about three years but discontinued the effort when the facility closed. Last week, he said, workers started installing three continuous monitors: one at the mouth of TECO's discharge canal, where brine from the desalination plant leaves the facility, one at the facility's intake canal and one at the embayment north of Apollo Beach.

Scientists will continue taking monthly samples at 18 stations in the Apollo Beach area, including some residential canals, Boler said.

The monitors will measure temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen. Pollution levels from chemicals released into the Bay are monitored by another program required under the facility's discharge permit, Boler said.

Discontinued were portable continuous monitors that EPC staff members had been moving around the Bay in Apollo Beach. The monitors would take readings every 15 minutes for three days but were costly because of staff time to transport them and analyze the results, Boler said.

"That's a nice luxury," he said. "You've got to put them out and then go back and get them."

On hold is benthic sampling, or checking tiny organisms that live in the sediment near the plant. Boler said EPC hopes to resume that program next year, with sampling planned in the spring and fall.

"We don't expect things to die off," he said. "There's no reason to think there's going to be instantaneous changes."