Baseball's most storied franchise - winner of 26 world championships - has a new foe.
The city of Tampa.
Owners of the New York Yankees, who are upgrading the drinking water system at George M. Steinbrenner Field, are trying to get out of paying a $42,000 impact fee for installing a new water meter at the spring training stadium.
They have asked the city to waive the required fee, claiming through a consulting firm they hired that the impact on the city's water and sewer systems would not be increased.
The impact fee is being charged for switching from a 2-inch to a 3-inch water meter.
"An increase in meter size will result in no additional demand on the city's water supply system or wastewater collection system," Daniel Vickstrom, vice president of Charlotte Engineering & Surveying, wrote in a recent letter to the city's water department.
Water department officials said the fees are flat rates charged to other large commercial users with systems that consume more than 450 gallons per minute.
"We're already giving them a discount for being an existing customer," department spokesman Elias Franco said. "Otherwise, the fee would be more than $70,000."
A spokesman for the Yankees in Tampa didn't return a call for comment.
Steinbrenner Field is one of the city's biggest water users, consuming about 3.5 million gallons a year at a cost of more than $8,700, according to city records. As a big commercial user, the Yankees pay a lower rate for potable water than most residential customers.
The field is home to New York's spring training games and a five-month season for the Yankees' Class A minor-league team in the Florida State League.
The Yankees franchise is valued at more than $1.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
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