It was getting on in the afternoon when Jim Norman finally cut to the chase and summed up the situation with some accuracy. ...more

October 23, 2009

Monday morning, the board of Tampa Bay Water voted to spend $1 million for a consultant to help the regional wholesale utility select the firm that will get the job of fixing the many cracks that have developed in its 15-billion-gallon C.W. Bill Young Reservoir. Fixing this crack problem at the reservoir, which is less than five years old, is going to cost almost as much as the $146 million it cost to build it. When you're throwing around that kind of dough, what's another million tacked onto the bottom line? ...more

October 21, 2009

The city's official Web site was disabled Tuesday because city employees forgot to renew the domain name for the home page. ...more

September 9, 2009

On Monday, the governing board of Tampa Bay used one hand to hold its collective nose and plunged the other into the pockets of the people in Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties who consume the water the regional wholesale utility produces. Then the board voted to spend an estimated $125 million over the next five years to repair the many cracks that have developed in the utility's 15-billion-gallon C.W. Bill Young Reservoir. ...more

June 23, 2009

$147 million Construction cost of the C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir $125 million ...more

June 16, 2009

$147 million Construction cost for the C.W. Bill Young Reservoir $500,000 Annual cost to repair cracks in the reservoir since 2007 ...more

June 5, 2009

Samaritan's Touch Care Center held its first annual fundraising dinner last Saturday night. The primary and specialized care clinic provides free medical care to area families who have no medical insurance of any kind, including Medicare and Medicaid, and whose income is at or below 200 percent of federal poverty guidelines. ...more

March 31, 2009

Enough is enough. Stop blaming the lack of rain or the people of Hillsborough County for our water shortage. Let's put the blame where it belongs: on incompetent government officials. ...more

March 22, 2009

Let's call it fishing in a huge, expensive and slightly flawed barrel. Wholesale utility Tampa Bay Water has paid a contractor $88,000 to relocate fish from its C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir to ponds in the area. ...more

March 7, 2009

The year 2009 has dawned. In the nation's capital, Barack Obama and Congress will soon begin trying to pull the nation out of a severe recession. We just hope they don't do anything to delay the recovery that would happen on its own, absent major interference from the political sector. In Tallahassee, state lawmakers will soon tackle a $2.3 billion budget shortfall. Here's hoping they don't try to solve that problem with taxes that invariably fail to raise the amounts of revenue their supporters claim. ...more

January 3, 2009