The Desal Plant

I've been asked a couple of times in the weekly live chats here on TroxBlog for an update on the desalination plant operated by Tampa Bay Water, our regional water utility. I asked for and got a response from TBW spokeswoman Michelle Biddle Rapp. (That's a file photo of the plant in the foreground, left, in front of TECO's Big Bend Power Plant). [Times photo | Skip O'Rourke]

Rapp said the plant has been operating since mid-March and is producing 10 to 20 million gallons per day. It has produced up to 22 mgd, but it needs to have sustained production of 25 mgd before the plant can be tested and considered to be "complete."

The company hired to fix the plant's problems, AWP, is still not happy with the performance of the sand prefilters, which has been a problem throughout. They continue to test various sand sizes and changes in water chemistry and the diatomaceous earth filters. (Basically, you don't want the stuff clogging up too fast, and the better you do at each step of the process, the better off you are further down the line.)

"The plant will continue to produce 10 and 20 million gallons per day during the testing over the summer," Rapp says. The plant's cost to Tampa Bay Water: $158-million. Total production to date: about 1.2-billion gallons.

Tampa Bay Water settled its litigation with earlier contractors in April.

Now, the question in our live chat was whether the desal plant was the area's biggest boondoggle. I dunno. I mean, at least it's working now.

If we could, I would line up the previous contractors and let everybody in Tampa Bay kick them in the butt. I distinctly remember how questions of filtering problems were brushed aside --  I was in the room at the time. Then subsequent contractors either screwed up (or didn't screw up, depending on your side in the lawsuit) the prefilters even more... while Tampa Bay Water, a board made up of local governments but has never struck me as a particularly strong institution, muddled along.

Water over the dam, now? 

Comments

[Larry]

Howard, thanks for the update on the big boondoggle. I suppose 10 to 20 million gallons a day is nothing to brush aside, at least for now. And like you said, "at least it is working." It remains to be seen what the long-term benefit will be. $158 million is a lot of dough, though. I know, we had to do something. Well, let's hope it works out for the best.

[Jennifer W]

I still want to know what they are doing with all the sand, dirt, critters etc. that they filter out. Where are they dumping the stuff that is clogging the filters? And what impacts are to come from that? And more importantly, what are they doing with all the salt they are extracting from the sea water? That's the killer right there. We should be watching that dump pile and documenting the dead zone that is growing around it. That's not worth $158 million to me.

[Tom]

Thanks for the update Howard. $158 million - wasn't the original estimate $60 million to have a plant producing the 25 million gallons per day? The next question is how is Tampa Bay holding up with all the added brine water that is the by product of this boondoggle? Is anyone from the State or Federal EPA keeping an eye on Tampa Bay for the damage from excessive salt being dumped now into the bay as a result of the desal plant's operation? When does it reach the tipping point that destroys the ususal sea life?

[20/20]

This was and is part of the biggest unexposed scandal in Pinellas history. As the experts lined up and told the various boards during the infamous “Drought 2000” public opinion manipulation campaign…

We don’t need it
The drought is cyclical
The rains will return and replenish the resource
You’re building it in the wrong place
It will cost twice as much as they’re telling you it will cost
It will never produce what they’re telling you it will produce
We wont be able to balance the ‘blended” water source
It will damage the ecology of Bay (dumping 19-million gallons a day of brine into it each and every day it operates)
The answer is resource management, not resource creation
Water cost could triple

And here we sit today… exactly where the experts said we’d be.

I can tell you from direct involvement and knowledge, it is “the area's biggest boondoggle”. Research public records to find the investors, and you will find you answers.

I laid it all out (with factual support) in a phone interview with a Times (allegedly) reporter… and not one word ever made it to print.

[Ron]

How is this the biggest scandal in Pinellas history? Tampa Bay Water is a regional authority.

I didn’t see anything about TBW in that post, Ron… ooopppps.

Like my pappy use to say; “A guilty mind needs no accuser.”

[Tom]

20/20 We ought to compare notes sometime - I had a unique vantage point for some of the informal meetings that occurred in one of the luxury suites at the Trop early into the program at the time the desal plant was being pushed. Did you know that Pick Talley and Steven M. Seibert represented Pinellas County during the formative stage of Tampa Bay Water? (While not as huge a boondoggle in terms of misspent money - much of it going to lawyers, here is the biggest scandal in Pinellas County which has thus far, been kept out of the St.Pete Times: Since Pick Talley's solo push for water fluoridation to be accomplished with fluorosilicic acid in 2004, former County Commissioner Seibert has made well over $400,000 from stock that's been given to him in Mosaic, the very company that manufactures the hazardous waste material which our county uses to effect "optimal" fluoride levels? Coincidence? (Optimal, by the way, must be defined by fluoride promoters as the level that is not immediately lethal - that is, unless you just happen to be taking kidney dialysis.)

[Lorraine Margeson]

Tom,

I'd like to hear a LOT more from you...how about the monochloramine and toilet to tap programs??? BTW, I have heard with my own ears Pick bragging about "drinking his own reclaimed water". I believe it shows..........seen Pick lately??

And didn't Steve Seibert set us back a century (Century Commission reference, sorry)debunking anything akin to growth management practice when he headed up the DCA???

[Boo Boo]

A boondoggle on top of a boondoggle on top of..aww you know what I mean. First lets be serious I don't think Pick Talley or anyone else would brag about drinking reclaimed water. They would be too sick to even take a breath. Reclaimed water is amount to flushing your toilet on your lawn. I see it to be one of the biggest eco-disasters of our times. It gets on the bugs the birds eat the bugs and so on and so on. UGH! DeSal plant geez what were they thinking..oh wait I know exactly what they were thinking a good way to pay back political supporters for their campaign contributions. Give them nice fat construction contracts with cost overrun carte blanche. So just shut up and eat your Flouride and wade through the muck on your nice green lawn.

[Don Mott]

And who is the Chairperson of TBW? Susan Latvala, the same Susan Latvala who as county commissioner wanted to build ball fields and wells and water processing facilities in the Brooker Creek Preserve. Imagine that! I hope everyone remembers her name come election time.