Suncoast Pinellas News
Tarpon Gets $20 Million For Water Plant
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Published: March 1, 2008
TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. - Professional persistence some times pays dividends.
After years of being told by consultants the state would never help the city build a reverse-osmosis water treatment plant, this month Tarpon Springs proved the experts wrong.
The governing board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District Board has approved a $20.1 million grant to help defray the cost of constructing the treatment plant, which will remove salt from well water, rendering it potable.
The estimated price tag of the plant is $45 million.
City Manager Ellen Posivach said the city was told not to apply for a grant because it was state policy not to fund local water projects that treat brackish well water.
The city applied for a grant anyway, believing it could prove its case, Posivach said.
Tarpon Springs wants to build the reverse-osmosis plant so it no longer has to buy water from Pinellas County Utilities. The city has little control over what it has to pay the county for water, local officials say.
In the end tenacity and professional persistence paid off, said Public Services Administrator Paul Smith, who has worked on the drinking-water project.
The grant will pay for about half the cost of the plant designed to produce 6.4 million gallons a day of fresh water. The city consumes about 5 mgd so a plant of that capacity would be able to meet an increase in demand.
The project is in the design, well testing and permitting stage.
The first glass of water should come from the tap in 2010.
To pay the rest of the construction cost of the water plant, the city is floating a bond issue. In a referendum 74 percent of city voters approved the bond debt.
With the SWFWMD grant, however, the city will be able to pay off the water plant bond issue sooner. This will save hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest, according to Posivach.
The city was lucky to have had Smith and Robert Robertson, a water plant civil engineer, present the city's case of the SWFWMD, grant, according to Posivach.
In 2004 the state Legislature approved a bill encouraging Florida's five water management districts to fund local water projects.
Posivach, Smith, Robertson and city commissioners made the case of the grant several times before the SWFWMD board and its area advisory panel, the Pinellas-Anclote Basin Board.
The city argued it would reduce the demand on the region's potable water supply if it could desalinate brackish well water.
The city ultimately won endorsements from the SWFWMD basin board and Tampa Bay Water, the Clearwater-based regional wholesale utility.
Tampa Bay Water supplies potable water to Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and St. Petersburg, Tampa and New Port Richey.
According to Smith, a last-minute plea to the SWFWMD board from Posivach prompted the district to increase its grant to the city from $9.5 million to $20.1 million.
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