Flush that toilet Mish! It stinks in here!
palmbeachpost.com
Flaws, fate cited in St. Lucie West water woes
By Teresa Lane
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 27, 2005
PORT ST. LUCIE — Each winter for the past two years, St. Lucie West Utilities Director George Morgan has watched the falling water levels in storage tanks and held his breath.
Record-breaking construction in St. Lucie West, where routine building levels tripled last year, had strained the plant's ability to keep water flowing to sinks and toilets and, in the dry season, outdoor spigots where homeowners attached hoses for sprinkling brown lawns.
Water wells drilled 16 years ago were overtaxed or pumping sand, and one was producing little more than a trickle by December, when crews punched the earth in search of more water. Filters at the treatment plant were clogged with sand and debris, but crews were unable to clean regularly because back-flushing reduced tank levels even further.
In the wee hours of Feb. 19, when a worker realized the plant no longer could supply enough treated water to meet demand, he decided to make a last-ditch effort to clean the filters. Instead of a quick fix, that action catapulted the award-winning utility into an extended water failure and city-imposed building moratorium that has many residents demanding answers to a seemingly simple question: How can a well-managed utility run out of water?
"It's like when you're on a cross-country trip, and your gas gauge is getting lower, but you keep passing gas station after gas station," Mayor Bob Minsky said. "All of a sudden, there are no more gas stations, and you're out of gas. You've got nobody to blame except yourself."
Although utility managers have planned to expand the plant for two years, J.W. French of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said unreliable water supplies in the shallow aquifer exacerbated the plant's woes.
Five board members of the St. Lucie West Services District, a quasi-governmental agency that owns and operates the utility plant, agreed last year to spend $12 million on a new plant and three deep wells that reach the Floridan Aquifer, but they say historic growth and the winter drought rendered their plans too little, too late.
"It does not take a literary giant to figure out there were a lot of mistakes made in the short term," said Jerry Barlowe, a nine-year board member and one of St. Lucie West's first residents in 1989. "We got kicked between the eyes, and I assure you it does not feel good. We don't intend for it to happen again."
When the plant shut down in the early hours of Feb. 19, the spigots at 7,000 homes and businesses immediately went dry. Although the city and utility managed to deliver a trickle of water that day, the flow disappeared a second time Feb. 20, prompting city crews to build a second interconnecting pipe between the two systems and begin supplying all the community's water.
Fearful of another failure, city council members imposed a building moratorium that will be lifted only after DEP is satisfied St. Lucie West can fulfill its own demand through July. That's when a new plant with nearly double the treatment capacity and well supply will go online to serve the 4,600-acre community through build out, which is likely to occur within a few years.
French said he hopes a well that was tapped Thursday and is undergoing tests will serve as a stopgap until July. It could be certified for use as early as Tuesday.
"They'll have to demonstrate they can meet their maximum daily demand with their largest well out of service," French said. "We'll see what kind of production they get out of their new well. If they can meet their permitted requirements, they're entitled to go back to operating on their own."
Although DEP monitors utilities monthly to ensure what occurred in St. Lucie West doesn't happen, French said well production is not included on the monitoring sheets. On paper, it appeared the wells were producing and the plant was treating enough water to handle the average daily demand of 1.4 million gallons of potable water.
In reality, lack of rain had left shallow wells parched. The water that was being pumped was sandy, further exacerbating dirty filters at the treatment plant, he said.
Morgan said he has warned supervisors for two years that the plant was approaching maximum capacity, prompting them to consider two avenues: Build a new plant and convert the existing wells to irrigation use or buy water from Port St. Lucie. City Manager Don Cooper attended a board meeting in April 2004 and offered to sell capacity for 3,200 homes for roughly $2.5 million, plus monthly water use.
Although board members said they liked the idea of spending only $2.5 million rather than $12 million, two utility consultants they hired advised them to choose the latter, resulting in a multimillion-dollar expansion program that landed the consultants more work and thousands more in fees.
One of those consultants, engineer Jon Whitmer, said he is not sure he would recommend the same action a second time in light of last week's water problems.
"There's some advantage to being able to control your own destiny, and utilities have become a good way to control growth," Whitmer said. "If we had gone to the city, we wouldn't be able to convert our existing wells for irrigation in July. That's one of the biggest concerns we hear out here, is that people want more water for irrigation."
St. Lucie West uses a combination of treated sewage and lake water to irrigate homes and businesses on a timer system. During dry times such as last weekend, residents use about 250,000 gallons of potable water a day to supplement the paltry output from their sprinklers, a high enough figure to prompt last week's crisis, Whitmer said.
"We were down to 1.34 million gallons (a day) of treatment capacity, and the demand was 1.4," Morgan said. "While we're off-line and the city is supplying the water, we're going to chemically clean our filters twice, and the new well should get us to 1.9 million gallons a day. I'm optimistic we'll get through until July."
Even if St. Lucie West shows it can operate without another shutdown, French said, the two utilities should agree on an emergency water pact as soon as possible to serve as a backup. After supervisors rejected the city's $2.5 million offer in April, newly hired District Director Charles Sweat wrote Cooper in November, saying he would like to buy 200,000 gallons of water each day "immediately."
City Utility Director Jesus Merejo responded in December that Sweat must apply for DEP approval to mix the two water supplies and spend nearly $200,000 to upgrade an interconnecting pipe and install an ammoniation system. Sweat never responded, saying there was no money in the budget for the upgrades.
City crews say they have incurred at least $150,000 in emergency costs so far and will bill the services district. St. Lucie West residents, including Police Chief John Skinner, have embarked on mass e-mail campaigns or placed angry calls to the district office and city hall demanding answers to the outage, which paralyzed businesses for days and threatens to taint the luster of Port St. Lucie's first master-planned community.
"We are not only talking about a healthy water supply, but if St. Lucie West gets the reputation for having an unreliable water and sewer system, our property values will take a beating," Skinner wrote in an e-mail to neighbors. "The recent failure of St. Lucie West Utilities is something we all need to be concerned with."
Resident Janice Zynko estimates the interruption will cost her hundreds of dollars to replace water filters that must be discarded after a boil-water notice is issued. The notice remained in effect five days last week.
"This failure is due to the poor planning of our officials, however the cost of replacement falls to the homeowner," Zynko told district supervisors. "How could plans for more and more town homes, single family homes, and businesses be approved knowing that the system was ready to fail?"
Barlowe acknowledges that board members should have monitored the situation more closely and warned residents to avoid unnecessary use of potable water during the crisis. After 16 years of living in the upscale community that boasts a major-league baseball stadium, two colleges and a 14-screen movie theater, Barlowe is hopeful the water failure will one day be a distant memory, long forgotten as residents return to their suburban lives in what is often seen as the catalyst to making Port St. Lucie the second-fastest-growing city in the country.
"If we can get through this crisis, and I'm sure we will, there is a light at the end of the tunnel," Barlowe said. "I'm so tired of hearing about irrigation and water, I'd almost be refreshed to hear people fussing about something else." |
