Shower, but do not sprinkle

Work on a broken pipe will take another week instead of another day, so Pinellas and Pasco water users are urged to conserve and not irrigate lawns.

By LISA GREENE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 25, 2003

Heavy rain and a difficult work site have slowed repairs to a broken pipeline that supplies water to most of Pinellas and Pasco counties, utilities officials said Monday.

April 2 is the new target date for putting the pipe back to work, instead of today, as utilities officials had hoped.

That means most Pinellas residents -- everyone except Dunedin and Belleair residents -- as well as residents of west and central Pasco County are being asked to keep conserving water.

It's okay to shower, do laundry and wash dishes, water officials say. Just don't water the lawn.

"It's important for folks to turn their irrigation systems off," said Michelle Robinson, spokeswoman for Tampa Bay Water. "With all the rain, no one needs to water their lawns this week."

Forecasts say there is a 20 percent chance of rain Wednesday, with showers possible over the weekend.

The 7-foot-wide water main broke Thursday afternoon, leaving thousands of people without water for several hours. More than 600,000 Pinellas and Pasco residents had to boil water until Saturday night, when tests showed the water was not contaminated.

Tampa Bay Water restored water pressure by pumping extra water from its well fields, diverting water from St. Petersburg to customers of Pinellas County Utilities, and running some water through a smaller bypass pipe around the break. Those measures are enough to supply water if people hold off on lawn watering, water officials say.

The broken pipe itself has been replaced, said Jonathan Kennedy, director of operations and facilities at Tampa Bay Water.

But workers must still replace three other spots where pipe is so damaged that it could break. They are testing a fourth, Kennedy said.

Repairs have been complicated by Sunday's rain. Some of the pipe already is in low-lying areas, and the repair sites now are so wet that workers must bring in sheets of steel to shore up the wet ground where they are digging.

"It's very time-consuming," Kennedy said. "We have to take extra steps with this much groundwater present."

The work also is difficult because all the repair areas are in a 2-mile stretch of pipeline on the Bexley Ranch, a remote section of Pasco County east of the Suncoast Parkway. Workers are using a one-lane farm road to move heavy equipment, Robinson said.

"Just the traffic control alone is very logistically difficult," she said.

Meanwhile, engineering consultants began inspecting pipe over the weekend to determine whether an 8-mile stretch of 30-year-old pipe should be replaced. Staff members will bring that question to the Tampa Bay Water board in April or May, Kennedy said.

"I am convinced" that staff members will want to replace all 8 miles, Kennedy said.

In 1997, staff members of the West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority, Tampa Bay Water's predecessor, told the authority board that all the pipe should be replaced, then a $15-million project. Board members then chose to inspect and replace sections shown to be damaged instead.

But that was before Tampa Bay Water, a more collaborative agency, was formed and took on much larger jobs, such as building a plant in Hillsborough County to desalinate seawater.

"This is no longer the daunting task it may have seemed in the late 1990s," Kennedy said. "And we now have additional evidence the pipeline has deficiencies."

Two board members said Monday they don't have enough information on whether the pipe needs to be replaced.

"We've got to find out if there are other problems," said County Commissioner Bob Stewart, water board chairman. "If there are, we're going to have to face it, and we're going to have to pay for it."

Because of the water main break, Pinellas County Utilities has stopped disinfecting water to north county residents with chlorine, director Pick Talley said. The utility had planned a six-week switch from a different disinfectant, chloramine, after tests showed a slight, but not dangerous, increase in bacteria levels.

Utility officials had planned to continue to use chlorine after the break. But Talley said Monday they have switched back to chloramine instead.

Even a few days on chlorine seems to have taken care of the problem, Talley said. It's too soon to say whether the utility will go to chlorine after the break is repaired.

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