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CANDACE RONDEAUXU.S. Rep. Mike Bilirakis says officials are listening to the public's concerns about the dumping plan.
Building on conversations with lawmakers last week, federal and state environmental officials say they're considering more changes to a controversial plan to dump millions of gallons of wastewater into the Gulf of Mexico.
A key change calls for barges to start dispersing the treated wastewater from the Piney Point phosphate plant as far out as 125 miles from the Gulf Coast and work their back toward an area 40 miles from shore.
The suggestion was one of several points federal and state regulators touched on during a Washington meeting with U.S. Rep. Mike Bilirakis, R-Tarpon Springs, on Wednesday. Bilirakis said environmental officials are listening to the public's demands for changes.
"I have confidence that they are going to go out farther" into the gulf, Bilirakis said in a telephone interview Thursday.
"I've told them, "Why don't you start at 100 or 125 miles?' " he said. "Then come in in increments. That way if you run into a problem where the monitoring is showing there's a problem then you can stop it before it gets close to shore."
The wastewater now is being stored in an unstable earthen mound at Port Manatee. State officials worry that untreated water could spill from the mound, which is nearly full, and pollute Tampa Bay.
Officials say they need to reduce the volume of water in the mound by more than 500-million gallons. The threat mounts as the rainy season approaches.
Under the state's current plan, barges will disperse the polluted water in a region 40 miles offshore over an area in the gulf measuring about 19,500 square miles. The wastewater will be dumped where water reaches a depth of 40 meters, or about 130 feet. Disposal is scheduled to start in about five weeks and end in November.
That region was selected because, in part, state and federal environmental agencies have studied water quality there. That data provides a baseline for comparisons.
In addition to affirming earlier promises to hire an independent scientist to evaluate the disposal project, Bilirakis said state Department of Environmental Protection officials agreed to scrap a plan to ask fishermen to collect samples from the disposal area.
Fishing industry activists welcomed those changes but said they're not satisfied with the disposal plan. Bobby Spaeth, executive director of the Southern Offshore Fishing Association and a leading activist opposed to the dumping plan, said he wants barges to begin dumping 140 miles of shore and move west from there.
"If they try to get that stuff dumped within 40 miles (of shore), I think they're going to have a real hard time getting those barges out of the bay," he said.
Spaeth is part of a diverse coalition of fishermen, sponge divers, shrimpers and environmentalists who are demanding closer monitoring of gulf waters than is currently called for in the state's proposal. Several in the group are asking the state to equip disposal barges with sophisticated tracking devices and independent observers to ensure that the water is dumped in a designated area far from the Gulf Coast.
DEP spokeswoman Deena Wells said a team of scientists is still analyzing the potential ramifications of moving the dumping site further out, but the agency still believes the current plan is the most viable one.
"The science and the data that we evaluated and the treatment data is telling us that it won't have an impact on the gulf," Wells said.
She said the city of Tampa and Cargill have agreed to take almost 200-million gallons of wastewater from Piney Point during the coming months. That could reduce the total amount to be dispersed in the gulf to about 300-million gallons, Wells said.
- Candace Rondeaux can be reached at (727) 445-4182 or rondeaux@sptimes.com