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CRAIG PITTMANTampa Bay Water will pay three companies $300,000 to figure out how to fix the problem at Apollo Beach.
CLEARWATER - Tampa Bay Water's troubled desalination plant has been shut down again, this time to give three companies a chance to figure out how to fix it.
The utility's board voted Monday to pay each company $100,000 for the tests. It's unclear when the plant's problems will be fixed or how long it will be out of use. Utility officials say the plant probably won't be ready until next year.
The $110-million Apollo Beach plant was supposed to be finished by Jan. 31, 2003. But its builder went bankrupt, and its filter system likely is not working properly, utility officials say.
Who caused the problems is a matter of dispute. The head of Poseidon Resources, the company originally hired to build the plant, attended the board meeting Monday to demand that utility officials stop blaming it.
In 2002, when Covanta, the main contractor for the plant ran into financial problems, Tampa Bay Water bought out Poseidon and kept Covanta.
Now Poseidon is trying to launch two new desalination projects in California, but questions have risen about what happened with the Apollo Beach plant. After Tampa Bay Water general manager Jerry Maxwell wrote a letter to San Diego officials blaming Poseidon, they decided to delay taking any action for six months.
"We're perplexed at the Tampa Bay Water staff's mischaracterization of our activities and concerned how this effort is affecting our business interests elsewhere," Andy Kingman, chief executive officer of Poseidon, told the Tampa Bay Water board. "We ask that you direct the staff ... to cease this course of action immediately."
Board members did not react. Afterward, Maxwell said he wrote the letter to respond to a request for information from San Diego and to statements by Poseidon blaming Tampa Bay Water. Maxwell's letter blamed Poseidon for picking Covanta to build the plant and allowing it to use a bad filter system. He also accused Poseidon of hiding test results that would have revealed the trouble early.
Kingman said Tampa Bay Water officials approved hiring Covanta and using the filter system, and had full access to all test results. He also said the filter problems stem from changes Tampa Bay Water allowed Covanta to make after Poseidon left the project, an accusation Maxwell denied.
The dispute, and the plant's woes, center on the system that filters impurities out of the briny water taken from Tampa Bay before it is pumped through membranes that screen out salt. As of January, the plant was producing 21-million gallons of freshwater a day. But the membranes clogged too quickly, showing that the filter system needs fixing.
Maxwell said estimates for fixing the filter system are between $8-million and $14-million. And Tampa Bay Water will spend more than $4-million to make Covanta give up control of the plant. None of the expenses have affected water rates.
Utility officials agreed to pay $300,000 to the three companies that want to fix the plant to ensure that Tampa Bay Water gets full access to test results. The contracts will spell out that the utility owns the test results. After the testing, one of the companies could win the contract to fix the plant.