One contractor says the price of fixing Tampa Bay Water's plant could exceed other estimates by as much as $6-million.
By CRAIG PITTMAN
Published March 16, 2004
CLEARWATER - Two of the three contractors vying for the chance to fix Tampa Bay Water's troubled desalination plant say repairs are likely to cost in the neighborhood of $8-million to $14-million, while the third predicts it could cost up to $20-million.
The three companies made initial presentations to Tampa Bay Water's board Monday, and now will begin three months of testing on possible fixes. The board expects to hire one of them in August, with repairs to be completed sometime in 2005.
But Tampa Bay Water parted ways with the plant's contractor, Covanta Tampa Construction, after it couldn't pass a test to show the desalination process was operating properly.
The desal plant is supposed to take 40-million gallons of seawater every day, filter out any impurities and then force it through 10,000 tightly woven membranes to produce 25-million gallons of freshwater and 15-million gallons of brine.
In setting water rates, Tampa Bay Water planned on each membrane lasting five to seven years. Replacing them more often would drive up water rates, utility officials say. The key to making them last is the filtering system that screens out impurities before they get to the membranes.
But when Covanta tested the plant, Tampa Bay Water noted 17 problems, not least of which was the filters clogging more frequently than expected, requiring cleaning of the membranes more frequently and with a stronger cleaning solution.
Covanta officials blamed the clogging on Asian green mussels growing on the water intake grates outside the TECO plant. Although Tampa Bay Water officials greeted that claim with bemusement and skepticism, Covanta's would-be replacements said the mussels are indeed part of the problem.
"We think it's a factor," said Kent Turner of American Water Services, a German-owned company that is the largest private water operator in the United States. American has teamed up with sister company Pridesa, which built the largest desal plant in Europe, for its presentation to Tampa Bay Water.
Turner and representatives of the other two consortiums vying to replace Covanta all agreed the filters need fixing so that the membranes won't need cleaning and changing so often.
But one of the groups, which recently built a similar 29-million-gallon-per-day desal plant in Trinidad, said there is plenty more that needs fixing - and as a result, they predicted the repairs will cost more than Tampa Bay Water expects to spend.
Tampa Bay Water officials have predicted that repairing the plant will cost between $8-million and $14-million, and general manager Jerry Maxwell has said that that estimate is probably on the high side.
So St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker asked each potential contractor about that estimate. Turner of American Water called it "in the ballpark." An executive of French-owned Veolia Water (formerly U.S. Filter), after initially refusing to answer the question, finally said that could be the range.
But not the group from Ionics and Montgomery Watson Harza, both U.S.-owned companies, who have "built more plants than any of our competitors," according to executive Ark Pang of Ionics. Pang said his team had spotted a number of other areas needing repairs, including the membranes themselves, that would boost the cost by another $5-million to $6-million.
Thanks to above-average rainfall in the region, Tampa Bay Water has not needed its desal plant to keep up with the demand of its 2-million consumers while cutting back on the environmentally damaging practice of pumping water from underground. The plant is now on what engineers call "hot standby," pending its repairs.
The utility initially had asked its biggest subcontractor, Hydranautics, which makes the membranes, to take over fixing the plant, but Hydranautics filed a federal lawsuit last week that said it has no responsibility for anything but the membranes.
