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To save oil, a Tampa plant would guzzle water

By STEVE HUETTEL and JANET ZINK
Published February 16, 2007

TAMPA — If the state’s first ethanol plant is built here to reduce our reliance on foreign oil, it will come at the expense of a scarce Florida resource: water.

City staffers are reviewing a request from Port Sutton EnviroFuels LCC for up to 500,000 gallons of fresh water per day to run the plant it plans to begin building this year at Tampa’s port.

Company officials say that’s peak use, and the plant will average 390,000 gallons daily. Even so, the facility today would be the city’s fifth-largest water customer, bigger than Tampa General Hospital, the University of South Florida or Busch Gardens.

The plant would gulp more than six times as much water as Tampa’s typical industrial customer and enough for nearly 1,500 homes based on average use.

Tampa has to provide the water even as it struggles to keep up with demand from residents, who are under once-a-week watering restrictions.

Most of the time, Tampa should be able to supply enough drinking-quality water for the plant from its own supply, says water department director Brad Baird.

But during dry spells, the city needs more than it can take from the Hillsborough River and must dig into financial reserves to buy more expensive water from utility supplier Tampa Bay Water.

The city is trying to cut potable water demand by getting big industrial customers to switch to reclaimed water.
That’s not an immediate option for EnviroFuels. Neither the city nor Hillsborough County has a reclaimed water pipe closer than the 2 miles from the plant site at Port Sutton, said company president Bradley Krohn.

 EnviroFuels needs a utility’s commitment to provide water before it can get a county permit to build the plant, he said. The company will work with the city or county for reclaimed water later.

“This is a very short-term solution, until we transition to reclaimed water as our primary water source,’’ said Krohn.
EnviroFuels has already used up a one-year option to lease the site and will return to the Tampa Port Authority next week seeking two three-month extensions.

Financing for the $86-million plant remains on hold because  a neighboring business sued to block the project. PEL Laboratories claims emissions from EnviroFuels will ruin its environmental testing business.

The delay may give the company and water officials time to speed getting reclaimed water to the plant, said Rose Ferlita, a Hillsborough County commissioner who sits on the port authority board.

Advocates promote ethanol as a key to reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Skyrocketing production has been a boon to corn farmers and rural communities.

But ethanol plants are notorious water guzzlers. In parts of Minnesota, plants are pumping ground water faster than the aquifer can refill.

Krohn’s company ran into opposition over plans to build a plant in Port Manatee requiring 500,000 gallons of reclaimed water and pumping ground water. The project was scrapped last month when another port tenant refused to sublease land needed for the plant.

The Tampa plant will take about 18 months to build and employ some 40 workers at salaries averaging around $50,000, Krohn said.

Tampa City Council member Linda Saul-Sena was concerned about the plant’s impact on the city’s fresh water supply but said ethanol production is a beneficial industry.

“If some industrial user has to come out of the blue to use all this water, I’d rather it be something like this than a tanning plant,” she said.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

[Last modified February 16, 2007, 21:07:54]