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Lawsuit over desal plant finally settled

Four years after its debut, the plant nears its final test. It's producing 16-million gallons a day.

By CRAIG PITTMAN
Published April 17, 2007

CLEARWATER - After years of legal wrangling, Tampa Bay Water's board voted Monday to settle a lawsuit over the failure of its desalination plant, even though the settlement nets the utility just $1-million more than its legal costs.

"The decision we made today puts this behind us," Pinellas County Commissioner Susan Latvala, who chairs the utility board, said after the unanimous vote. "Let's move forward and get this desal plant running."

The utility board was far happier with the news that, four years after its original debut, Tampa Bay Water's long-delayed $140-million desalination plant may be ready by next month for its final test.

The board also voted to spend $126-million to expand its surface water treatment plant, which has struggled since 2002 to produce its full capacity and to meet the utility's stringent water quality requirements.

The expansion of the surface water plant in Brandon will enable it to treat enough river water to supply half of the drinking supply of the Tampa Bay region, the utility staff said.

Both the surface water treatment plant and the desal plant were built so Tampa Bay Water could cut back on pumping water out of the ground. Groundwater pumping had drained swamps and lakes and dried up private wells, so the Southwest Florida Water Management District, commonly known as Swiftmud, offered to help pay for the utility's efforts to develop less damaging water supply sources.

The desal plant, the largest in North America, was supposed to be up and running in March 2003. But it flunked a crucial test because of defects in the plant and its processes.

So the utility's board paid off its bankrupt contractor and hired a company to fix the problems at the Apollo Beach plant. The new contractor, American Water Pridesa, promised to finish the repairs and be ready for the final test by October 2006. It missed that deadline as well as new deadlines set for Dec. 22, 2006, and March 31.

In an April 2 report to the board, executive director Jerry Maxwell wrote that "the time schedule for the project completion and startup is challenging."

Four days later, though, the plant began producing water. As of this week, it was pumping 16-million gallons a day into the region's drinking supply during the ongoing spring drought.

Eric Sabolsice, project director for American Water Pridesa, said he expects the desal plant to ramp up to its full 25-millon-gallons-a-day capacity soon. Unless there are unforeseen problems, he said, it should be ready to undergo the rigorous "acceptance test" in two to three weeks.

While the repairs were going on, Tampa Bay Water was suing several subcontractors involved in building the plant, including the company that manufactured the membranes used in filtering salt from the water and two engineering companies. In the 2004 civil suit, the utility sought more than $15-million in damages.

In pursuing the suit, the utility spent $6.8-million on legal costs. As a result of the settlement, an insurance company will pay Tampa Bay Water $7.9-million in damages.

"They're going to net about $1-million," said Richard A. Harrison, who represented the utility. "It's certainly not the greatest settlement anybody ever had."

But going to trial would have cost a lot more and carried the risk of losing, he said. And after all, he said, "the purpose of the agency is not to litigate. It's to make water."

While the desal plant's troubles have made headlines, the surface water treatment plant has had its own share of woe. Built by the world's largest water company, Veolia, the plant treats water taken out of the Alafia and Hillsborough rivers and the Tampa Bypass Canal.

It failed to pass its acceptance test for four months. The quality of the water it produced was out of compliance with Tampa Bay Water's standards off and on for more than two years. Then chemicals Veolia used in the treatment process made things worse.

As a result, the company reported in 2005, the plant "has experienced shortfalls in treated water production." Veolia spent millions of its own money fixing the problem.

Despite those problems, Tampa Bay Water decided to expand the plant, and Swiftmud is going to help pay for the work. The work will expand the plant's capacity to 120-million gallons a day, although it will probably not produce more than 99-million on average.

[Last modified April 17, 2007, 00:46:19]