History shows county needs push from DEP

By TIMES EDITORIAL
Published July 10, 2007

Pasco County's offer to connect homeowners on polluted wells to its central water system should not be spun as a goodwill gesture or as an unnecessary repair to a situation that might correct itself in a half-dozen years.

More appropriately, Pasco County will spend $300,000 to connect up to 55 homes with sodium- and chloride-tainted wells to its utility system because state environmental regulators are watching.

Two weeks ago, Utilities Director Bruce Kennedy and Commissioner Jack Mariano briefed Hudson residents on the connection offer. Kennedy called it a proactive approach done out of an abundance of caution and said even if the county did nothing, the contaminants would dissipate naturally. Mariano asked rhetorically if the county's offer could be characterized as a goodwill project.

Neither is correct. The state Department of Environmental Protection, which said the county assumed responsibility for the hookups, indicated Pasco should provide drinking water to the well owners as quickly as possible. Its sense of urgency can be explained by tests showing drinking water with chlorine and sodium levels exceeding state standards.

DEP has another frame of reference, as well. The tests were done as part of a far-reaching consent order between Pasco and the state over a lengthy list of environmental violations at the county utility including building a treatment plant without a permit and using a secret pipe to illegally discharge partially treated wastewater.

The state fined the county $359,000 and allowed it to begin $2.7-million worth of upgrades after originally threatening a penalty of nearly $2-million.

As detailed recently by Times staff writer David DeCamp, the likely source of the sodium and chloride is water from the Gulf of Mexico infiltrating older sewer lines along the coast. The county treats the sewage, but not for sodium or chloride, at its plant near Houston Avenue and then sends it to percolation ponds. There, it filtered into the earth and into the underground drinking water supply of the private well owners nearby.

Kennedy contended the county could have argued it did not cause the saltwater intrusion, which could have come from another utility. We're not sure what to believe considering the contradictory tales told last year about who was responsible for the secret pipe in Wesley Chapel. At one point Kennedy blamed a road contractor.

But, if true, (and two private utilities have been asked to explain any potential role they had in the Hudson contamination), the county should pursue aggressively the suspected polluters. Allowing private companies to skate while asking county utility customers to absorb an unbudgeted $300,000 expense is unfair.

This episode also reaffirms the suspicion that the county is ill-prepared to regulate private utilities, despite Mariano's contentions to the contrary.

[Last modified July 10, 2007, 07:37:40]