Desal plant passes last test

The project to augment the bay area's supply of drinking water cost $158-million.

By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER, Times Staff Writer
Published December 18, 2007

It took four years of delays and nearly $30-million in repairs, but Tampa Bay Water's troubled desalination plant is completed and pumping at full throttle after clearing a final obstacle.

The nation's largest seawater desalination plant passed a November performance test it first flunked in 2003. The results of the test were announced during Monday's Tampa Bay Water board meeting and mean the plant is no longer under construction.

The utility is now depending on the plant to supply up to 25-million gallons of water every day to the utility's customers in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties.

"What this means is we have a large supply of water that's drought-proof," said Pinellas County Commissioner Susan Latvala, a Tampa Bay Water board member. "It doesn't matter what the conditions are, we have this water. With everyone from Atlanta to other parts of the country facing water supply issues, this is a huge deal."

The plant filters out salt from water drawn from Tampa Bay and provides about 10 percent of what the utility needs every day for its 2.5-million customers, said Jerry Maxwell, Tampa Bay Water's general manager.

"It's a lot of water when you're in a dry period," Maxwell said. "Without it, you'd be contemplating doing things that wouldn't meet environmental stewardship standards so that you could meet public health standards."

Tampa Bay Water embarked on the project, which has a total cost of nearly $158-million, to avoid future water shortages and environmental damage from depleted groundwater supplies.

But the new plant, relying on experimental technologies, was bedeviled from the beginning by an assortment of problems.

Its first contractor went bankrupt in 2000. The replacement firm, Covanta Energy, went bankrupt in 2002.

The plant failed its first performance test in 2003, and the Covanta subsidiary that had continued to build the plant subsequently went bankrupt.

In 2004, Tampa Bay Water hired American Water Pridesa to fix the plant for $29-million. But in October 2006, the plant again missed a deadline.

Testing was postponed indefinitely this July and the utility teetered on the brink of an uncertain future. But during a 14-day period from late October to November, it passed muster. It has produced 3-billion gallons of water this year.

A key improvement was in the plant's pretreatment process. Unlike in previous tests, the membranes that filtered out salt didn't wear out as quickly.

"When you're doing a project of that size and in a way that's never been done before, you're going to have problems," said Tampa City Council member Charlie Miranda, a Tampa Bay Water board member.

"It all worked out, at least seemingly," Miranda said. "Something may change, who knows? But this is a giant step in the right direction."

Michael Van Sickler can be reached at mvansickler@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.

[Last modified December 18, 2007, 00:05:06]