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Tampa Bay Water plans two meetings, today and Wednesday, to get public input on placement of the desalination plant, set to open by 2007.
By KATHERINE GAZELLA
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 22, 2001
TARPON SPRINGS -- Residents will have two chances next week to tell Tampa Bay Water where they want a desalination plant built.
At open houses Monday in Tarpon Springs and Wednesday in Holiday, citizens can make suggestions about the plant, which Tampa Bay Water wants to build somewhere along the gulf coast between Tarpon Springs and Holiday.
The suggestions will affect the agency's decision where to build the plant, said Michelle Klase Robinson, spokeswoman for Tampa Bay Water.
"We want a project that the community can be happy with," she said.
The desalination plant would produce 25-million gallons of drinking water per day and could be expanded to produce 35-million gallons a day. It would be the second desalination plant in the Tampa Bay region and is part of a plan to create new water sources, that would reduce pumping at well fields, Robinson said.
The plant would be about the size of a grocery store supercenter, said Don Lindeman, a registered professional engineer and the project manager. He said the plant would be buffered and screened so it would blend with the community.
In the past, Tampa Bay Water considered putting the plant near the Anclote River Power Plant. That is still an option, but the agency is looking at other sites as well, Robinson said. A partial list of potential sites includes:
Property across the discharge canal from the Anclote power plant.
A parcel south of the L&R industrial park.
A spot north of Anclote Road and west of L&R Industrial Boulevard.
The former concrete plant south of Wesley Avenue.
The list also includes two potential sites in East Lake: a Pinellas County-owned parcel north of the S. K. Keller Water Treatment Plant and a location in the Eldridge-Wilde well field east of the Keller water treatment plant.
Tampa Bay Water officials plan to have handouts available at the meetings that locate the sites under consideration. And they say the list is not necessarily complete.
"We're definitely open to other sites that the public might suggest to us," Robinson said.
After the agency receives public input next week, the site options will be narrowed down and ranked, she said.
Tampa Bay Water will come back to residents with a ranking early next year, and will take the information to the agency's board in the spring, she said.
The plant is expected to go online by December 2007, Lindeman said.
At desalination plants, seawater is treated to become drinking water. The discharge is water that is twice as salty as seawater, Lindeman said. The agency will have to decide how far offshore to put intake and discharge pipes, a decision that he said will take into account environmental studies involving effects on sea grasses and marine life.
"We're really going to let science drive the selection," he said.
Tarpon Springs resident Lorraine Gould said she will attend the meeting next week to help her decide how she feels about the desalination plant.
"I think it might be a positive thing," said Gould, the president of the homeowners association at the Meadows, a manufactured home community in northern Tarpon Springs. "I don't want to go in there negatively."
Gould said she understands the need for a desalination plant, especially in light of this year's drought.
She said it doesn't seem fair that Pinellas County takes water from places like Pasco County.
"I don't want those people to suffer because we're using their water," she said.
Lindeman said there will always be proponents and opponents to a project like this. But he said some people may be more supportive because of the drought.
"I believe the drought has heightened everyone's awareness to the critical need for drinking water," he said.
-- Staff writer Richard Danielson contributed to this report. Katherine Gazella can be reached at (727) 445-4182 or gazella@sptimes.com.
Tampa Bay Water plans two open houses on plans for a new desalination plant. One will be 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. today at the Heritage Center in Craig Park, 100 Beekman Lane in Tarpon Springs. The second will be 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Fellowship Hall of the Community United Methodist Church, 3214 U.S. 19, Holiday.