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Water authority grades proposals for desalinationBy JEAN HELLER © St. Petersburg Times, published June 5, 1998 While the grades, given by staff members and consultants for the West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority, are not definitive in identifying winners and losers, they appear to favor a proposal by the partnership of Progress Energy and Ionics Inc. at an Anclote River site adjacent to a Florida Power plant in southern Pasco County. Progress Energy and Florida Power Corp. are sister companies, both subsidiaries of Florida Progress of St. Petersburg. Ironically, the worst grade went to proposals from the same Progress Energy partnership at the Higgins power plant site on northern Tampa Bay near Oldsmar. The reason no hard conclusions can be drawn is that each proposal was graded in five categories -- plant location, potential environmental impacts, ability to pass state permitting requirements, product water quality and delivery, and financial factors. A final ranking must wait until the West Coast board decides at its June 15 meeting how much weight to give to each category. The second-best set of grades appears to go to Florida Water Partners at a Tampa Electric Co. site at Big Bend in southern Hillsborough County. Stone & Webster appears to finish third, and Florida Seawater Desalination Co., fourth. "If you look at nothing more than the table of grades, some things are evident," said Don Lindeman, desalination project manager for West Coast. "But you can't draw any conclusions until the board makes the weighting decisions." Progress Energy, with generally the best set of grades, got A's for plant design and siting, environmental impacts and product quality, and B's for permitability and financial factors at its Anclote site. By contrast, it got C's and D's for environmental effects and permitability at the Higgins site. "The next step is for the board to determine finalists and begin cost negotiations," West Coast general manager Jerry Maxwell said in a statement. "However, a final decision about desalination as a source of new water will not be made until after we've received and evaluated the results of environmental investigations we've begun." The environmental concerns focus on what, if any, effects there would be on Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico from the discharge of brine waste from a desalination plant. If the decision is to proceed with desalination, it will be made no earlier than fall, after West Coast is reorganized into a regional utility called Tampa Bay Water.
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LEARWATER -- Like schoolchildren about to embark on summer vacation, the four partnerships vying to build a saltwater desalination plant for the region have received their final grades.
