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Editorial: From denial to pragmatism on St. Petersburg sewers

 
This week started off with a drenching tropical storm, forcing St. Petersburg to dump millions of gallons of partially treated sewage into Tampa Bay. It ground along with City Hall in denial about the need for more openness about the situation and more urgency about a solution. But by week’s end there was a better sense of pragmatism, as Mayor Rick Kriseman finally relented and embraced some immediate, commonsense remedies.
This week started off with a drenching tropical storm, forcing St. Petersburg to dump millions of gallons of partially treated sewage into Tampa Bay. It ground along with City Hall in denial about the need for more openness about the situation and more urgency about a solution. But by week’s end there was a better sense of pragmatism, as Mayor Rick Kriseman finally relented and embraced some immediate, commonsense remedies.
Published June 10, 2016

This week started off with a drenching tropical storm, forcing St. Petersburg to dump millions of gallons of partially treated sewage into Tampa Bay. It ground along with City Hall in denial about the need for more openness about the situation and more urgency about a solution. But by week's end there was a better sense of pragmatism, as Mayor Rick Kriseman finally relented and embraced some immediate, commonsense remedies.

First, Kriseman abruptly dropped his opposition to using settlement money from the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to start sewer repairs. Some of the $6.5 million already has been earmarked for projects including a downtown bike share, a ferry linking St. Petersburg and Tampa and funds for a marine research vessel. But most of the money remains available, and now that millions of gallons of partially treated sewage has flowed into the bay Kriseman has seen the light and reversed course. The City Council should seize the opportunity and spend the remaining money on sewer repair. To be spending BP settlement money on wants such as a bike sharing program while resisting spending any on essentials such as sewer repairs sent exactly the wrong message to taxpayers.

Second, Kriseman scrapped plans to convert a former sewer plant near Albert Whitted Airport into a fish farm and promised to keep using the plant's tanks as emergency storage. That proved helpful this week in preventing a bad discharge from being even worse. The wisdom of closing the Albert Whitted sewage plant because of the expensive upgrades it would have required and the timing of the closing can be debated. But the need to do something now other than pursuing a fish farm is obvious.

After St. Petersburg received as much as 14 inches of rain in some areas on Monday and Tuesday, city officials were forced to discharge partially treated sewage into the bay to deal with the overflow. The same thing happened last summer, when weeks of sustained rains led to spills and discharges of more than 30 million gallons. Officials this week estimated they would have to dump about 2 million gallons into Tampa Bay. The final tally: nearly 10 million gallons. Citing a consultant's study, Kriseman acknowledged that leaky pipes are part of the problem.

While substantial sewer repairs remain at least a year away, St. Petersburg cannot afford discharges like the one this week to be a constant threat after a tropical storm — and even a minor hurricane would pose bigger challenges. The mayor was wise to shift direction, and the City Council should allocate the BP money to promptly addressing the weakest links in the sewer system. It shouldn't have taken a second massive sewage dump to get to this point, but at least there is consensus: It's time to fix the sewers.