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Editorial: New turns in St. Petersburg sewer crisis

 
Abrupt reversals and revelations undermine public confidence in St. Petersburg City Hall and bring home the importance of independent, outside investigations to understand what went wrong and correct it. Mayor Rick Kriseman appeared before the council last week to pledge improvements after a rough stretch.
Abrupt reversals and revelations undermine public confidence in St. Petersburg City Hall and bring home the importance of independent, outside investigations to understand what went wrong and correct it. Mayor Rick Kriseman appeared before the council last week to pledge improvements after a rough stretch.
Published Sept. 27, 2016

It's not easy keeping up with St. Petersburg's sewer crisis. After months of insisting it would be too expensive to reopen the closed Albert Whitted treatment plant, city officials are exploring that option. After days of insisting overflows at the city's Northwest plant were as clean as reclaimed water, Mayor Rick Kriseman has acknowledged it was actually partly treated sewage. These types of abrupt reversals and revelations undermine public confidence in City Hall and bring home the importance of independent, outside investigations to understand what went wrong and correct it.

Kriseman appeared before the City Council on Thursday to pledge improvements after a rough stretch. The city has released more than 150 million gallons of raw or partly treated waste into Tampa Bay and other local waterways as the sewer system was swamped repeatedly by heavy rains. At this point, the cause appears to be a combination of poor policy decisions, inadequate capacity and management issues. It took until last week for the city's public works administrator, Claude Tankersley, to acknowledge the obvious: The Albert Whitted treatment plant should not have been closed until additional capacity at another plant was available.

Adding more intrigue to the saga: a whistle-blower, a decision by Kriseman to place two top sewer officials on unpaid leave and a potential criminal investigation by the state.

Kriseman didn't tell the public or the council about the 58 million gallons that poured out of the Northwest plant earlier this month. After the Tampa Bay Times reported it, the mayor defended his nondisclosure, insisting the public didn't need to know because it was clean water and posed no health threat. But a whistle-blower questioned that claim and turned out to be right: The water was dirty.

To his credit, Kriseman made public the error late Friday. But that followed other lapses, including a 2014 study warning that closing Albert Whitted would leave the sewer system vulnerable to overflows. Kriseman and council members say they never saw that report, and the plant was permanently shuttered in spring 2015. Months later, the sewage dumps began. While the toll continued mounting this summer, the city reopened Albert Whitted solely to hold wastewater, not treat it.

Kriseman and Tankersley repeatedly dismissed the idea of reopening the plant as a treatment site because of the cost. Now, they are re-examining that option at a potential cost of $40 million. That would be on top of the $38 million the city is spending next year to repair pipes and add capacity at another plant. As the price tag to fix this mess keeps growing, so does the need for accurate accounting and explanations.

An outside audit will try to determine why the 2014 consultant's report was kept hidden. The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating St. Petersburg's sewer problem, along with the state Department of Environmental Protection. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will determine if any laws were broken. The city should open its books for all of these inquiries.

As bad news piled up last week, Kriseman kept his pledge to be more transparent. That will be even more important going forward, as the prospect of a criminal investigation raises the urgency on St. Petersburg's sewer crisis. But by repeating bad information to the public, the mayor has lost some trust. It will take some work to rebuild it.