St. Petersburg done with 2015-16 sewage spills lawsuit

As St. Petersburg waited for the stadium deal with the Tampa Bay Rays to officially expire, it resolved another festering challenge: a sewage crisis from a decade ago.Sarasota-based environmental group Suncoast Waterkeeper, along with two other organizations, sued the city after it discharged 1 billion gallons of wastewater from 2015 to 2016. Up to 200 million gallons wound up in waterways including Tampa Bay.As part of a settlement agreement, the city pledged to repair and upgrade its neglected sewage systems, increase water quality testing and promptly notify the public of any sewage spills or water quality issues. Suncoast Waterkeeper told a federal judge March 31 that St. Petersburg has done what it said it would do, fulfilling the settlement and ending court-supervised compliance. “I hope the city can celebrate this,” said Suncoast Waterkeeper founder Justin Bloom, an attorney who filed the lawsuit in December 2016. “There’s a lot of challenges the city’s going to have to face in the future, but the work that they’ve done should prepare them for those challenges.”St. Petersburg’s Water Resources Director, John Palenchar, oversaw environmental compliance during the sewage crisis. In an emailed statement, he acknowledged his staff’s hard work and commitment in achieving “demanding standards” while maintaining essential community services.“This milestone reflects nearly 10 years of dedicated collaboration between our city team, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and environmental stakeholders,” Palenchar said. “We worked closely with the Suncoast Waterkeeper and their engineers throughout the compliance process to ensure transparency and accountability in our corrective measures.”The resolution came just as the Rays announced they were walking away from a stadium deal the city and team have been working on with many stops and starts for nearly two decades.Suncoast Waterkeeper and its partners sued the city under the federal Clean Water Act. Around the same time, St. Petersburg entered into a consent order with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to upgrade its sewage system. The city initially fought the lawsuit but then agreed to a settlement in 2018.“Had they done that at the beginning, they would’ve saved an incredible amount of money,” Bloom said. “They could’ve focused on those corrective actions sooner, saving money and saving the community from a lot more overflows and spills.”As part of that deal, the settlement’s requirements were rolled into the state’s consent order. St. Petersburg has budgeted approximately $300 million for those projects, fees and fines related to the consent order, said city spokesperson Samantha Bequer.Projects include repairing or replacing sewer lines, manholes, pump stations and critical main lines; cleaning sewers for fats, oils, grease, roots and debris; installing meters to monitor the system’s response to heavy rain events; tracking properties with defective underground pipes that connect private properties to the sewer system; routine testing of the city’s water bodies and issuing public advisories when water quality levels are found to be unsafe. The city also paid $200,000 to Tampa Bay Estuary Program for water quality improvement projects.“Had we not filed the lawsuit, I don’t think these things would’ve been in there,” Bloom said.He said St. Petersburg’s recent decisions to close down its sewage plants during hurricanes Helene and Milton last year had no effect on the settlement. But he said those incidents showed evidence of historic planning shortcomings, the crux of the lawsuit.The city still needs to close out the consent order on the state’s end. That’s expected to be completed in June when an AquaFence flood barrier around a pumping station near Albert Whitted Airport arrives. St. Petersburg and Suncoast Waterkeeper still need to settle who will pay attorney’s fees.“Through significant infrastructure investments, operational enhancements, and system improvements, our wastewater system is stronger and more resilient than ever before,” Palenchar said. “We are proud of our team’s accomplishments and remain steadfast in our continuing commitment to protecting Tampa Bay and our community’s environmental health.”The sewage crisis began when the sewage plant near Albert Whitted Airport was closed down without reinforcing the Southwest Water Reclamation Facility to take on added capacity. The decision to close down the plant was made years before it was taken offline in 2015. Millions of gallons of sewage were dumped down into wells and into Tampa Bay over the next year. Former Mayor Rick Kriseman’s administration was initially reluctant to disclose how much was being dumped and how dirty the water really was. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission looked into criminal charges but filed none . A public works spokesperson was hired to deal with the fallout. The uproar loomed over the 2017 mayoral election.

St. Petersburg done with 2015-16 sewage spills lawsuit

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