A sign and barricade warn of sewage being released into a local water, Clam Bayou, after weeks of heavy rain in the summer of 2015. Credit: Cathy Salustri

A sign and barricade warn of sewage being released into a local water, Clam Bayou, after weeks of heavy rain in the summer of 2015. Credit: Cathy Salustri
As debate over who's at fault on the matter of St. Petersburg's notorious sewage dumps over the past couple of rainy seasons continues, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has handed down something of an ultimatum for the city: take on a long list of possibly pricey fixes to prevent such dramatic events in the future — or pay the state some $820,000.

Since 2015, the city has been the target of a slurry of bad publicity over the decision to dump tens of millions of gallons of "partially treated" sewage into Tampa Bay as a result of three dramatic rain events. Mind you, that sewage doesn't just come from St. Pete. The city handles wastewater from smaller coastal communities like Gulfport and Treasure Island.

Each time sewage was dumped, there seemed to be a perfect storm of issues compounding the problem — the closure of the Albert Whitted wastewater facility despite a report floating around allegedly suggesting waiting until its capacity was compensated for at another plant; aging underground pipes into which millions of gallons of stormwater seep; and climate change impact including sea-level rise and increasingly erratic rain patterns. What seemed like a culture of secrecy within the city's water department or among the city as a whole seemed to help political rivals of Mayor Rick Kriseman, a Democrat, build a case against him.

Florida Governor Rick Scott and some Republican members of the local state legislative delegation happen to be among his critics, though it's hard to say whether their many differences factored into DEP's decision or if, had those decisions been made on the watch of a Republican mayor, the state would have handed down similar consequences.

In order for St. Pete to avoid paying the fine, the city has to do several things by 2018:

-Build two wastewater injection wells — one each at its Northwest and Southwest wastewater treatment facilities.

-Fix cracks in pipes as well as manhole covers.

-As for the Albert Whitted plant, it needs to come up with a master plan for the site.

Luckily for the city, Kriseman has already opted to commit tens of millions of dollars in an effort to prevent massive sewage dumps in the future.

As an op-ed that ran Friday in the LA Times notes, the city plans on using "$60 million for short-term upgrades and $300 million to fix the water management system as a whole."

That piece focused on the disconnect between policies handed down at the Republican-dominated state level, which are handed down by a governor who won't allow his employees to utter the words "climate change," and coastal cities like St. Petersburg, which are dealing with the brunt of the problem — and asked whether the same dynamic would play out at the national level under soon-to-be-president Donald Trump.

This article appears in Dec 1-8, 2016.