After Tropical Storm Colin brought heavy rains to the Tampa Bay area, the city of St. Pete had a tough but familiar choice so make: let a nasty cocktail of stormwater and sewage tax the city's waste water infrastructure to the point where it bubbles up out of manholes, or pump some of it out to sea.
On Tuesday, city workers did the latter, jettisoning at least two million gallons of "partially treated" sewage, groundwater, and stormwater out into the bay via a quarter-mile-long pipe that juts eastward from Albert Whitted Airport, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
The dump consists of water from St. Pete as well as Treasure Island, Gulfport and St, Pete Beach, which earlier Tuesday urged residents not to take showers or do anything else involving wastewater because their system had been so heavily taxed.
From a media release sent out Tuesday:
Due to Tropical Storm Colin and the inundation of our system from processing wastewater for St. Pete Beach, Gulfport, and Treasure Island, the city has been authorized to discharge partially treated wastewater at the Albert Whitted Plant under General Condition 22 of the city's Wastewater Treatment permit. This permit allows bypassing around wastewater plants when unusual emergency circumstances are experienced. This bypass will allow partially treated wastewater to be discharged directly into Tampa Bay at a level of treatment similar to what was normal in the 1970s (called Primary Treatment).
The city said it notified the Florida Department of Environmental Protection about the issue, and cautioned against coming into contact with water in that area.
The dump comes less than a year after three weeks' worth of heavy rains led to a dump of over 16 million gallons into Clam Bayou, an already-strained estuary that sits between St. Pete and Gulfport. It was a move that drew sharp criticism of Mayor Kriseman's administration and may have led to the dismissal of then-public works administrator Mike Connors.
As mentioned in the city's statement, dumping sewage into Tampa Bay is legal under certain conditions. But obviously, it is not a good week to be a dolphin in Tampa Bay.
But the fact that city officials deem it necessary after heavy rainfall events points to a bigger issue: the city's need to upgrade its decades-old wastewater infrastructure.
There has been talk of starting to do that (a complete overhaul, officials have said, would be well beyond the city's means) but officials have yet to agree on how to pay for it.
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2016.