Studer Community Institute

ECUA ready with answers about beach treatment plant

February 18, 2015
/ William Rabb
/ community-dashboard

Facing questions about the treated wastewater from the Pensacola Beach sewage plant, the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority came to a Tuesday public meeting armed with fact sheets, spreadsheets and water samples from the plant. “You're welcome to taste it if you like,” said ECUA's director of water reclamation, Don Palmer, pointing to three small jars of clear water. He wasn't joking. Palmer said one sample was tap water, another was taken directly from Santa Rosa Sound, and another was treated effluent from ECUA's wastewater plant on the beach, water that had been cleaned to the level of drinking-water standards. All three samples looked identical and were crystal clear. Along with ECUA engineers and plant managers, officials from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were on hand at the gathering held at the DEP's district office in downtown Pensacola. The session was part of the public comment period, which closed at midnight Tuesday, for renewal of the plant's five-year permit. DEP has said it plans to renew the permit for another five years, and a formal announcement could come in the next few weeks. Only about five people showed up Tuesday with questions, but one, Bill Young Jr., a fisheries biologist, urged the DEP to cancel the permit. “If the permit...is renewed, it should be on condition that the discharge is removed from Santa Rosa Sound,” Young said in a written statement submitted to state regulators. Young and other critics, who held their own informational meeting last week, have said the discharge from the plant — which meets state environmental standards — contains human waste, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and excess nutrients. These contaminants are harming the ecosystem of the sound and could threaten the health of swimmers at Quietwater Beach in the sound, just a half-mile from the plant's outfall pipe, Young and other environmental scientists said. [caption id="attachment_17052" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Pensacola_Beach_wastewater_treatment_plant

Aerial photo of the Pensacola Beach wastewater treatment plant[/caption] Young, who grew up in Gulf Breeze, related his own experience as an avid swimmer and snorkler in the sound. Before the Gulf Breeze Wastewater Treatment Plant was built in the late 1960s, the seagrasses and marine life were plentiful, Young said. After the plant began discharging treated sewage on the north side of the sound, the diversity of marine life dropped significantly, he said. After Gulf Breeze stopped its discharge into the sound in the 1980s, and moved it to spray fields on land, a safer method of disposal, Young noticed much improvement in the sound ecosystem. A similar effect would no doubt be found if the Pensacola Beach plant's effluent were diverted to land areas in Gulf Breeze or the mainland, he said. The manager of the beach plant, William Ford, produced water-sampling data at the meeting to counter those concerns. The data showed that levels of various compounds, nutrients and fecal bacteria in the plant's outfall have been well below state standards for most of the past four years. [sidebar] Data about the Pensacola Beach Wastewater Treatment Plant showed:

The state standard for fecal coliform bacteria is an annual average of 14 microbes per 100 milliliters of water. The monthly average for the plant's discharge has not risen above two microbes per 100 milliliters.
Enterococcus bacterial counts have been less than 1/100 of the Florida limits, almost every month.
The state standard for nitrogen, a key nutrient that in excess can lead to harmful algae blooms, has exceeded the state standard in just four months out of the last 48.
For phosphorus, another nutrient, the effluent also exceeded the state standard in four months.

[/sidebar] Opponents said the state has relaxed its standards so much in recent years that those numbers are almost meaningless. “The bottom line is that the DEP's own report shows that the sound near the outfall, which used to have a lot of seagrass and a white, sandy bottom, is just a lot of black muck now,” said Donald Ray, a retired DEP biologist who now advocates for higher environmental standards. That report, a December 2013 biological assessment of the treatment facility's effect on the sound, found “no detectable nutrient enrichment from the effluent.” The report gave the habitat for bottom-dwelling organisms around the outfall a score of 29 out of a possible 100, indicating the ecosystem cannot absorb the discharge from the plant and remain healthy, Ray said. “Proof of damage cannot be any simpler than this,” Ray said. Other critics have noted that other sewage treatment plants, including those in Gulf Breeze and Navarre Beach, have stopped discharging treated waste into the sound, or will in coming years. The Navarre plant, operated by Santa Rosa County, has an agreement with Eglin Air Force Base to eventually pipe the effluent to an unused part of the base. There, it where it will be spread over low-lying areas on a continual basis and absorbed by the flora and soil. That plan may cost more than $20 million, said Santa Rosa County Engineer Roger Blaylock. County officials have put the pipeline high on its list of projects to be funded with penalty money to be paid by BP, the company held most responsible for the 2010 Gulf oil spill. A similar plan to pipe Pensacola Beach wastewater to the mainland could cost $35 million to $50 million, said Tim Haag, ECUA communications director. The pipeline would probably have to be buried under the sound floor to minimize risk of damage from storms, adding to the cost. “If we had that much to spend, we would do it, but we didn't see that as probable project that would get funded with RESTORE money,” he said. Instead, ECUA and state officials have said they are content with another idea for the beach wastewater. From another batch of oil-spill money, Florida Gov. Rick Scott late last year requested $2.9 million to expand the plant's use of reclaimed water. The plant already reuses as much as 80,000 gallons a day of the highly treated wastewater as irrigation on roadways and on private property where requested. The expansion would allow the plant to reuse as much as 475,000 gallons a day, keeping it out of the sound. The recycling of the treated water already keeps tons of effluent out of the waterway, Ford said. On most days, between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 p.m., when the irrigation takes place, the beach plant releases nothing into the sound, he said. ECUA officials also took the Tuesday meeting as a chance to correct some critics' recent assertions. The wastewater plant is permitted to handle as much as 2.4 million gallons a day, but it has never discharged more than 1.4 million gallons in a day, ECUA data show. That level came only twice in recent years, once during the beach's busy Blue Angels weekend in July, and during the April 2014 flood, which deluged the area with rain. The average discharge is less than 800,000 gallons a day, according to the utility. The next step in the permitting process for the plant is for DEP to issue a formal “notice of intent” on renewing the permit, said Shawn Hamilton, director of the agency's Northwest Florida District. He would not speculate when that may happen, but said his staff would review all public comments before making a recommendation. Once the notice is issued, the public has 14 days to request a public hearing on the issue.

Back to Blogs

ECUA ready with answers about beach treatment plant

Recent Posts