Water, toil and troubles

Port St. Joe city commissioner Rex Buzzett was on target during a recent workshop on the city’s water when he said the time may soon arrive when the city “takes the gloves off” in trying to get answers to questions about discolored water.

The workshop served to highlight just how foreseeable problems with water discoloration were when the city moved off the underground Floridan Aquifer and tapped a surface water source for potable water some two years ago.

The discussion during the workshop also highlighted how the process to the water plant failed to address foreseeable issues and how accountability has been elusive – save the accountability flying out of the wallets of water consumers and city taxpayers.

The central focus of the workshop was the corrosive inhibitor which has been used to prevent the build-up of rust in pipes. The corrosive inhibitor, using a different chemical protocol than previously used by the city, was needed with the more aggressive surface water.

However, for that inhibitor to work, as explained by a representative of CDM, the company that designed the filtration and treatment process, it must reach the pipe.

That is the only way the inhibitor can fully put down the protective coating needed on pipes – it must reach the surface.

And if it is prevented from reaching the pipe surface because of prior iron and rust build-up – then the inhibitor will trigger a reaction that will cause scaling from that rust build-up into the water inside the pipes.

And the result is red or discolored water, a visitor of the 18 months that residents would just as soon bid adieu.

As Buzzett noted during the workshop, city water consumers are buying bottled water rather than drink from the tap or use what is coming from the tap to cook.

And consumers are paying a “premium” price for an “inferior” product.

That, Buzzett said, is simply not right.

As the CDM representative noted, however, this was easily predicted.

He brought with him a jar of water from his home in Bay County. In that county, he said, staff works hard to produce quality water from a surface source. However, he lived in an area with aging pipes and thus had experience with red water.

So, when considering how this new water, treated in a new fashion, interacted with pipes that are, at least in much of the city proper, 50-80 years old, there was no foreseeable risk of red water?

That has been the reply in town hall and city commission meetings about the water, that the problems of discoloration, or at least the extent, took everybody by surprise.

Commissioners danced around the question two weeks ago – how could this be a shocker to those providing us advice and input?

As Buzzett detailed, during the process that brought the city to this $21 million plant and the headaches that have ensued there was no shortage of experts providing direction to the city.

The plant was designed by Siemens, built by Marshall Brothers Construction, the treatment process designed by CDM. All that work overseen by Preble Rish Engineers, the city’s engineers of record.

The Northwest Florida Water Management District urged the city off the Floridan Aquifer and put up some $6 million all told in funds to purchase the freshwater canal fed by the Chipola River from which the city wets its thirst and assist in construction of the plant and implementation of a new treatment process.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection undertook constant dialogue with the city throughout the build-out of the plant and the steps to bring the plant online.

Among this roster of advisers and experts, however, it proved a surprise for a city with miles – some 20 combined – of aging iron and, in some cases, clay pipes to experience red or discolored water when more corrosive surface water replaced more benign well water.

The city has done itself no favors, either, though it seems the city was enabled by the very agencies and experts that have assisted in creating the problem.

The city is undertaking, again, an aggressive flushing program but part of the issue with rust build-up in pipes is a direct result of the city failing to implement required flushing and monitoring programs over the course of decades.

The lack of a flushing program combined with aging pipes, however, is additional evidence the red water problem was foreseeable, at least for the experts.

The ones paying the bill for this breakdown in foresight, however, are taxpayers and consumers.

They have seen the city sink $15 million in debt due to infrastructure improvements linked to the construction of the new water plant, built to existing specs with the dream of being a regional water supplier, a dream that evaporated with sinking property values.

They have seen their utility bills double and in some cases triple, with another raise in water and sewer – which is tied to water use – rates coming in the fall, the increases required to meet that crushing debt.

Changing treatment protocols, ramping up the flushing and monitoring program – which given staffing levels will be a cost burden for taxpayers – with the hope that in a few months a change will come is wildly frustrating for consumers who want answers now to why clothes are changing colors, water is unpalatable and bath tubs have permanent rings.

Buzzett was correct; it is time to press for answers to questions from the city’s partners regarding the move to a new water treatment plant. Whatever mechanism is available to the city, commissioners should take off the gloves and hold feet to fire.

Thus far only consumers have been held accountable – in rising utility bills – for the failure of foresight from the experts the city was relying upon to predict problems that were hiding in plain sight.