- November 15, 2024
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Sewer plants: They're not the most exciting thing to spend $25 million on. But without a new one, the city of Palm Coast would eventually have to stop expanding.
The Palm Coast City Council unanimously approved a $25 million construction contract with PC Construction for the city's second sewer plant at a City Council meeting Feb. 16.
"Our wastewater treatment plant, we only have one, and it is very near capacity," City Manager Jim Landon said at the meeting.
The city's current wastewater plant on Utility Drive is permitted by the Department of Environmental Protection to handle 6.83 million gallons a day, Community Development Director Steve Flanagan told council members.
It's nearing that number, and has at times handled around 10 million gallons a day during heavy rains.
If the Utility Drive plant exceeds its permitted capacity before a new plant is built, the DEP could stop the city from allowing new subdivisions to be built.
The new sewer plant will have a capacity of about two million gallons a day in its initial phase, but would be constructed so that that capacity could eventually be expanded to six million gallons a day, Flanagan said.
The new plant will be built near city Water Plant No. 3, about three miles north of Palm Coast Parkway on U.S. 1, and connect to the re-use system at Wastewater Plant 1 on Utility Drive.
The city hopes most of the new sewer plant's effluent will ultimately go to re-use, Flanagan said. The remainder would be released into the swamp that runs between U.S.1 and the Belle Terre Elementary School and Indian Trails Middle School properties off Belle Terre Parkway.
The construction contract the council approved Feb. 16 has a plant construction cost of $25,108,000, plus a 5% contingency of $1,255,400, for a total appropriation of $26,363,400.
The city already took out a $31 million State Revolving Fund loan last year to pay for the new plant.
The remainder of the $31 million loan will pay for two supporting projects: an effluent disposal line, and the design of a master pump station on Matanzas Woods Parkway that will reroute flow coming from the the northwest quadrant of the city to the new sewer plant instead of the existing one.
