- November 18, 2024
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To comply with a decree from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Palm Coast must upgrade its Wastewater Treatment Facility 1 by 2028.
The plant — which serves the bulk of Palm Coast’s wastewater treatment needs — is permitted by the FDEP to treat 6.83 million gallons per day but has averaging at or higher than that allotted amount of water flowing through the plant in at least four of the last 12 months, Utility Director Amanda Rees said. Because of the that, the FDEP issued a consent decree — a legal document formalizing the city’s plan to increase its wastewater treatment capacity — to the city to address the overflow.
During September, the city was averaging 8.7 million gallons per day at Plant 1. During Hurricane Milton on Oct. 10, the plant processed 17 million gallons per day in just the one day. Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo told the Palm Coast City Council that so far, October is averaging at 10.8 million gallons per day.
During the summer’s dry months, from April to August, he said, the plant averaged between 5.5-6 million gallons per day.
The city has already begun the process to both reduce the current flow to Plant 1 and to expand the plant’s capacity. At the Oct. 15 City Council meeting, the council unanimously approved a $5 million design contract to expand Plant 1 by 4 million gallons per day, bringing its treatment capacity up to 10.83 million gallons per day by 2028.
Some of the pressure will also be taken off Plant 1 hundreds of thousands of gallons per day are diverted to Wastewater Treatment Facility Plant 2 in early 2025. Plant 2 has been undergoing its own phased expansion from a 2 million gallons per day plant to a 4 million gallons per day, which will be complete in early 2025.
Pontieri pointed out that the expansion, once completed, won’t reach the levels of the peak weather event the city saw with Milton, but city utility engineer Alexander Blake said it is not meant to.
“You're not going to build a wastewater treatment facility to take on peak wet weather conditions,” he said.
Blake said the plants have a hydraulic capacity — which is the amount of flow it can handle — and a treatment capacity, which is how much water can flow and be treated in a day. Plant 1’s hydraulic capacity is at 20 million gallons per day, he said — it’s the treatment capacity that is limited to 6.83 million gallons per day.
But running over the treatment capacity of a plant is not a long-term solution.
“You're not going to take that on day after day, because you won't be able to make parameters for treatment,” Blake said.
The $5 million contract is just to finish the design of the project, which is already at 30% completion. Assuming the city can find the funding, the plan, Blake said, is to begin pre-construction work in late 2025 and begin the expansion in October 2026, with an eye to finish by the end of 2028.
Blake said also said new industry standards were passed in 2021 that requires the city to update Plant 1’s filtration process to the new Advanced Waste Treatment standard by 2032. That conversion process would be part of the expansion project and be completed sometime around late 2029 to early 2030.
Stormwater and Engineering Director Carl Cote said the entire expansion project is likely to cost $240 million. And while the expansion portion of the project can be paid for, at least in part, by developer impact fees, to convert the plant to the AWT standards, the city will need to use the utility rates.
To fund these needs — both the expansion and general maintenance operational costs — the city needs to increase its utility rates. The Palm Coast Council rejected a residential rate increase to utilities last February, when some council members said that they felt the increase was unnecessary at the time.
“Deferred maintenance can no longer be an option,” Council member Charles Gambaro said.
