News-Press.com
Special
report: Sewage failures high in Lee
Private wastewater treatment
plants often fail to make repairs
By Pedro Morales
pmorales@news-press.com
Raw sewage has spilled, leaked and emitted foul odors from at
least a quarter of
The News-Press reviewed thousands of records of wastewater plants
that landed on the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's violations
list. The investigation found repeat offenders and delinquent plants have
polluted
The DEP has issued warnings and fines from
"A lot of them are profit-making entities," said Linda
Young, director of the Clean Water Network of Florida, a Tallahassee-based
coalition. "They are not going to voluntarily spend money. As long as no
one is harassing them and DEP is not speaking up, (private owners are)
thinking, why should I?"
Environmentalists say the polluting plants are poisoning
tributaries that drain into the
Several water bodies in the Caloosahatchee River Basin, which
covers two-thirds of Lee and parts of Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties;
the Everglades West Coast Basin, which covers southern Lee and Collier; and
Charlotte Harbor have been classified as “impaired” by the DEP since 1998, when
the first assessments were done. The waters fail to comply with the Clean Water
Act — a 1972 federal act created to regulate discharges into the country’s
waters and set standards for water quality.
Dirty water also can have an economic impact. For example, in late September
when the waters of Sanibel were polluted, businesses on the island lost money
because tourists were forced to look for other beaches.
Residents have filed dozens of complaints against plants to the DEP — reporting
headaches and nausea in one complaint and damaged property after a sewage spill
in another, according to DEP records.
Plant owners offered little or no response to repeated calls by The News-Press.
Those who did speak do not deny the problems — they are required to
self-report.
Wastewater management is a dirty business. Sometimes mistakes happen, but
spills and leaks are quickly fixed, according to Patrick Flynn of Eagle Ridge
Utilities.
The plants’ owners insist they are following the regulations set forth by DEP.
But sometimes residents tend to exaggerate a problem, said Flynn.
Complaints are “subjective in nature,” he said.
Complaints are not filed electronically, so there is no accurate count of how
many residents say they are feeling the effects.
Problem plants
Twenty-two of
The county has a nearly 28 percent violation average for that time period. That
does not include plants that landed on the list and are no longer in operation.
About 16 percent of Lee’s plants, 13 total, are on the
violation list.
Lee is ranked fourth of 67 counties in the state when it comes to wastewater
plant violations.
The majority of the county’s plants are privately
owned and run, and therein lies a problem.
“As an observation, most smaller plants began as a necessity of the developer
to provide wastewater treatment to their subdivision,” said Fred Partin, executive director of Bonita Springs Utilities, a
nonprofit organization that oversees Bonita’s public wastewater plants.
A plant run by a county or city has one mission — to provide service to its
taxpayers, Partin said.
One run by the private sector may be more influenced by profit.
“Some of them (the developers and homeowner associations) fail to make
investments in the facility,” Partin said. “The
technology is old, they tend to have more problems.”
Still other private plant operators intend to sell the plant, removing all
incentive to make renovations.
“If we’re the owners of an RV park and we want to sell the park in a couple of
years to a developer, why would we put money into the existing plant?” said
Dave Gabriel, manager at
Gabriel is bucking the trend and investing $225,000 in a new plant to
accommodate the park’s growth.
Most environmentally hazardous violations fall into three categories: spills or
leaks, odors and water quality issues.
Examples of these include:
• Pink Citrus Mobile Home Park on Bokeelia, which
last summer treated water without chlorine, an essential chemical that resulted
in discharged water with a high fecal count. The park is still on the
violations list for malfunctioning equipment that caused contaminated
discharge, but operators are working to solve the problem.
• The plant at Eagle Ridge Golf & Tennis Club in south
• The plant at Jamaica Bay West in south
Old and falling apart
When the Florida Governmental Utility Authority assumed control of
the Lehigh wastewater plant on
In 2006, that plant leaked at least 20,000 gallons, and had more than 12
spills, mostly of raw sewage, according to records.
“Previous owners looked at it as a money-making proposition and when it got too
expensive they would just sell it,” said Barbara Kerby,
the community services representative for the not-for-profit.
The spills that have occurred over the past years are a result of leaking pipes
and malfunctioning pumping stations, which keep the flow of water moving, Kerby said.
FGUA is on a $91.9-million, five-year campaign to upgrade its facilities,
including adding a 3,000-foot deep injection well for extra treated water and
replacing sewer pipes.
Renovations are needed across the
“You have infrastructure that is old and aging, you have staff limitations on
treatment plants, you can’t get enough funding for maintenance,” Tchobanoglous said. “If you do deferred
maintenance for a long time it will catch up to you.”
Take for example the wastewater plant that serves Forest Country Club in south
Later that year, very little had changed and it received a
significant-out-of-compliance on its annual report. The country club remains on
the list for compliance issues.
Lack of vision
Since 2000, 174,853 people have moved into
Planning ahead is an expensive venture for wastewater plants, Partin said. A plant will forecast its expansion based on
the number of projected homes and population, an estimate that is not always on
target.
“It’s been a real challenge,” Partin said, speaking
about Bonita Springs Utilities, which in 1998 was serving 16,390 households but
now serves more than double that.
“Often times you have to speculate to some degree what’s on the horizon,” Partin said. “You don’t want to make an investment in
infrastructure to have it sit there.”
DEP records show some plants are receiving too much sewage, resulting in a
number of spills and leaks that were forewarned by inspectors in warning
letters.
In Estero’s Covered Wagon Trailer Park, DEP
inspectors sent a warning letter to wastewater operators in October 2000 that
from January to July of 2000, “the monthly daily average flow (was) 80 to 100
percent capacity.”
Five years later, the plant was still at near capacity. In April 2005 the plant
received another letter that its collection ponds were overflowing.
In the summer of 2006, DEP received a complaint from a plant operator that the
facility was in “terrible shape” and was treating wastewater over its permitted
capacity. The plant has since resolved its capacity issues and is no longer on
the violation list. But it remains an example of how some plants are taking in
more than they can handle.
“They’re waiting (to expand) until they’re at 100 percent capacity,” said Mary Rawl, a
Spoiled paradise
Plant owners and DEP officials continue to grapple with problems,
while residents stand by waiting for permanent solutions.
One of those homeowners, Atiq Ahson,
says despite the home’s prime location in a south
Ahson’s son couldn’t even go outside because the odor
bothered his allergies.
“I have complained about this so many times,” said Ahson,
who for 22 years has lived near the wastewater plant. He blames the plant for
the smell for keeping guests away and hampering the sale of their home.
Since 1999 the residents at Eagle Ridge have filed grievances about the stink —
going so far as to complain about headaches and nausea in one complaint dated
The plant continues to emanate an odor.
“A complaint doesn’t necessarily indicate the need to install odor control,”
said Flynn, who runs Eagle Ridge, where odor complaints date back to 1999.
“The records are clear that we took the steps to control odor when it was
necessary to do so,” said Flynn, who added he has not received any complaints
recently.
Residents say otherwise.
Scott Bradley has gotten so used to the smell coming from the water treatment
facility near his house he doesn’t notice it anymore. He and his family have
found a solution for dealing with the smell.
“We just don’t go (outside),” he said.
Beachgoers are becoming all too familiar with the red and yellow no-swimming
advisories on Lee’s beaches that follow a high fecal bacteria reading, as
happened on March 11 at Bowditch Point.
There were three pollution warnings in 2007, two of them on Sanibel, when the
Lee County Health Department found high levels of Enterococcus
bacteria. The same fecal bacteria closed
The third advisory in 2007 was also on Sanibel, when
Environmentalists see a connection between these contaminated waters and the
plants whose record of non-compliance often includes spills and leaks into the
rivers and Gulf.
“We’re trying to promote the Great Calusa Blueway and water-based tourism in
Ralph Woodring knows his water is polluted. Another
round of algae bloom began appearing in early February on Sanibel, making the
water mucky. Normally he blames
“It takes a certain kind of nutrient to make this stuff grow,” said Woodring, who owns the Bait Box on Sanibel. “Obviously the
lake is not releasing nutrients but it takes nutrients from somewhere to make
this stuff grow.”
He sent a sample of the algae to Bruce Neill of the
The results are expected in seven weeks, but Neill said he believes the source
may point to wastewater plants on Sanibel that reuse their effluent to spray
golf courses.
The golf courses should absorb the nutrients, but if the effluent pollutants
are above pollution standards the ground won’t remove the excess nutrients,
which then drain into
“Any package plant not properly maintained... they do produce an effluent that
overruns into the estuary and that’s as high a powered nutrient as you can
make,” Woodring said.
The Clean Water Network of Florida is expected in May to release an assessment
of the water that plants are releasing into the
“There are widespread violations of permits and almost no enforcement by DEP or
requirements of upgrades to be made,” said Linda Young, director of Clean
Water.
A dirty business
Wastewater plant operators, for their part, say they are doing
everything in their power to meet DEP regulations and plan for the future. They
admit there are the occasional spills, leaks or smells, but these are
unintended consequences of a messy business.
“There is no such thing as a perfect wastewater plant,” said James Nault, who oversaw the plant at the Pink Citrus trailer
park between 1998 and 2005, when a number of violations were found.
“Given that a wastewater treatment plant operates seven days a week, it’s real
easy to find a violation,” said Nault, who was with
the Palm Harbor Development Group.
“The tendency for plant operators is to report everything no matter how small.
And of course it goes on the reports.”
And not every violation necessarily indicates a pollution problem, DEP and
plant operators say. Discrepancies in a log book, a broken fence or a missing
sign are all violations.
“I’ve often thought that regulating a wastewater treatment plant is like
regulating coal mines,” Nault said. “When you hear of
an accident, it’s not really an indication that the mine was unsafe, it’s just
an indication that the mine safety board was doing their job.”
Nault said he could not recall any major violations
during his tenure as plant operator at the
Plants must grow
After the beaches on Sanibel were closed, in late September
environmentalists, residents and city leaders pointed to the Sanibel Bayous
Sewage Treatment Facility, a wastewater plant that has a history of violations
that include leaking polluted water.
It was the last privately run plant on Sanibel. Every other home was on the
city-owned municipal system. After the public outcry, the owners of the plant
sold the facility to the city on Jan. 15. The city plans to dismantle it and
connect residents to city sewers.
Many plant operators agree: The larger the plant, the more
strict the regulations, the more efficiently it runs.
Small-to-medium sized plants found with violations should find a way to hook up
to the city or county-run wastewater plants, which have 24-hour staffing and
better technology, Nault said.
“It’s far better if everyone is on a municipal sewer,” said Nault.
“It can cover its costs much better.”
A municipal system can handle an emergency better as well, said Jon Meyer,
utilities senior manager with Lee County Utilities. When a spill or leak
occurs, a plan is in place and the staff reacts immediately.
“Everyone knows their role,” Meyer said.
But joining the municipal sewer may not make financial sense.
“One of the biggest concerns is they (DEP) would want you to hook up to the city
at a cost-prohibitive price,” Gabriel said.
For those remote neighborhoods with plants that can’t connect to a city- or
county-owned sewer, or for the municipal plants found with violations, the only
solution is to upgrade the structure, said Tchobanoglous,
the UC Davis expert.
“We need truly an infusion of resources and money into these facilities,” Tchobanoglous said.
But that’s hard to come by in these days of budget crunching.
“It mirrors our society on a whole, that is that someone else is going to pay
for it,”
Tchobanoglous said. “The public doesn’t want to spend
anything.”
Young, of the Clean Water Network, said it’s time people adopt a new mind-set.
“We’re always saying growth is good and we worry where we’ll get water to
drink, but there’s not a lot of worry about what we’ll do with our sewage,”
Young said.
“People have no idea. They pay the bill every month and they assume the sewage
is taken care of. And that is a false assumption.”