craig pittman

Deal to settle Tampa Bay Water reservoir lawsuit comes up one vote short

By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Tuesday, September 20, 2011

A sharply divided Tampa Bay Water board voted Monday to settle its lawsuit against the company that designed its flawed reservoir, with HDR Engineering handing over $30 million — far less than the cost of a repair, which means the ratepayers would likely pick up the rest of the tab.

The regional utility’s management announced the settlement in a news release, and an HDR executive hailed it as the best possible solution.

But there was a problem. The settlement passed by a vote of 4-3 — and it turns out that’s not enough.

Late Monday, two Pinellas County commissioners who were on the losing side of the vote pointed out what was wrong: The rules governing Tampa Bay Water require at least five of the board’s nine members to ratify any legal settlement.

Votes to approve the settlement fell one short, so “it doesn’t count,” said Pinellas Commissioner Susan Latvala.

Latvala and Commissioner Neil Brickfield had voted against the settlement and then heard about the problem from county attorneys who were familiar with how Tampa Bay Water was set up, she said.

As a result, the board will have to vote on the proposed settlement again at its Oct. 17 meeting, according to spokeswoman Michelle Biddle Rapp.

But this time it will be different. Monday’s decision to settle the case, as with all previous discussions of the lawsuit, took place behind closed doors, thanks to an exemption in Florida’s open government law. No one in the public knew the terms of the settlement discussions in advance. Now they do.

“Stay tuned for another installment,” joked Latvala, who has seen the utility stumble repeatedly over glitches with its desalination plant and its relations with other government agencies.

For nearly two years, Tampa Bay Water officials have said they hoped the companies that designed and built the reservoir would bear most, if not all, of the cost of fixing its cracks.

Two of the contractors that worked on the reservoir had previously settled the utility’s claims for $6.75 million. Added to the proposed settlement with HDR, that makes $36.75 million in damages — which falls far short of the repair cost, estimated at $121 million.

The decision on how to pay for the rest — and whether it will mean a rate hike — will come next year, said Tampa Bay Water general manager Gerald Seeber. The staff is predicting rates might go up 10 to 15 cents per thousand gallons of water used. The average Tampa Bay area household uses about 8,000 gallons, so that would be 80 cents to $1.20 per month on the average bill.

Latvala, Brickfield and Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman voted to oppose the settlement, while St. Petersburg City Council member Karl Nurse, Pasco County Commissioners Anne Hildebrand and Ted Schrader and New Port Richey Mayor Bob Consalvo voted to go ahead with it.

Two members weren’t there: Tampa City Council member Charlie Miranda was recovering from surgery and Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark Sharpe was attending a Hillsborough Area Regional Transit committee meeting. Sharpe could not be reached for comment, but Miranda said he’d be at the October meeting “even if I have to find someone to drive me.”

Nurse said he voted for the settlement because he was worried that even if Tampa Bay Water were to win, HDR would appeal and drag the case out for years. Hildebrand said any rate increase would be “just pennies.”

But Brickfield predicted water customers “are going to feel a lot like me — not happy.”

The utility opened the 15.5 billion-gallon C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir in June 2005 as a place to store water skimmed from the Alafia River, Hillsborough River and Tampa Bypass Canal. The embankment’s top layer is a mixture of soil and cement to prevent erosion. That’s what cracked in December 2006. Some cracks were up to 400 feet long and up to 15½ inches deep. Workers patched the cracks, but the fix didn’t last.

Last month Tampa Bay Water approved a contract with Kiewit Infrastructure South to repair the reservoir and also boost its capacity by 3 billion gallons for $156 million. The company has promised to finish in two years — during which the reservoir will be drained, forcing the utility to use its desalination plant more.

Craig Pittman can be reached at craig@sptimes.com.

By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
Posted: Aug 15, 2011 10:27 AM

CLEARWATER — Despite their misgivings about the impact on their rates, Tampa Bay Water’s board voted unanimously Monday to sign a $156 million contract to fix its cracked reservoir and expand it from 15.5 billion gallons to 18.5 billion gallons.

The construction work by a Nebraska-based firm, Kiewit Infrastructure Group, is now scheduled to begin late next summer, with completion in 2014. The work will require draining the reservoir and instead relying on the utility’s other water sources, such as the frequently troubled desalination plant, which produces the most expensive water in the regional system.

One board member, Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, said she supported fixing the reservoir but worried about the impact on the rates. Tampa Bay Water provides wholesale water to utilities in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties, which pass along any rate increase to their customers.

“We’ve had a series of bad results from big projects,” Murman said. “I want to cross all the T’s and dot all the i’s so we have a smooth landing on this. But I think we’re taking the cart before the horse.”

Murman said she worried about proceeding with the repairs of the reservoir before a trial next month of the utility’s lawsuit against HDR Engineering over the cause of the cracks. Tampa Bay Water contends HDR’s design of the reservoir was flawed, while HDR points the finger at the company that handled construction.

The utility’s finance director, Koni Cassini, told Murman that the worst-case scenario would require a 10 to 15 cents per 1,000 gallon rate hike — but if that happened, she said, she would spread the increase over several years to lessen the sting.

The board voted in June to raise its rates 3 cents a month per 1,000 gallons of water used, or just under a quarter for the typical user of 8,000 gallons a month. The increase is to cover the cost of running the desalination plant harder than usual during the two years when the reservoir is being repaired. That will require spending more on power and chemicals for the desal plant.

In addition to the $156 million for the repair and expansion, Tampa Bay Water is putting aside about $6 million to cover any unforeseen expenses during work, which is expected to be completed in 2014.

In addition to hoping to recoup some of the costs of the work from its lawsuit against HDR, Tampa Bay Water’s board is asking the Southwest Florida Water Management District to cover half the cost. But that state agency is facing a 36 percent budget cut mandated by Gov. Rick Scott and the state Legislature.

The utility opened the $144 million C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir in June 2005 to store water skimmed from the Alafia River, Hillsborough River and Tampa Bypass Canal. The reservoir, named for the longtime congressman from Pinellas County, covers about 1,100 acres in Hillsborough County.

The reservoir’s walls consist of an earthen embankment as wide as a football field at its base, averaging about 50 feet high. An impermeable membrane buried in the embankment prevents leaks.

The embankment’s top layer, a mixture of soil and cement to prevent erosion, began cracking in December 2006. Some cracks were up to 400 feet long and up to 15½ inches deep. Workers patched the cracks, but the patches didn’t last.

An investigation found water is getting trapped between the soil-cement lining and the membrane. As long as the reservoir is full, the trapped water remains stable. When the utility draws down the reservoir, though, pressure increases on trapped water in some areas, producing cracks and soil erosion.

The cracks have not been deemed a safety hazard to the structure, but utility officials say if they don’t fix their underlying cause then conditions could get worse. But HDR officials contend the problem is not that serious, and could be solved with a simple monitoring and maintenance program that would cost less than $1 million a year.

Kiewit’s proposal called for digging out and replacing the soil cement and the membrane beneath it. The reason, Kiewit’s design manager, Trent Dreese, said earlier this year is that they believe the cracks showed a weakening of the reservoir wall and “additional failures are likely during drawdown” of the water for the repair.

As for the expansion, Kennedy said the only change that would be visible was that the walls would be about 10 feet higher.

Sandy Murman

Tampa Bay Water agrees to $156 million contract to fix reservoir