Story by: Tom McLaughlin, Pensacola News Journal. 2024.12.11
On the same night it was sworn in, a new look Milton City Council ordered the relocation of the city’s long-planned and permitted proposed wastewater treatment plant, directing staff to find a different parcel of land on which to create spray fields to handle treated effluent from its existing plant.
Board members voted first to reject the $16 million bid of Chavers Construction to dig a pond and put a wastewater storage tank, which is infrastructure needed to create spray fields to handle treated effluent, on property within the existing Santa Rosa County Wellfield Protection District.
In doing so it authorized city staff to negotiate with the engineering firm of Baskerville Donovan to relocate the lined pond and tank to another location.
Council members then voted to turn down bids from two companies interested in building a new wastewater treatment plant and directed engineers to find a site on flat land at a lower elevation than had been permitted.
The majority of the council now favors a location they and the voters who put them in office believe will be less likely to pollute the Blackwater River.
“This is a step forward. We’re working with the community, not just doing what we think is best,” said Larry McKee, one of four new council members sworn into office Tuesday.
Both of the actions taken came with associated risk, as more delays to a project debated for well over a decade put millions of dollars in grant funding in jeopardy.
The city has pulled together an estimated $65 million thus far for the wastewater treatment plant project and estimates it will need another $10 to $15 million more.
It had applied for another roughly $25 million in grants, but at the request of City Manager Ed Spears and Assistant City Manager and former grants manager Sandra Woodbery, the council voted Tuesday to pull those from consideration. The grant applications included one for $7.6 million from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the second, a resiliency grant, for nearly $17 million.
Spears said the best strategy would be to reapply for the grants after a new site for the sprayfield and wastewater treatment plant had been confirmed, plans were securely in place and the project re-permitted.
“It’s going to look bad either way, but it’s better if we withdraw them than if we lose them,” Spears told the council.
A nearly $5 million American Rescue Plan Act grant was in the most immediate jeopardy, being set to expire at the end of this month absent some evidence of progress on the spray field project being shown.
“It’s midnight and Cinderella is looking for a carriage ride home,” Spears told the council as it weighed the options before it.
Acknowledging that the ARPA grant deadline would be missed, council members directed city staff to find possible new projects it could legally pursue with the grant dollars.
The city has already lost $9 million in federal grant funding due to its failure to present a viable environmental plan as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
A low bid of $64.4 million to construct a new waste water treatment plant was also rejected and council members voted to have Baskerville Donovan look to relocate the plant site to 80 acres below the 24 acres at which it had long ago been determined to build the facility.
Both highly controversial decisions were made by a 7-0 vote. Council Member Casey Powell, who had been re-elected to the council this year without opposition, was present to be sworn in to another term in office, but left after taking his oath, citing illness.
Four new council members, Ashley Fretwell, Robert Leek, Tom Powers and McKee, had relied heavily on support from political groups like Milton’s Concerned Citizens and Save Blackwater River to get elected. Both of those groups, comprised of many of the same people, have been lobbying against the site chosen for the proposed wastewater treatment plant.
Sitting board members Mike Cusack and Marilynn Farrow, along with Mayor Heather Lindsay, also align with the organizations and individuals who have opposed the treatment plant site, and more recently the decision to deposit treated wastewater in an area within the Santa Rosa County Wellfield Protection District.
The worries concerning the spray field construction in the Wellfield Protection District are that the treated effluent being pulled from the city’s aging wastewater treatment plant, which is operating at capacity, could contain PFAS, or forever chemicals, known to be dangerous to human health.
Spears had recently acknowledged that the city handles wastewater known to contain PFAS from two established sources, including the U.S. Naval Air Station Whiting Field.
The majority of Santa Rosa County residents receive their drinking water from the sand and gravel aquifer in the area that lies beneath the Wellfield Protection District. South Santa Rosa water systems have also objected to installing spray fields within the Wellfield Protection District, citing the dangers of PFAS entering the drinking water wells utilized by their customers.
McKee said in voting to oppose the location of the spray field that human life should be given greater consideration than the loss of a $4.2 million grant.
“What’s one life worth?” he asked rhetorically. “If we do not plan this correctly it’s going to cost us more than $4.2 million.”
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