ST. PETERSBURG, FL, Sep. 19, 2000 (St. Petersburg Times) — Pasco County and Resources Conservation Co., the firm that built the county's leachate treatment facility, have wrapped up a year of negotiations and agreed to settle an outstanding bill.
From the beginning, both sides agreed that the county owed Resources Conservation $575,712.33 for the final payment on the plant, which the county refused to pay. That's because it said Resources Conservation owed the county $460,000, or what it cost the county to haul contaminated water away when the treatment facility didn't work, plus environmental penalties.
Rather than risk a court judgment ordering the county to pay $1-million, the balance of the bill plus the interest and attorney's fees specified in the contract, the county's legal staff agreed to settle for $650,000, said County Attorney Robert Sumner. Commissioners are set to vote on the settlement today.
"I felt that this was as good as we were going to get," Sumner said.
The county's contract with Resources Conservation required a 12 percent interest charged on late payments, and prohibited the county from seeking certain kids of damages. Those conditions helped the county get a better upfront price on the leachate treatment facility, Sumner said.
Resources Conservation's attorney could not be reached Monday.
The problem with the facility dates back to 1991, when the county opened its incinerator in Shady Hills. The incinerator burns garbage, producing ash contaminated with salts and dangerous metals. The ash is placed in dumps and rain falling on the dumps creates contaminated water called leachate.
Initially, the county piped leachate to a nearby wastewater treatment plant. There, it was mixed with regular sewage and treated, then sent to ponds, where it seeped into the earth. It began to contaminate nearby groundwater.
In 1996, the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered the county to quit sending the leachate to the wastewater treatment plant. (It also ordered the county to come up with a plan to suck from the aquifer the huge salty blob of water, which was migrating slowly to the northwest and caused the county to replace two fouled private wells.)
County officials proposed to build a special leachate management plant that would evaporate the water, leaving behind a solid mass of salts and metals, which could be easily disposed.
That's when Resources Conservation came into the picture.
The leachate treatment plantcame on line in May 1997 and was hailed in a trade publication as a cutting edge solution to a tricky problem.
But the $4-million plant, which was supposed to process 35,000 gallons of leachate a day, worked properly for only one month. It seldom worked until sometime after May 1998.
The plant works fine now. But the county had to pay to haul the leachate away during the periods when the treatment plant wasn't working.
DEP officials overseeing the cleanup plan say the salty blob of water has migrated a little, although DEP doesn't consider that movement a threat to the aquifer. State officials have said they anticipate approving the cleanup plan in the next couple of months.
- Alisa Ulferts covers Pasco County government. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is mailto:[email protected]
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