Guest Op/Ed: Wasted Money - Wasted Water

Federal, state and local governments are struggling more than ever to balance their budgets. In doing so, they're often trimming their very future with cut-backs and lay-offs that shrink their schools, social services and pension funds in order to make due with today's declining revenues. But looking back rather than forward may prove more prudent if curtailing cost is their objective. Bottom line, it's our representatives that approve the projects and write the checks  – and that's what decides our economic fate in both good times and bad. Nowhere is that reality more evident than at state and local levels.

Today, oil is the headliner in the news and in our wallets, but it's said, most wars in the future will be fought over water and the increasing scarcity of freshwater sources. The people of west central Florida have endured many costs associated with the power-grabs for water and the veiled deals that for decades went unreported. Case in point; The Apollo Beach Desalinization Plant.

Most of us are familiar with the plant’s excessive cost overruns, the public/private arrangements that have bankrupted companies, it's inability to produce more than a fraction of its designed volume, and the 10-year struggle to complete it. But what's most alarming is the actual purpose for which it was built.

Tampa Bay Water (TBW) and South West Florida Water management (SWIFTMUD) pushed the need to construct the Apollo Plant with one motive, "to relieve the central Florida aquifer from it's overburdened pumping." Then, the city of Tampa's total water use was less than 200 million gallons a day (MGD) and a good portion of that came from the aquifer. During that same period, phosphate mining was pumping nearly 300 MGD, of which nearly all came from that same aquifer. Much attention has been brought to farmers and local municipalities to curtail the use of water since then, but little to no pressure has been put on companies like Mosaic Mining, the gorilla size phosphate company in the state, to modify their use.

Ten years later, the City of Tampa uses a little over 200 MGD (of which 80 MGD comes from the aquifer), while phosphate uses nearly 150 MGD. Mosaic's share is 100 MGD of that and  the phosphate giant has recently negotiated with SWIFTMUD to reduce their permit to 77 MGD, owed in large part to fewer active mines.

The original proposal to build the desalination plant started at $110 million. Complications shot it up to $158 million. Then trouble shooting repairs pushed it up to $180 million. In it’s three separate contracts, where the private parties went belly up, reimbursements equated to millions more, and the cancellation of a 15-year Operation and Maintenance contract of over $300 million had to be bought back. There are many millions more spent each year on electricity (depending on time spent in operation). When you take into consideration the actual cost to the public you would see it nearing $800 Million in total investment. The money will be recouped from one source: municipal water customers.

Corporate externalization is most often defined as: corporate maneuvering so that other entities (usually the government) consumes operational and liability cost, while internalizing the profits. In this case, if Mosaic were to pay for the enormous amount of water it uses, and have that expense mimic the cost to Tampa Bat Water pumping from the aquifer, it would cost Mosaic $77,000.00 a day, or 28 million dollars a year, and that would be for the reduced permit. But Mosaic’s only expense, taking the water, is for the diesel fuel needed to power their pumps.

The cost to Tampa Bay Water to pump from the aquifer is $1.00 per thousand gallons, roughly $2.00 per thousand for surface water and about $3.00 from the desalinization plant. The plant is currently producing an average of 15 MGD, 1/5th of what Mosaic uses. Mosaic claims it recycles 95% percent of its water. Finding a second use for highly contaminated water before it sits somewhere to evaporate, is not recycling water. It’s what gets pumped everyday that describes water use.

There is an Army Corp of Engineers (ACOE) workshop later this month on March 25th in Punta Gorda, FL. It’s focus; develop a strategy that implements guidelines that measure the true environment impacts associated with ”phosphate mining,“ and develop an EIS (environmental impact statement) that clearly defines the past, present and future effects to rivers, estuaries, wetlands, endangered species, aquifer, restoration and economics. No doubt, water alternatives, their cost, and mining’s affect on them will be discussed and debated.

Ordered by the Federal Courts, an EIS was mediated as a condition if the permitting of phosphate mining is to continue. A contested ACOE permit for Mosaic to mine initiated that ruling, arguing lax oversights by all regulators had created a rubber stamp atmosphere. Many feel ACOE and SWIFTMUD’s all too cozy relationship is at a far too great a cost. It’s wasting our money, our water and our future. The residents of Southwest Florida have a very significant interest in correcting this imbalance and protecting our most necessary natural resource, because adequate access to water is not a problem we want to correct in the future, when we can prevent it in the present.