Questions Continue to Arise Regarding Allied and Injection Well

MANATEE COUNTY – Additional information is raising questions about the operations of a local bleach manufacturer and its recent deal with Manatee County to dispose of the chemical company's sodium chloride brine wastewater into a county-owned injection well. Records show the company may not have been forthright about where brine from its Palmetto bleach plant was being disposed of prior to reaching an agreement with the county.

 

In our continuous investigation and reporting, TBT has sought to uncover as much information as possible about negotiations between officials of the Manatee County Government and Allied Universal Corporation leading up to the agreement approved by commissioners last month.

 

Allied Universal Corp is the parent company that owns and operates two bleach manufacturing facilities on Florida's central gulf coasts. One plant, named Allied New Technologies, is located on the east coast in Fort Pierce. A "brother plant" to the Fort Pierce location, named Allied New Technologies 2, is located on the west coast in Palmetto, Florida. The Palmetto bleach plant was constructed years after the Fort Pierce facility.

 

In 2017, Allied publicly stated that sodium chloride brine wastewater–a byproduct of the manufacturing of sodium hypochlorite (bleach)–from its Palmetto facility would be trucked outside of Manatee County for disposal. But new information uncovered by TBT is raising serious questions about where Allied has been disposing of the waste originating from its Palmetto plant operations.

 

TBT previously reported that text messages obtained by the Florida Center for Government Accountability revealed that county staff, including County Administrator Scott Hopes, and representatives of Allied had been in communication to reach a deal for months before any plan for an agreement was made public. The final approval by the county commission to allow the chemical company to dispose of its brine waste locally was not brought before the board until November 29–nearly a year after private negotiations first began for the agreement.

 

Although there was no staff presentation provided to commissioners during November's BOCC meeting, during which commissioners were asked to approve the agreement with Allied, statements made by some commissioners asserted that Allied had been trucking its sodium chloride brine waste from its Palmetto plant, across the state for disposal in Fort Pierce.

 

Commissioner James Satcher, the only commissioner who opposed approving the deal with Allied, questioned what benefit there was to residents for the county to begin taking on the company's brine waste for disposal.

 

"If they (Allied) have an option to take the brine to Fort Pierce, why not continue to take advantage of that option?" Satcher asked during the meeting's discussion.

 

Satcher added that, by his calculation, his role was to represent the constituents of District 1 where the county's injection well slated to take on Allied's industrial wastewater is located.

 

"Send it to Fort Pierce. I’m not here to be looking out for them, they don't vote for me–Manatee County does," added Satcher.

Satcher also expressed concern about the brine wastewater being driven by tanker trucks through residential neighborhoods or through school zones in order to reach Manatee County's Buffalo Creek injection well at the county's North Regional Water Reclamation Facility.

Commissioner George Kruse responded to some concerns raised by Satcher during the meeting. Kruse argued that whether Allied is trucking its waste across the county to an injection well located at Buffalo Creek or all the way to Fort Pierce made no difference in terms of risk or hazard of transporting. Either way, Kruse suggested, the tanker trucks have to travel roadways within the county.

 

"Unless you're currently airlifting this to Fort Pierce?" Kruse asked Allied rhetorically during his comments. "You're still using the same roads to get it out of Allied, you're just stopping a little bit sooner to get to Buffalo Creek."

 

Despite the assertions made by commissioners that Allied was trucking its brine from the Palmetto plant to the east coast to Fort Pierce for disposal, neither Jim Palmer (CEO and President of Allied who was present at the meeting) nor Allied's legal representative, former Florida Senate President Bill Galvano, corrected the commissioners' statements.

 

While answering another commissioner’s question about the amount of brine currently being produced by operations at the Palmetto plant, Palmer did offer a justification for the company's request to begin disposal of the brine in Manatee County.

 

"Right now we are having to truck this 30 to 40 miles away and that takes time," stated Palmer.

 

Fort Pierce is nearly 150 miles from Manatee County.

 

In 2014, FDEP issued an injection well operating permit to the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority (FPUA) for its Henry A. Gahn Water Treatment Facility injection well. The permit allows for the discharge of reverse osmosis brine wastewater, as well as sodium chloride brine from "Allied New Technologies." At the time the permit was issued, Allied's "brother plant" located in Palmetto–"Allied New Technologies 2"–did not exist.

 

 

In previous reporting, TBT shared details of the agreement that Allied has with FPUA. The agreement, established in September 2014, permits Allied to dispose of 21,600 gallons of brine wastewater per day into an FPUA-owned injection well. However, the terms of the agreement are specific to allowing Allied to only dispose of brine wastewater originating from the source site of the company’s Fort Pierce bleach plant–"Allied New Technologies" located at 9545 Range Line Rd, Fort Pierce, Florida.

 

TBT reached out to officials at FPUA to clarify whether the agency had ever amended its agreement with Allied to expand the brine wastestreams the company was permitted to discharge into its well. An official with FPUA confirmed that the 2014 agreement contained the effective terms of its arrangement with Allied and that there were no amendments ever made to those terms.

In follow-up, TBT sought additional clarification from the FPUA as to what brine waste the agency had been allowing Allied to discharge into its Henry A. Gahn Water Treatment Facility injection well. A representative responded to our inquiry by email, writing, "FPUA has not received any industrial brine reject solution from any other source than the Allied Plant in Fort Pierce, Florida."

 

Based on the comments made by Allied’s President Jim Palmer, TBT submitted record requests to nearly a dozen regional counties and municipalities 30+ miles away from Manatee County. None of the entities contacted by TBT had record of any past or existing agreements with Allied for the disposal or storage of brine wastewater.

 

TBT attempted to reach Mr. Palmer by email to provide an opportunity to clarify for our readers where Allied has been disposing of its sodium chloride brine waste from its bleach plant in Palmetto, Florida. Emails were addressed to Palmer, the company's head of operations, and to its general inquiries email address. We received no response to any of our emails.

 

If Allied has, in fact, been disposing of brine wastewater produced by operations at its Palmetto facility by trucking it to Fort Pierce for disposal in FPUA's injection well, it seems clear the FPUA is unaware it is doing so. It also seems clear, based on the agreement and permits Allied has been issued by FPUA, that disposing of any brine waste from any other site other than its Fort Pierce facility would be in violation of the terms of the agreement between Allied and FPUA.

 

On November 29, Manatee County Commissioners voted to approve the county entering into an agreement with Allied. The agreement will allow the company to begin disposing of almost twice as much brine wastewater in a Manatee County injection well–40,000 gallons per day–than the company was approved to dispose of daily under the terms of its agreement with FPUA.


During the November meeting, a citizen phoned in with public comments and asked commissioners whether the terms of the proposed agreement between Manatee County and Allied would restrict the company from discharging any brine waste from any of its other Florida facilities into our county well. The county attorney responded to the citizen's question affirmatively, explaining that the agreement's language was restrictive to the disposal of brine solely from the Allied New Technologies 2 plant located in Palmetto.

However, given new questions about whether Allied has been disposing of brine waste in violation of its agreement terms with FPUA, it is worth pointing out that the agreement approved between Manatee County and Allied contains nearly identical language that Manatee County's attorney assured would protect against such action.

TBT reached out to each of the six commissioners who voted to approve the agreement with Allied during the November 29 meeting. We asked whether this new information–had they been aware of it during deliberations–might have changed considerations to vote to approve the agreement with Allied. None of the commissioners responded to our request for comment (TBT did not email Commissioner Satcher for comment, because he voted against approval of the agreement with Allied).

 

The 2014 agreement between FPUA and Allied allowing the company to continue disposing of its brine waste at FPUA’s injection well is set to expire ten years from its effective date–a little more than a year from now in 2024. Allied can request a renewal to continue disposing at FPUA’s well site which, if approved, could extend the agreement an additional five years.

Dawn Kitterman is a staff reporter for The Bradenton Times. She covers local government and entertainment news. She can be reached at dawn.kitterman@thebradentontimes.com.