Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
$400 million needed for S. Fla. reservoir
Building a reservoir to help quench Broward and Palm Beach counties’ longterm drinking water needs may leave water customers and state taxpayers picking up a $400 million tab.
The costly long-sought reservoir is billed as a way to keep residents’ taps flowing during future droughts, as growing populations and changing climate conditions put a strain on South Florida’s underground water supplies.
Sunrise, Dania Beach, Lauderhill and Broward County’s water utilities are among
the first in line for potentially tapping into the reservoir
Now after a decade of planning, South Florida officials say they may need state money to help pay for converting old rock mines west of Wellington into a reservoir that would send water south.
“During drought conditions, we don’t have enough water,” said Jennifer Jurado, Broward County’s director of the Environmental Planning and Community Resilience Division. “This is a piece of a long-term solution. ... It helps to satisfy what is a recognized regional need.”
The 20 billion-gallon reservoir would hold rainwater now drained out to sea for flood control and instead use it to supplement drinking water supplies for growing South Florida communities.
Permits and construction plans are ready to go for the first $161 million phase, but how to pay for it remains a hurdle to building the reservoir.
About $90 million could come from water customers of the initial communities that are ready to use the reservoir now, with more money to be paid in the future from communities expecting to need more water.
South Florida officials are considering asking state lawmakers to help to cover the rest of the first-phase cost.
“We don’t have any excess money in our budget for it,” South Florida Water Management District Board Member James Moran said. “These are big numbers we are throwing around here.”
Decades of draining half the Everglades to make way for development and farming limits the areas in South Florida where water can be held to supplement community drinking water supplies during droughts.
While South Florida’s vast system of canals, levees and pumps is good at draining rainwater to avoid flooding, it doesn’t include enough places to hold water for future needs.
The proposed reservoir could provide an alternative water supply to help during droughts as well as replenish underground sources that South Florida communities tap into for drinking water.
Supporters also say the reservoir would become a flood control asset during storms — corralling rainwater that would otherwise threaten homes in Palm Beach County.
“Relief can only be provided through [water] storage,” Jurado said. “It has to be a combination of storage anywhere we can.”
The proposal calls for the Palm Beach Aggregates rock mining company to turn its excavated holes into a reservoir, with communities in Broward and Palm Beach counties agreeing to buy the water that it could deliver.
This reservoir would be located beside an existing reservoir, also built from converted Palm Beach Aggregates rock mines that hold water intended for re- plenishing the Everglades.
That existing reservoir cost South Florida taxpayers about $220 million for constructing the water collecting areas completed in 2008. Another $64 million is being spent for pumps — expected to be finished this year — to send the water to the Everglades.
The new reservoir would use the pumps at the existing reservoir to get water flowing south.
The first phase of the new reservoir could deliver 35 million gallons of water per day. It could be operational by 2019, if state lawmakers during their spring legislative session agree to move forward.
Building the larger sec- ond phase, at an additional cost of $286 million, would take another seven years. That would enable delivering more than 150 million gallons a day of additional water to South Florida communities.
Refining plans during a decade of discussions helped reduce an estimated price tag that was once as much as $1 billion.
“Everybody is making progress,” Palm Beach Aggregates representative Ernie Cox said. “Slowly but surely, all the questions are being answered.”
Yet a push for state funding for this reservoir would come just as lawmakers are already being asked to approve a $2.4 billion reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee. Incoming State Senate President Joe Negron is pushing for that reservoir as a way to hold lake water now drained east and west, with damaging consequences on coastal waterways.
Aside from competition with Negron’s proposal, the reservoir planned at the old rock mines would have to overcome concerns about a controversy tied to the South Florida Water Management District’s previous reservoir deal with Palm Beach Aggregates.
Palm Beach Aggregates ended up reimbursing the district for a $2.4 million secret “success fee” that federal prosecutors said was paid to an engineering consultant who recommended the reservoir deal to water managers — without disclosing his role as a consultant for the mining company.
Instead of pursuing another costly, “impractical” reservoir at Palm Beach Aggregates, South Florida officials should be requiring more water conservation at homes and businesses, said Drew Martin of the Sierra Club.
“This is going to draw funds away from Everglades restoration,” Martin said.
Reservoir supporters say expanding South Florida’s water supply is worth the public investment.
The availability of the rock pits and the potential to help water supplies in Broward and Palm Beach counties “makes it a perfect fit,” Broward County Commissioner Tim Ryan said.
“We are hopeful that [the project] will move forward,” Ryan said.