No time to go with the flow

Lauderdale’s water, sewer systems could fail at any time, study finds

Beneath the streets of the 106-year-old city of Fort Lauderdale lies a world of trouble that could cost $1.4 billion to fix.

The city’s system to deliver drinking water from the tap, and to carry away what’s flushed, has aging parts that could fail at any time, an independent study of the water and sewer system found.

The failings are no surprise to those who waded through toilet water around the holidays in the Tarpon River neighborhood, or watched in dismay as a sewage pool engulfed their car tires in the parking lot of Regal Trace apartments in northwest Fort Lauderdale last year.

Though the burst water pipes and leaking sewage have plagued more and more neighborhoods in recent years, the city has no plan to address it all.

In November, voters countywide defeated a sales tax increase for improvements that could have helped older cities such as Fort Lauderdale rebuild decades-old systems. The water and sewer system

serves hundreds of thousands, reaching beyond Fort Lauderdale’s borders.

The city’s water and sewer customers have seen their bills rise each year. But money that could have been spent on repairs has been removed from the system and spent on other things such as parks, public safety and other general expenses, the report notes.

The consultant’s report, for which the city paid $1.9 million, was completed in April. It has not been publicly discussed.

Sprinkled among its 839 pages of maps and technical analysis are urgent warnings:

At one of the city’s wellfields, a source of drinking water, much of the equipment is at the end of its useful life. The electrical system for the wellfield, and its backup system, are on the brink of failure.

Nearly a quarter of the wastewater pipes are made of high-risk materials that need to be replaced, and “a large portion of the city’s pipelines will reach the end of their 50-year service life within the next 10 years.”

Some improvements at the city’s largest water treatment plant, the Fiveash plant off Powerline Road, are considered urgent fixes that “affect the ability to produce and monitor safe drinking water.”

The largest water plant has major, immediate needs and might be better off with a complete replacement, which the report says would “reduce the very real risk of a calamitous failure.”

The city’s water system has been underfunded for at least the last decade and now requires immediate attention.

A sewage pumping station downtown is nearly at its max. “Any current and future growth will exceed the existing station’s capacity,” the report says. But 5,186 condos or apartments are at some stage of the development process downtown, plus 1,024 hotel rooms, 405,555 square feet of office space and 160,234 square feet of retail.

Fort Lauderdale serves residents in parts or all of seven other cities: Dania Beach, Davie, Lauderdaleby-the-Sea, Wilton Manors, Lazy Lake, Oakland Park and Tamarac. It also serves Port Everglades and unincorporated Broward.

Fort Lauderdale elected officials have said they wanted to keep the property tax rate from rising, so they take money from utility bills — which go up 5 percent each year — to pay for general city services. Customers outside the city pay higher rates on their utility bills.

“The city is redirecting approximately $20 million a year collected from … water and sewer bills to cover other city expenses,” the report says.

As they pay more for the service, the number of pipe breaks and burst mains has been on the increase, city records say. And sewer breaks don’t have great timing. Last year, a few days before Christmas, Cara Campbell dreamed she smelled something awful.

Sure enough, Southwest Sixth Avenue in her Tarpon River neighborhood was a cesspool.

“We’ve been inundated with sewage three if not four times,” she said. “It’s disgusting. You just look down the street and it’s a sewage lake.”

A neighbor had flushed condoms in the yard, she said, and another had sewage in her swimming pool.

“The city is just trying to overbuild and overbuild and overbuild,” Campbell said, “despite the fact the city’s in a pathetic condition.”

A few weeks ago, there was another sewage leak in her neighborhood. A city spokesman said vacuum trucks collected about 1,350 gallons of sewage from the swale. So much sewage has leaked out in the past two years, state environmental officials are pursuing a consent order with the city, with potential fines.

The city’s utility needs total $1.4 billion over 20 years, according to the report by Reiss Engineering of Winter Springs. Much of it is unfunded. The city spends between $16 million and $18 million a year now repairing the system, using a pay-asyou-go approach, the public works director said.

“There’s a lot of things that need to be fixed and they have high price tags,” Fort Lauderdale Public Works Director Paul Berg said Thursday. “I think in the long run we’ll probably end up with a fairly large bond issue.”

Berg said the city has been waiting for the report in order to prioritize repairs and come up with a plan. He said he’ll work with a new city infrastructure board, then recommend a way forward. City commissioners will decide how quickly, and at what cost, the improvements will be made.

The financial pain likely will be felt in utility bills, if the city opts to borrow money for an ambitious program.

Not since 2001 has the city spent significant sums on its water and sewer systems. That year, Fort Lauderdale embarked on a nearly $700 million WaterWorks 2011 program to get most residents off septic systems and onto modern sewerage.

Berg said the report doesn’t portend a stalling of development in the city, because there’s plenty of water supply and sewer capacity to handle growth. It’s the parts that need replacing, he said.

“There’s a lot of work to do there,” Berg said. “But like I say, this is a plan and we’re going to use this to prioritize. … It’s a big job.”