WEST PALM BEACH — Twenty years ago, the city conceived a visionary approach to drought relief that would turn the runoff from sewage treatment into drinkable water.
Now, after spending $37 million on a plant that has been shut down half the time since 2009, administrators are ready to give up. Plagued by design flaws and operator error, the Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant breaks down too often and is too costly to run when it's working, they say.
A Palm Beach Post analysis of plant records shows it has produced no water at all on 49 percent of the days since 2009.
Other findings:
Replacing just one bulb on the plant's balky and dated ultraviolet disinfection system costs $250. And the plant's 256 ultraviolet bulbs go out so often that it cost $130,000 to keep the system running last year.Five years after the plant opened, lengthy shutdowns are blamed on poor design. For instance, a methanol tank can't be replaced because it is right under a roof that would cost $500,000 to remove. Instead, purging the tank for repairs takes days, during which time the entire plant must be shut down.Four giant pumps costing hundreds of thousands of dollars failed years ago because city workers with no expertise on pumps tried to cool them with swamp water, which gummed up the works, causing them to burn out.Ferric, a chemical needed to meet the plant's stringent treatment requirements, cost $250,000 last year. Typical sewage reuse plants don't need ferric.Plant production averaged 14 percent of promised levels, an important factor because the city is permitted to draw only as much water from its well field, its drought backup, as the plant sends to the well field.For Utilities Director David Hanks, who came to the city in 2008 excited to work with the cutting-edge plant, the costs outweigh the benefits. "You've got to look at return on investment," Hanks said. "It's certainly not there at this point.
" Every day I was like, 'What now?' " Hanks said. "It makes you want to knock your head against the wall."
"Why an engineer would recommend something like that is beyond me," Hanks said. "All we can do now is try to fix it and we're doing that."
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$37 million West Palm Beach water plant doomed by costly chemicals, city failures
