Hillsborough County officials said one of their five wastewater treatment plants is reaching capacity and that the county reached out to the city of Tampa asking for help diverting the flow.
The city of Tampa's treatment facility can treat about 96 million gallons of wastewater a day. On average, they're seeing about 60 million gallons. The city’s wastewater director Eric Weiss said that’s not including around two million from the county.
“If we can take the flow we, of course, will help out,” Weiss said.
The city of Tampa said it is taking over the flow of the county's Falkenburg Road Advanced Water Treatment Plant.
“There's several interconnects between their wastewater system and the county and the city of Tampa for these very kind of things. I think that's what the citizens and the ratepayers expect of both governmental agencies,” Weiss said.
Assistant County Administrator George Cassady said this impacts a portion of the county.
“Which is roughly I-4 south to Gibsonton from the city limits just to west Brandon,” Cassady said.
Cassady said this will give the county some headspace to make development connections to get them to adequate capacity. He expects this diversion to last from six months to a year.
"We'll access our reserve accounts to be able to pay for this amount. The city rates are a little bit higher than what it would cost us to treat the water internally but in the short term, it's not going to cost our customers any additional cost,” Cassady said.
The county said customers might not notice but developers could.
“There were approximately 130 active developments taking place. Not all of them are in construction. Not all of them are getting ready to make a connection. We wanted to know who was in that queue looking for capacity or looking for connection in the near future,” Cassady said.
Cassady said the county is obligated to stop writing permits when they're at capacity at the plant, but right now, they need some breathing room.
“It's build right now. Our challenge right now is making sure that there's room in our wastewater plant to receive their flow,” Cassady said.
Hillsborough County says it's been partnering with the city of Tampa on diversion projects for about 40 years, and it isn't the first time it's had to reach out to the city.
The county believes the last time it reached out to the city was about four years ago so it could complete maintenance projects at one of its plants.