By Jeremy Morrison
Efforts to determine the source of human waste fouling a downtown Pensacola beach slated for a multi-million public improvement project may be stalling out until later this fall.
According to officials with the city of Pensacola and Emerald Coast Utilities Authority, further tests to determine how wastewater is infiltrating the stormwater system and making its way (Poo Alley) to Bruce Beach may not be occurring until October. Testing was supposed to have begun this this week.
“The ECUA and the City are working together to perform detergent and bacteriological testing on the Bruce Beach storm drains,” reported Nathalie Bowers, public information officer for ECUA. “The first round of testing with the City of Pensacola was scheduled to begin between August 16 and August 20, weather permitting, but has been postponed to early October due to a delay in the shipping of testing materials.”
Earlier this year, city of Pensacola officials were alerted to the presence of human waste in the stormwater drains emptying out at Bruce Beach, where the city is engaged in a $8 million waterfront improvement project. Since May, the city has worked with ECUA to determine how wastewater is infiltrating the stormwater system; Pensacola oversees the downtown stormwater infrastructure, while ECUA oversees the wastewater infrastructure.
In June, tests were conducted at three governmental buildings in the vicinity — Pensacola City Hall, the Chappie James building and Escambia County’s judicial building — where it was determined there was no infiltration occurring. This month, Mayor Grover Robinson and Amy Tootle, the city’s director of Public Works and Facilities, said that summer illnesses had sidelined further efforts to work on the issue, but that testing would resume soon.
Bowers said that while some work has been conducted this month — salinity tests were conducted in an effort to determine how effective detergent test might be — that further efforts hinge on acquiring the necessary chemicals to conduct detergent tests, which involving injecting detergents into the wastewater line in order to observe where it might be infiltrating the stormwater system.
“The materials needed for the detergent testing are a variety of chemicals, with the last of which is currently scheduled to ship on Sept. 20,” Bowers said. “We are exploring alternate sources for these materials to see if we can obtain some sooner but so far haven’t located any.”
While the city and ECUA will continue to meet regarding this issue, Pensacola Public Information Officer Kaycee Lagarde said the next step forward is the detergent testing and that step is on hold until needed supplies can be obtained.
“The next step in the entire investigation is to do the detergent testing. Until the materials needed for testing are in the team’s hands, we will not do any other investigations in an effort to be as efficient as possible with this process,” Lagarde said. “The team is being methodical and working downstream to upstream, and the detergent indicator is the best way to start narrowing down possible infiltration locations. If the detergent testing narrows down a location in the storm sewer, the team will likely camera the pipes. Of course, this becomes complicated in the tidally influenced areas, thus the reason we are starting with the detergent testing to help narrow down locations.”