By Jeremy Morrison
Having begun his weekly press conference Monday with an announcement about the annual Mayor’s Bowl face-off between Washington and PHS, Mayor Grover Robinson had football on the brain. This time, though, it was metaphorical.
“You wanna score a touchdown? We’ve got a team working together. We’ve got ECUA, DEP and the city of Pensacola. One way or the other, we’re going to get to the goal line, I promise you that,” the mayor said. “And, I mean, we may have a couple of fourth downs we’ve gotta get through, but one way or another, we’re going to get to the goal line. I’m confident we’re there; I’m confident that now that the team’s been put together, we’re going to get there.”
The goal line in this instance is successfully locating and solving an infiltration of sewage into the city’s downtown stormwater infrastructure, which empties into Pensacola Bay and, more specifically, into the waters off Bruce Beach, where the city has just dug into a multi-million dollar public improvement project.
Officials with the city of Pensacola, which oversees the stormwater infrastructure, and the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority, which oversees the wastewater infrastructure, confirmed last week that further efforts to determine the sources of the infiltration were being delayed until October due to supply chain issues associated with chemicals needed to conduct testing. On Monday, Amy Tootle, the city’s director of Public Works and Facilities, said that testing would actually resume a bit earlier after ECUA successfully swung a trade with Escambia County.
“ECUA was able to locate some extra materials and kinda bargain with the county, so we’re able to kinda trade-off with the county to be able to use some of the detergent testing materials that they have, and we’ll replace them when ours comes in,” Tootle said. “So, we’ll be able to start that testing here in September.”
Researchers from the University of West Florida and the Bream Fishermen Association alerted the city to an issue with wastewater contamination at Bruce Beach last year, with a formal report provided to officials just last month. Since the spring, Pensacola and ECUA have partnered to address the issue, which Mayor Robinson said Monday should be able to be completed before Bruce Beach reopening to the public at the completion of the public improvement project next summer.
“I think this is realistic; we’re still within a year’s timeframe,” Robinson said.
Once the source of the contamination is determined, the mayor said, the fix should be fairly straightforward.
“If you can find’em, it’s going to be fairly easy to fix’em after that,” Robinson said, suggesting that the infiltration may occur at cross-connections installed prior to the modern era (some of the downtown infrastructure dates to the 1800s). “I think once you replace those connections, you no longer have the contamination, and I think it kinda solves itself from there.”
Tootle said that ultimately the solution would depend on exactly how wastewater entered the stormwater system.
“Once we locate where the sources are, then we’ll have to look at what type of infiltration it is into the storm, sewer, and then it could be either a full pipe replacement, a pipe lining, it just depends on what the issue is that we find,” she said. “Really, in terms of what type of fix, it just depends on what the issue is.”
Since 2012, ECUA has been required by a Florida Department of Environmental Protection consent order to repair its aging, leaking infrastructure systemwide; in the downtown and southern portion of its service area, according to ECUA Public Information Officer Nathalie Bowers, ECUA the utility has thus far rehabilitated 37 percent of the infrastructure at a cost of $28 million.
Insofar as potential costs associated with an eventual fix in the effort to stop wastewater from flowing to Bruce Beach, Mayor Robinson said Monday that he felt that the city and ECUA, as well as the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, could successfully fund whatever remedy is required; one possible source of funds, he said, could come from National Resource Damage Assessment money stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“I think there’s a commitment from the city, and I think there’s a commitment from ECUA to figure out how to do this,” Robinson said. “Now is the best time as ever, because if we got into a fix to where we needed to do something with funding, I would still say there’s NRDA money and other things to do with FDEP.”
Affordable Housing Goldmine?
Last week, the Pensacola City Council approved offering Baptist Hospital $500,000 for a parcel of natural property and historic home located on the hospital’s current campus, in exchange for a commitment from Baptist that at least 500 units of affordable and workforce housing will be built elsewhere on the soon-to-be-vacated campus.
On Monday, Mayor Robinson stressed that the affordable-housing component of the city’s offer was essential.
“I’d love to see as many affordable units as we can, I’d love to see as many workforce units as we can, both those things are critical in making affordability a part of the city of Pensacola,” Mayor Robinson said.
Baptist is in the process of relocating its campus to a location near Interstate-110, leaving vacant its sprawling campus near downtown. Hospital officials have expressed a willingness to sell the property with a particular vision attached; part of that vision, city officials say, should include affordable housing.
Mayor Robinson said that the city could be willing to up its offering price if the additional affordable housing was built into the deal.
“I’m willing to pay more for the land if I can get more units, and they may not be all affordable, but they can be workforce and I think if we can get more units that would be the goal and what we’d like to see done,” Robinson said.
The mayor said he will soon discuss the details of the city’s ask with hospital officials. Any affordable housing units realized on the Baptist campus would prove key to the city reaching its goal of creating 500 units within five years.
Mayor’s Bowl
With a gold trophy displayed on a clear podium, Mayor Robinson decreed a shout out to this weekend’s Mayor’s Bowl, a football matchup between Booker T. Washington and Pensacola High School. By his side were Washington principal Rick Shackle and PHS principal Saraya Miller, as well as Escambia County Superintendent of Schools Tim Smith.
“These two schools make up so much of what we do and what we want to achieve,” said Robinson, himself an ’88 BTW grad. “It is amazing to see the talent, both from an academic, athletic, cultural and variety of other ways that comes from both of these high schools and we’re very blessed to be a part of it.”
After some good-natured trash-talking from Shackle and Miller, Superintendent Smith noted how “engaging in athletics is that special piece that makes high school even more fun and more memorable” and nodded toward “deeply rooted” and “long-lasting tradition” of the Washington-PHS game.
“I think it’s really important to celebrate the long-standing tradition of two incredible high schools that represent the city of Pensacola in truly outstanding fashion,” Smith said.