TEMPLE TERRACE — Temple Terrace is moving forward with a nanofiltration fix to its water issues, while clearing the way for a temporary fix.
The City Council voted unanimously Sept. 15 on a resolution to accept the water treatment facilities master plan prepared by CHA Consulting, a roughly $74 million overhaul of the city’s water treatment plants that will include measures to reduce PFAS contaminants from its water.
By doing so, it also helps the city in pursuing a temporary solution as well.
The plan is required by the Florida Department of Health and will serve as the foundation for the permitting to follow.
The vote allows the city to seek a design, engineering and project management firm to oversee a project expected to take three to five years to reduce the elevated PFAS levels in its water to future EPA standards.
“We would like to get started officially,” City Manager Carlos Baia told council. “We have these deadlines from the EPA, which are constricting us in terms of how much flexibility we have in terms of timing.”
The decision may help answer a question many residents have had — if the permanent solution is three to five years away, what temporary fixes can be implemented in the meantime?
However, “temporary” doesn’t necessarily mean quick.
The city has been investigating granular activated carbon, or GAC, as an interim treatment. Testing already conducted during the development of the master plan found that carbon supplied by Calgon Carbon Corp. lasted roughly 45-50 days before PFAS began breaking through.
But competing vendors, according to Public Works director Jason Warrenfeltz, use proprietary carbon and equipment that would have to be tested before the city could compare costs and then permits.
One vendor told Warrenfeltz its carbon was “somewhat similar” to Calgon’s product.
“Somewhat similar doesn’t meet the qualifications,” he told the council. “They’re going to need bench testing. They’re going to need analysis for the permit.”
Testing is just one part of finding a temporary solution.
The other complication is the city’s aging water plants, which are in need of upgrades prior to installing a temporary treatment system.
Warrenfeltz warned about “putting the cart before the horse.”
“We need a project manager. We need a scope. We need a design,” Warrenfeltz said. “We need stuff before we can ever say this is what we’re going to do going forward.”
Council member Alison Fernandez asked staff if that meant some improvements to the existing plants would have to occur before a temporary solution could be implemented, and Warrenfeltz said yes.
He could not provide a start or completion date, however.
That will get easier now that the permanent project has been officially approved. The two solutions aren’t completely separate projects, as some of the work required for the permanent overhaul will be needed to make the temporary solution work.
“There’s just a lot of moving parts here,” Baia said. “We would just like to get started.”
The goal is to hire an engineering and project management firm that will also be involved in evaluating the interim system, to avoid spending money on work that later must be altered or replaced.
“We feel that it may be best for us to have that again designed comprehensively, to assure that we don’t run the risk of putting something in and then finding out it doesn’t quite work with either the short-term solution or the permanent solution,” Baia said. “So we want to make sure that we do this the right way, because you’re only going to do this once, at least for the next several decades”
Meanwhile, finding the right interim system is a work in progress. Warrenfeltz said the proposals received so far have varied dramatically. For example, one vendor proposed 24 GAC filtration vessels, while another just four.
“That’s a big space difference that we’d have to accommodate for,” he said.
The clock is ticking.
Temple Terrace is one of many cities nationwide where water testing found levels of PFAS, or “forever chemicals” linked to cancer, thyroid disease and other health problems, above federal limits that go into effect in 2029. Cities that may be compliant with current standards are scrambling to reduce those levels to the new limits.
If the city can show substantial progress toward treating PFAS by April 2029, it could receive an additional two years to reach compliance.
Nanofiltration was recommended by CHA as the most effective way to achieve that goal. It pushes water through a semipermeable membrane that traps PFAS and calcium, helping remove the contaminants while also softening the city’s notoriously hard water.
“The master plan was presented in May. It’s September,” Warrenfeltz told the council on Sept. 2. “Time is shrinking on us.”