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Highlands Today

New Option For Thunderbird Sewer Mess

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By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: December 5, 2007

SEBRING — Assessments of more than $5,000 on customers of the Thunderbird Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant may not be necessary to solve the long-standing problems at the plant.

In an effort to eliminate, or at least minimize, the potential assessments, Highlands County commissioners agreed Tuesday to talks on a possible new solution.

Next week, county officials will meet with representatives of Highlands Utilities, which runs a wastewater treatment plant serving 1,250 customers, including Lakeshore Mall and many businesses along U.S. 27.

There will be one topic: arranging for the Highlands Utilities wastewater plant to treat the sewage from the nearby Thunderbird Hills plant, which has been operating without an operating permit from the state Department of Environmental Services for six years.

Dan Correll, a spokesman for Highlands Utilities, and county Administrator Carl Cool both said this arrangement may have the potential to be far cheaper than the solution which the county is investigating now.

That option – with an estimated price tag of $2.2 million, which ultimately would be paid by Thunderbird's 430 customers – is to close the plant and pipe the sewage to the city of Sebring's wastewater treatment plant.

Most of the cost would be in connecting the Thunderbird Hills homes to the city's sewage plant.

Such a connection from the Thunderbird Hills homes to the nearby Highlands Utilities plant "would be very minimal," compared to the Sebring option, Correll said.

Correll invited county officials to discuss two options. They are:

• The county could purchase Highlands Utilities, and send the Thunderbird sewage there for treatment; or
  
• The county could contract with Highlands Utilities to treat the wastewater from Thunderbird.

Cool said a third option may be discussed, too.

"I don't know if there would be interest in it by Highlands Utilities, but they might consider acquiring Landmark (Utilities)," he said. Landmark Utilities is the corporation doing business as Thunderbird Hills Wastewater Treatment Plant.

With the last option, unlike the first two, the county would not be involved directly in solving the odor and operational problems that have been plaguing the Thunderbird Hills plant.

"When we sit down, we'll talk about all of the options," Cool said.

Cool praised David S. Plank, the owner of Landmark Utilities, as a man in a tough spot trying to find a solution for his customers that won't hurt them financially.

In a letter to Cool about the Landmark Utilities problem, attorney Bert Harris III, representing Plank, concluded by writing,

"David Plank remains willing and desires to work cooperatively with Highlands County so that the park (Thunderbird) utility customers are not further harmed."

Cool said Plank has been living up to that statement, trying to find a solution in his customers' best interests. In sharp contrast, Cool said, some other owners of wastewater treatment plants with problems have been "anything but cooperative."

Even so, the commissioners acted on the recommendations of Cool and Ross Macbeth, the county's attorney, in rejecting Plank's offer to give his treatment plant to the county.

Cool and Macbeth advised commissioners against accepting the Thunderbird plant because the county also would have assumed the mortgage on it, of about $100,000, and liability to pay fines levied on the plant by the state DEP and the Florida Public Service Commission.

Macbeth said county officials don't know how much those fines total for the plant's non-compliance with state regulations. Also, Cool pointed out, DEP has repeatedly said that a new operating permit will never be approved for the Thunderbird plant, because it is too close to existing homes for the major improvements that are needed.

The only complete, long-term solution at Thunderbird is to have the sewage treated elsewhere, at a new or existing treatment plant that does meet state regulations, Cool said.

Possible, estimated assessments of $4,000 on Thunderbird customers were figured out last week based on the county's rough estimate of $2,175,000 to connect to the Sebring plant, divided among an estimated 500 customers.

However, Thunderbird reportedly has 430 customers, and that divided into the $2,175,000 estimated cost comes out to assessments of $5,046 per home.

County commissioners have applied for a state grant to cover the cost, so that Thunderbird customers wouldn't have to be assessed. However, with the state facing budget troubles and possible tax cuts, state funding for the Thunderbird situation is seen as anything but a sure thing.

Commissioner Barbara Stewart summed up the commissioners comments on considering all options and trying to find a solution soon.

"We've been working on this (Thunderbird situation) for two years," she said, "and we're at the same spot we were two years ago."

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