Episode 23: Fort Pierce Utility Authority: Making Progress on Wastewater Treatment in the IRL

Caleta Scott:

Do you ever think about what happens when you flush the toilet? I admit, I never really thought about it. Or maybe I thought I knew the science behind it.

Well, today we’re talking wastewater, specifically how advanced treatment and a bold relocation project will transform water quality in Fort Pierce, the Indian River Lagoon and beyond. That’s what we’re talking about today on this episode of One Lagoon, One Voice.

Duane DeFreese:

Hi, I am Duane De Freese, executive director of the IRL Council and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. Welcome to our One Lagoon, One Voice Podcast.

Each week, myself or one of my staff members will host leaders in the community, scientists along the lagoon, people who know a lot about the system to talk about some of the problems.

And most importantly, some of the solutions to solve the Indian River Lagoon’s health and make sure it’s great for future generations. So let’s get the show started and let’s talk a little lagoon.

Caleta:

Greetings, greetings and peace. Welcome to One Lagoon, One Voice.

I’m Caleta Scott, Community Engagement Coordinator with the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program, and the host of this episode where we’re gonna get to the nitty gritty about how exactly wastewater is treated.

We’ll talk all about moving the wastewater treatment plant off of Hutchinson Island in Fort Pierce. We’ll learn the status of the new mainland sewer treatment plant, and the benefits of reaching our goal of protecting the Indian River Lagoon.

Joining us today is Mike Martin, Water Reclamation Operations Supervisor and Project Manager for the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority. We’ve talked to Mike Martin in our webinar, but we’re so excited to bring him onto our podcast.

Welcome back, Mike.

Mike Martin:

Good afternoon, Caleta, great to be here with you. I appreciate the invite back. I’m looking forward to this, this will be my first podcast experience, so apologies if I do something weird, but it’s all good.

I’ll give you a little bit of background on me. I’ve been with Fort Pierce Utilities for 18.5 years. Started as a wastewater assistant and moved my way up through operations, and now supervision.

A big part of my job is running the day-to-day operations of the Island Wastewater Plant on Hutchinson Island there. And for the last few years I’ve been acting as a project manager for our new mainland Water Reclamation Facility Construction Project. So I split my time about 50-50 between those two roles. And it’s been fun bringing that new wastewater plant through fruition.

Caleta:

We’re so glad. 18 years at the Utilities Authority. Thank you for your service. That’s a lot of great work that you’ve done. And, I’m gonna start with saying that Mike and I went on a sweet tour of the new mainland facility-

Mike:

Mm-hmm.

Caleta:

…and it’s massive out there. It’s massive. And these big, huge vats makes me feel really good about the fact that we won’t be seeing them on our island anymore.

Mike:

Yeah, absolutely. (laughs)

Caleta:

Let’s talk about the big picture at Fort Pierce Utilities Authority. Give us a little history about what they do, and how they got into treating our water in Fort Pierce?

Mike:

Sure. So, Fort Pierce Utilities Authority is a separate chartered, kind of municipal structure that operates inside the city of Fort Pierce. We’ve been around since 1972. Prior to that the utilities were handled by the city of Fort Pierce directly.

I wanna say, I don’t know the actual history, but I think there was some political tomfoolery that was going on back in the ’70s that created the charter for the utility authority as a separate entity.

That being said, we’re not political, we’re not politicized, and we’re not funded by taxpayer revenues. So because we’re 100% rate funded, we’re a little more accountable, and we have to be a lot more transparent with how we’re spending money to our customer base.

Caleta:

Thanks for that.

Mike:

Yeah, Absolutely.

Caleta:

(laughs).

Mike:

Now, the Island Wastewater Plant has been there since 1959. Originally built by the city of Fort Pierce as probably part of some of those, some of those New Deal federal money that was, circulating around America at the time.

Most of our sewer infrastructure in this country was built in the ’40s and ’50s, not many people know that. Unfortunately, for the many reasons that we’re moving our plant, and a lot of cities are now having to upgrade their systems because all of it’s getting old around the same time, around that 70-year mark, which was well beyond all the engineered life expectancies of some of these materials years ago.

Caleta:

Mm.

Mike:

So yeah, the wastewater plants been there in some form for over 70 years in its current configuration that was built in 1984 after a very large expansion project ’cause they thought Fort Pierce was gonna double and triple in size.

And so that brought the plant from like 3 million gallon capacity up to a 10 million gallon a day, which would service 50, 60,000 people.

Now, Fort Pierce never quite grew quite as much as they expected. So our wastewater plants not overloaded as far as the capacity, but it is starting to get very old now, and there’s a lot of defunct equipment. There’s a lot of outdated equipment that we’ve decommissioned.

And of course, because of our island and ocean water location, all that salt air is causing a lot more corrosion on our middle and tank structures than it will be at the new site. That’s for sure.

To get a little bit into wastewater treatment… I’ll talk about that a little bit. We do microbiology, biological treatments.

So that means the bacteria that are in our guts and in everybody’s belly right now, we basically grow those same bacteria on a massive scale. So wastewater plant is kind of like a big Petri dish. And what we’re doing is growing these microbiological bacteria to, during their life cycle, decompose and consume all of the toxic stuff that’s in raw sewage, all of the biological oxygen demand, some of the nutrients, they convert ammonia into harmless nitrogen gas and so on and so forth.

So the human beings that work at a plant, myself and my staff, we don’t really do the treatment. All we do is make a good environment for the bugs to do the work for us.

So it’s exciting. And both plants, the old one and the new will operate on that same basic principle.

Caleta:

So Mike, you’re getting a little deep here talking about things that are in my gut…

Mike:

(laughs).

Caleta:

How safe is it to use treated wastewater?

Mike:

Very safe.

I mean, for years and years and years, wastewater basically was treated to a certain level. For a very long time it was just dumped, raw sewage was dumped into local waterways, streams, whatever creek was by your house.

I mean, it’s not, it’s no surprise that human life expectancy has only gone up recently. You know, most people died in their 50’s back in the day, because we weren’t very hygienic as a species. Until modern technology and obviously the renaissance of thinking, delivered us some good science on how to be more hygienic, and how to treat wastewater in a good way.

So wastewater now, most of it, including what we’re gonna be making at the new plant, is re-used for irrigation purposes, industrial re-use. So that raw wastewater gets treated to a certain level, and then we can send it right back in, and use it, and keep it on the surface, for other uses.

Otherwise, we lose it down our deep injection well, or other disposal methods, and we never really get a chance to use it again.

Caleta:

Hmm. That’s an interesting philosophy of having wastewater treatment facilities like on the coast, right? We’re dumping it into the waterways.

But I can imagine that, you know, back in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s we were talking about, it was beautiful along the, the IRL, you know? It’s a paradise for wildlife, and there’s-

Mike:

Absolutely.

Caleta:

…manatees grazing on endless grass, seagrass beds and flocks of wading birds. What happened? And how… what role maybe has wastewater played, in the decline of water quality and seagrass beds?

Mike:

That’s a good question. There’s a lot of debate on this still.

As somebody who’s in the industry, I don’t think what we discharge, treated wastewater, is that bad, but it certainly could be.

And I can’t speak for the prior 65 years before I started at the wastewater plant, you know? I know since 1993, our wastewater plant has been disposing down a deep injection well instead of the river.

Caleta:

Nice.

Mike:

So for about 50 years our main disposal method was, discharge into the Indian River Lagoon. That’s why our plant was built there back in the ’50s. That’s why Vero Beach was built on the lagoon at the same time period.

And then up and down the coast, there’s a bunch of wastewater plants that were put on the Intracoastal for that exact purpose ’cause I guess, they had to pick one or two lesser evils they’d rather have it spill in the river than into their city streets and into their communities and neighborhoods.

So that was kind of how much thought that was put into it back then. Like I said, luckily engineering, research and development, technology has improved. So we’re able to responsibly get rid of that wastewater without harming the local ecology.

Caleta:

Well, thanks. But I think that now, (laughs) 50 years later we know that the IRL is a vital habitat, especially for manatees and other key species. So-

Mike:

Oh, yeah.

Caleta:

…I understand why back in the day they had to put them there, but now we’re here and it makes sense to move it.

Mike:

Yes.

Caleta:

And I’m glad, like I said before, I’m glad I don’t have to look at that vat of sludge when we cross the Pei-Pei Cobb Bridge.

Mike:

(laughs). Oh, yeah.

Caleta:

So now let’s get into this move. How are you gonna move this facility? What does that exactly mean?

Mike:

So right now our entire collection system was designed, engineered, and installed back in the 50’s and the 60’s to flow towards the river. So most of our gravity in our older parts of town… these are pipes that are almost impossible to access now. These are underneath people’s homes, these are under, deeply buried beneath roads. And over the years, things have been repaved and paved again.

So most of our system now flows towards the East. What we have to do is somehow capture a way to send it back to the West to our new mainland location. And that’s gonna be right off Selvitz Road out there near the Walmart Distribution Center, near all those concrete ready-mix plants.

We’re kind of out, tucked away in the industrial part of town where we belonged in the beginning. So now we’re kind of gonna be redistricted where we should be in the first place. Not right there, yes, on that 17 acre waterfront parcel where we are now.

So the easiest way to do that is to utilize our master lift station. Right now, 99% of our flow goes through Lift Station A, which is our primary lift station downtown. Uses big 250 horsepower pumps to actually deliver that raw sewage underneath the river to our wastewater plant now.

Talk about another liability, knock on wood, those underwater pipes have never given us a problem, but it’s just a matter of time before they eventually fail. So trying to beat the clock and move this plant so that we can abandon those underwater mains and remove them once and for all.

But right now we’re gonna use Lift Station A, and we’re gonna redirect the force mains and some of the pressurized mains that are gonna deliver that sewage back towards the West, down Orange Avenue, down Jenkins Road, through that corridor to get it over to that Selvitz road, Glades Cut-Off area where it needs to finally be.

That process is gonna take a little while, but it’s not as hard as it sounds. It’s just gonna take some time and money. (laughs).

Caleta:

Well, you talked about beating the clock. How long has this project been on the Fort Pierce Utilities wish list? And do you think that it was that public perception of having it on the island that maybe encouraged a move, or were there other factors?

Mike:

Absolutely. I remember even when I was just getting outta high school as a teenager, in college, the city commission talking about this. I think many different versions of FPUA’s board and the city of Fort Pierce commissioners have talked about making this move so we can redistrict that land and kind of make something more beneficial for the public than just a wastewater plant.

Most people don’t realize a wastewater plant is very beneficial to the public, (laughs) but certainly not in that spot. And we all understand that. So FPUA has been making moves towards moving this plant for years.

We bought that original property where we are now building the new site. We bought that back in 2003, I believe.

Caleta:

Oh, wow.

Mike:

All of our strategic master planning for our collection systems, whenever a new pipe had to be installed, say 15, 20 years ago, we made sure that it was reversible, for lack of a better word. So that if we installed it to go one way, that we could throw a couple of valves and send that flow back the other way.

So we tried to do a lot of this anticipatory work because we knew this was something that needed to happen.

And in 2007, we almost did actually get the political will and get final approval from our board to move it. They drew up a plan, we were actually able to construct the deep injection wells at the new site. So we almost got off the ground, but then the recession of 2008 hit, and just we or everybody had to slam the brakes on that.

It would’ve been too much to put on our rate payers back then to finance that project in 2008. So it got shelved, we spent a little more money on the island plant, modernizing its monitoring systems and installing a SCADA system from scratch. That’s a computer control and monitoring system. So we modernized the island plant instead, and now here we are, it’s time to move.

The state of Florida’s putting a little bit of regulatory pressure on us to move our location, or make significant upgrades to 100% eliminate the risk of any river discharge, which as you can imagine, where we’re at, it’s hard to 100% eliminate that risk. God forbid something goes crazy. We still could easily spill into the river if we have a major break or a major disaster.

Caleta:

Mm.

Mike:

So just moving the plant altogether, it’s time to fulfill that original promise from 2003 and get it done.

Caleta:

Well, thanks for sharing that because I figured that this wasn’t a pick it up and move it type of situation.

Mike:

Mm-hmm. No.

Caleta:

You mentioned Jenkins Road. I’ve noticed a big, huge pipe on Jenkins Road-

Mike:

Yes.

Caleta:

…does that have anything to do with this project?

Mike:

It does. So, you know, designing and building the wastewater plant has been kinda one lane in this little race.

Now, the conveyance system, all of that work I was talking about, to get the flow to move in the other direction, that’s another kind of phase of this project, and they both need to work in tandem. And that conveyance project has been parallel just a little bit behind our progress on the plant side.

So, that pipe you’re seeing on Jenkins is the first of many little capital projects we’re gonna be pursuing that are gonna help deliver that raw flow from the east and send it back to the west.

We’re actually installing a 30-inch, force main on Jenkins Road in that easement on the left-side of the road there if you’re heading south. And the crews are actually moving really fast on that.

We had a board meeting last night, and our other project manager, Luigi Dawson, was able to talk about that. They’re running about a month ahead of schedule already on that, so making great progress.

I’m hoping all this rain lately isn’t gonna slow them down too much. But that’s pretty complicated because they have to open trench dig. They basically have to dig a big trench, install this pipe where there was none before. And then go under Okeechobee. They actually have to use a directional bore, a directional drill machine that’s gonna actually send that 30-inch pipe about 26 feet below Okeechobee Road in Jenkins, below that intersection, and then come back up on the other side over by Wawa.

So it’s pretty impressive what they can do nowadays with technology, talk about that. That used to be a job 100 people would take eight months to do. Now there’s a machine that could do it in a couple weeks. It’s awesome.

Caleta:

It really is awesome. And it speaks to the type of… next phase of the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority… I feel-

Mike:

Yes.

Caleta:

…that’s happening. Is there gonna be a time, Mike, when both facilities are operating at the same time? I’m not sure. What happens when the existing plant is decommissioned and what’s that process like?

Mike:

Sure. So yeah, right now a lot of companies, a lot of municipalities and utility companies, they’re making upgrades at they’re plants.

Maybe they’re building brand new plants, but they’re usually building it on the same site more or less. They’re not completely changing it’s (laughs) geographic location like we are. We’re one of the few to do a project like this where it’s completely redistricting our infrastructure inside the city 80 years after it was built.

So there’s gonna be a time period where the mainland then brand new plant has a small portion of our total flow, and the rest of it’s gonna still be at the island. And then slowly but surely, almost like turning two dials, I’ll be turning more flow over to the new plant, less flow to the island. And then each time we make a little capital project, each time we complete one of those little mini projects, more of that flow goes to the new place, less goes to the island.

And then slowly but surely there’s nothing at the island, and it’s all at the mainland.

Now for a short period of time, we probably will have to keep the island plant going just as an EQ facility, just for a big storms. We get tropical storms, hurricanes. We get a lot of stormwater intrusion into our system still. So during a hurricane or a big afternoon storm even, uh, you’ll see the flow go from 5 million up to 13, 14 million in a matter of an hour or two. So that’s difficult to manage, that’s gonna be hard for our fledgling system to handle those kind of flows on day one. But eventually we will be able to get there.

Once we showcase that we can handle up to 20 million at the new wastewater plant, we’ll be able to officially decommission the island. We’ll get FDEP approval to be able to do that. And we can abandon that site and get it ready for demolition and yeah, redevelopment, which is what everybody’s talking about. (laughs).

Caleta:

Speaking about redevelopment, you know, we’ve got King’s Landing on the west side of the lagoon, and this is a prime spot. Is there any opportunity for people to give feedback about what they wanna see there?

Mike:

To my knowledge, they’ve had two little mini meetings, these little charrettes they call them, where I think designers can come in and show off some potential designs for how the Causeway Cove site next to the island plant, once it’s redeveloped can be kinda integrated, and turned into some kind of big crown jewel of Fort Pierce.

I’m excited to see what they come up with. I know lately there’s been those big drawings circulating around social media about that massive condo and industrial, like apartment complex they were talking about. That’s way too early to say that’s what it’s gonna look like, but that’s somebody’s vision. I imagine we’ll see lots of visions over these next five or six years as time… as we get closer to that time.

But I do believe there’s gonna be opportunities, city commission meetings or special meetings where the public can come, talk about what they’d like to see there, have a little input on it. I do know, and I don’t know the full details of it, but there are some legal ramifications to completely privatizing that site. I think it was granted to us by the state back in the ’40’s, in some kind of complicated legal way. So some of it has to remain public use, otherwise it reverts back to the state.

So you, you can expect a mixture, I think, of public property, maybe a park and a river walk or something, in addition to maybe some condos, some retail, some shopping, some restaurants, something like that. I feel like that’s probably what it’s gonna be, a nice hybrid.

I’ve seen drawings where there’s an amphitheater. I would love that, a little waterfront amphitheater would be really good for our city.

Caleta:

There is a lot of action taking place right on our waterfront right there. So I’m excited to see, but I know that it takes time.

Mike:

Yeah.

Caleta:

So let’s get into a little bit of the dollars and cents. You talked about the public access. What’s the public benefit to moving this? And how practical is it for our residents? And what is it that they need to know?

I know that was a lot of questions, but let’s talk about how much this is gonna cost, and is it feasible for a community as small as ours?

Mike:

Right. Well, that’s a great question. And in the early days when we were putting this together, getting the financing lined up, doing the design phase of the plant, and kind of drilling down on what the number was gonna cost, like what the final cost was gonna be. We had a couple of public outreach meetings at the, I think the Percy Park Community Center and a couple places in Fort Pierce, I can’t remember exactly where. But we went to the public, told them our plans, explained why this is gonna be beneficial.

I mean, really, the message was we’re gonna make a higher quality treated wastewater product with this state-of-the-art technology that we’ve chosen for the new plant. We’re gonna be able to kinda redistrict and get this risk off of our island, out of Indian River Lagoon Basin, so that we’re not contributing to the pollution of the river and the lagoon.

And that’s such a big part of Fort Pierce’s identity is our waterfront recreation. It’s a big part of our economy, our local economy. So we never want the wastewater plant to be something that is seen as interfering with that or diminishing that in any way. So we tried to tell the public that this is gonna be very good for the city of Fort Pierce, their rates, their bottom line, and of course, the quality of their wastewater treatment and the collection system itself.

The total cost on the wastewater plant, you mentioned the cost there, total GMP, which is the guaranteed maximum price, which is kind of a contractual term for, basically a worst case number is 139 million. That captures all of it. That’s the design phase, that’s all the work basically me and the team have done since 2021 to today, till basically the plant’s fully commissioned later this year, early next year. That’s gonna capture all of it.

And I’m happy to say we are tracking under that number right now. We’re tracking on schedule to be commissioned in, December of this year. And we’re actually tracking ahead of budget a little bit as well. So it’s great news there.

And we were able to do this mainly because all of the grant funding we were awarded. Our in-house grants team has done a wonderful job getting out there, being really tenacious to access and get and apply for as much federal, or in-state funding as possible on this project. I’m happy to say we’ve received over $70 million in just total grant funds for this entire wastewater project. And that has been-

Caleta:

Since when Mike, since 2021?

Mike:

Um, well, we started applying for grants in 2023.

Caleta:

Okay. Wow.

Mike:

You know, we’ve been at it hard for these last three years, basically pursuing grants. You really can’t ask for grant money until you have the real numbers in mind. So we had to get to the contract point to where we had a GMP.

But it is been great and we’ve gotten a lot of support from our local lawmakers, Senator Erin Grall, Representative Dana Trabulsy, even at the federal level with Representative Brian Mast.

We’ve had a lot of people helping, pushing this for the local community because they understand how important it is to get this site moved. So it’s been exciting.

Caleta:

It is exciting. I wanna talk a little bit about what this advanced part of the water treatment are. This is coming from the government regulatory requirements that we have to change what we do? What makes this treatment advanced?

Mike:

Right. So once again, our plant was built in 1959 based on the engineering principles of 1959, right? Like, the best they could come up with back then, which still works on a basic level, don’t get me wrong. But there’s been a lot of of evolution in this industry. So much research and development has been put into better ways to do the same thing. Better ways to use those bugs to treat that wastewater and capture more efficient final products.

So what we’re actually doing is we chose a state-of-the-art process called AquaNereda, it’s basically a trade name for Granular Sludge Treatment.

Caleta:

Hmm.

Mike:

So right now our wastewater plant… when I say sludge… that’s basically the soup of concentrated bacteria that we actually grow. That Petri dish thing I was talking about earlier-

Caleta:

Yes.

Mike:

…that sludge is basically just bacteria incarnate, and it’s what we need to treat all those fresh gallons of raw sewage that continuously flow through our plant every day.

Right now, we’re flowing about 5.2 million gallons from the city of Fort Pierce, that’s what our population gives us on a daily basis. That’s an average daily number. Like I said, sometimes when it’s really raining outside like this morning, the plant flow spiked up to 10, 12 million sometimes. That’s just a velocity, it’s not gonna stay there.

Caleta:

Okay.

Mike:

But we need to be able to have the sludge capacity to treat all of that wastewater at any given moment. So the new plant’s gonna get into a granular sludge, which settles a lot better, separates from the liquid a lot better. And that, so that sludge and that liquid are gonna be completely different zones. And you’re gonna have a really clear visibly, you know, low-turbidity effluent product compared to what we’re making now at the island, compared to the 1950s technology I was talking about.

We still make a very good product, don’t get me wrong. But it has some visible solids in it, there are some flocs still. It’s not quite as clean as it could be. And that’s something we’re excited to capture at the new plant, because that’s gonna make it a lot easier to get into a reuse system, to start selling that water back out into the system as irrigation water-

Caleta:

Yes.

Mike:

…wetlands restoration, there’s all kinds of use for treated wastewater.

I mean, I hate to say it, a lot of people are talking about it in California, direct potable reuse is kinda the wave of the future.

Caleta:

Yes.

Mike:

A gallon that you flushed yesterday, might be the same one you’re drinking tomorrow. That is not an idea the public’s gonna bite off on right away, but it is where we’re moving. It’s where this technology is guiding us to. So that all of that water that’s taken in, can be 100% reused, and we never have to inject it into the deep well, and we never have to lose it.

The new plant’s gonna allow me and my staff to do that a lot easier and make a much higher quality product.

Caleta:

I’m just gonna go back to when I took the tour and we were out there. It looks like there’s opportunity, there’s a lot of growth opportunity. What’s the capacity out there? And tell us about your team, and what they do, and maybe some of the challenges they may have.

Mike:

Oh, sure. Yeah. So off the bat, we’re building the plant to be rated for an average daily flow of 8 million gallons a day which is 4 million higher than what we normally see. So right off the bat, we have some growth opportunity. But the important thing is the peak, we’re building the plant to hydraulically handle 24 million gallons of flow for an entire 24-hour period. That’s something we’ve never seen.

I hate to say it, year-by-year things seem to be getting worse with the weather, so we need to plan ahead.

Caleta:

Yes.

Mike:

And that was kind of in the idea when we did the design on this, size these tanks, sized at the plant, we wanted to make sure we could have something that could handle the nastiest rainstorm. Those days where it just rains and rains all day long, and we just get four or five inches of rain, our plant cannot handle that now. And it really, it pushes out and it gets us very, very close to going into the river at the island now.

Caleta:

Mm.

Mike:

So it is mostly because we don’t have the hydraulic capacity to handle it. So we know our system’s old now. We built that plant back when the system was new. So at the time it was fine, but now you had 70 years of wear and tear. Our collection system has a lot of infiltration, a lot of storm water gets in. So we’re sizing that new plant to handle up to the worst emergencies possible.

And to your point, it is expandable, the wastewater plant itself has four main basins and room for two more. We’ve actually deliberately created space so we can add two more of these large treatment basins in the future as we need. That will bring the capacity from 8 million to 10 million, and a peak of 30 million gallons a day.

So in the future, if Fort Pierce does double, in size and a population keeps going on the trend that it has been, we’re gonna be able to handle any of these future flows for decades to come, probably another 70 years before we have to have this conversation again or longer. (laughs).

Caleta:

I like to hear that because-

Mike:

Oh yeah.

Caleta:

…generally government, you know, we plan for the next 50 years or so.

Mike:

Mm-hmm.

Caleta:

But it seems like we’re ready for a good long run. And I’m glad that you’re there to oversee it with so much care.

Mike:

Yeah. Thank you.

Caleta:

Let’s talk about how this project fits into the Fort Pierce Utilities Authorities broader goals of resilience and water quality, how it matches the growth of Fort Pierce and the Treasure Coast with Port St. Lucie’s growth being so tremendous? And what it means for the Indian River Lagoon?

Mike:

Right. I think this project especially is kind of our marquee project. It’s FPUA’s biggest capital project to date, and it’s another great example of our commitment to the community, and in everything that means. So, as you know, the FPUA also supports the Manatee Center downtown, and we support those educational efforts that Jessica and her team are doing over there.

FPUA is, we’re members of the community, as well as workers inside of it, right? We’re not just, we’re not just anonymous faces that come in from Vero Beach and Port St. Lucie and dictate what happens and then go back home. The majority of our staff works and lives in Fort Pierce. I work and live in Fort Pierce, I wanna see this town grow in a responsible way that is sustainable, and that is resilient because, we’re… I don’t know. Port St. Lucie seems to have been going a little crazy. They say yes to everything, and they’re growing really fast, and that’s putting a lot of demands on their system.

Of course, they’re capturing the impact fees and they’re able to crowd fund a lot better because they have a much bigger crowd than we do. But I do think Fort Pierce needs to do it right. I think we have some good examples around us of maybe hasty development, and I wanna make sure we’re not doing that.

So Fort Pierce Utilities, through this wastewater project, through the modernization of our infrastructure, through our smart grid, we’re pursuing AMI on the electric side to make it easier for our customers to track and monitor their electric usage and decrease restoration times after storm so that we can get people back up and running a lot faster than we were used to. This is all stuff that’s gonna make Ft. Pierce a bigger target for future economic development, and of course, future population growth in the right way, in a responsible way.

Caleta:

Yes. As a rate payer, I appreciate that.

Mike:

Yes.

Caleta:

Are there opportunities for residents to learn more about this project and the phases of it? What does that look like? Are there meetings that may come up?

Mike:

Sure. So we have a couple different things going in that line. We have, Citizen-Led Utility Advisory Committee that we actually proposed and came up with, I think our public affairs team came up with that a few years back. That’s a way to directly engage, maybe the protest customer who doesn’t like what we’ve been doing, in theory, behind the scenes without being out there and transparent.

That was always kind of a long-standing fallacy, I think, with Fort Pierce Utilities that we’re just doing things willy nilly and it’s unfair and yada, yada, yada, right? So we’ve had to overcome some of that negative PR because of that.

So the Utility Advisory Committee is a great way for our good citizens who wanna get out there, influential citizens to come, be involved with what the Fort Pierce Utilities is doing. Hear from myself and other department heads directly about projects and the progress of certain capital things that are happening. Hear and really connect with our directors and our executive leadership. And have a way to influence those conversations so they can bring… It’s very much like a democratic kinda way where these citizens can bring, maybe some issues that their friends and neighbors have and bring it to our director. So he can address it in a right way and maybe make policies and procedures to account for that. So that’s a great way that the community can get involved.

The Utility Advisory Committee meets once a month on Wednesdays at our Energy Services Center building on 37th Street. That’s a great way to come. Those meetings are open to the public. Anybody’s invited to come and just kinda listen to some of the goings-on.

It’ll be a lot like this. It’ll be me presenting about something, or it’ll be somebody from electric engineering presenting about a new substation, so on and so forth. So it’s a great way to get involved with things. Not many people think about it on a daily basis.

The plan itself, we’ve actually got a couple different ways where you can keep up. Follow our socials, Facebook, and on LinkedIn. We post weekly updates about the wastewater plant project, it’s called Wastewater Wednesdays, we’re really proud of it.

Basically, myself or some other staff members take pictures of the construction progress, and we post every Wednesday with a quick little narrative that talks about what’s going on this week, right? The block is in, the concrete work is done. They’re out, they’re installing staircases this week, they got pipes going in this week. It’s a cool way to be really transparent with these public funds, right? ‘Cause this isn’t our money, this is our customer’s money and we wanna make sure they know we’re spending it the right way.

So this has been going since February of last year. Really cool. Every week you get to see some really technical pictures that not a lot of people get to see. It’s kinda like the stuff you see on Discovery Channel. How It’s Made or Dirty Jobs. You get to see that kind of internal snapshot of how these pipes come together.

I think when you were out there, we were actually able to look down into that 42-inch pipe and-

Caleta:

Yes.

Mike:

…you could hear the echoes coming back. It’s weird, you know? It’s kinda like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory before the chocolate gets there. (laughs).

Caleta:

(laughs). I love it. I love it.

And speaking to that, I think this is a really, if we can do it safely, can we get some kids out there to see what’s going on? Maybe working with some local partner agencies to get kids out there that may be involved in science or wanting to touch upon water quality. Some of our Marine Academy kids, maybe?

Mike:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, for sure the construction site might be a little tougher, but we’ve actually hosted a lot of boys and girls clubs, and after school tours to the island plant, the existing plant.

We’re actually able to walk them around, explain how it works, kinda answer their questions and, you know, kind of a simpler way, I try not to get too technical with it. But they can take a look at our microscope, they can actually see these bacteria alive under the slide. And it really brings it together, it kind of adds a little bit of flair to all that, I hate to say boring stuff we learned back in biology class. But I thought I would never use a microscope in the real world, and here I am using a microscope. So it’s pretty exciting.

But the new site, yeah, I would love to be able to host people, get them out there, go to see, we just gotta figure out the logistics of that-

Caleta:

Yeah.

Mike:

…’cause it’s still an active construction zone, so we just gotta be careful. That’s all.

Caleta:

You know me, I’m all about connecting dots. So-

Mike:

Yeah.

Caleta:

…I’m thinking with the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority playing such a, having such a huge task in front of them of moving this plant… has this impacted any of your partnerships with maybe St. Lucie County, or any other partnerships maybe St. Lucie Village?

Mike:

Um, not in a specific direct way. I know for sure St. Lucie Village, I think they’re about to come online as one of our new targeted septic to sewer zones. So we’re doing a lot of conversion of existing septic tanks in some of the older parts of our town that never got on-

Caleta:

Mm-hmm.

Mike:

…to the collection system. Maybe they were unincorporated and they were just too far away. But now we’re able to use low pressure sewer mains, like 2-inch, 3-inch lines that are very unobtrusive, they’re not hard to install into a community. We don’t have to tear up the roads and the swales to get it done. So we’re able to offer these customers for fairly low fee, and it could be added to their assessments or their tax bill.

And a new septic to sewer system, basically like a grinder pump station that replaces their septic tank, and gets rid of that septic seepage coming from their drain field. And discharging nitrogen and phosphorus into the soil. All that stuff gets washed into the river, creates problems. It creates that blue-green algae crisis that crippled us eight, nine years ago.

So yeah, it’s a great way to convert, find those little danger zones, and bring them back into the collection system. It helps in the environment, of course, it also helps Fort Pierce Utilities because now they become a new customer, now they get to help share those rate loads around, because the more customers they have, the lower overall impact when we have to have rate increases. So that’s a cool way to do that.

The county, the St. Lucie County, I think they’ve got, they’re moving forward with some of their own plans for wastewater facilities and water facilities out in the West corridor. I think they’re trying to get ready for the future growth that we all feared was coming, but now it’s coming.

They’re going west of Glades Cut-Off and it’s gonna keep going, I think, we’re strategically poised in that spot where the mainland is on that southwest corridor of our service territory. We’re ready for any of that south, southerly and western growth with Fort Pierce. We’d still love to do as much as we can in partnership with St. Lucie County, but I’m just not sure how that’s gonna play out over the next 5, 10 years.

Caleta:

That’s okay, I think we’re all in this together, right?

Mike:

Oh yeah.

Caleta:

Like, as this area grows, we’re gonna definitely connect those dots. And hopefully, like you said, do what’s best for the rate payers, for our citizens, visitors, and our Indian River Lagoon responsibly.

Mike:

Absolutely.

Caleta:

It’s been really a pleasure talking to you. We touched on some septic to sewer things, and I feel like that’s a whole other podcast, septic to sewer. (laughs).

Mike:

It can be. Yep. (laughs).

Caleta:

Yeah. Mike, you mentioned that people can reach you on the internet. What are those ways that they can reach you?

Mike:

Well, we have social media accounts on Facebook and LinkedIn. Just Fort Pierce Utilities Authority. You can search our company pages there, you’ll find all kinds of good updates beyond even just the wastewater plant stuff. It’s a great idea to keep an eye on that for public notices, road closures, any kind of oil, water notices we need to put out. That’s a great way to stay connected to us

Other than all just the automated phone calls that sometimes can be obtrusive. And wastewater specific updates, we have actually a website for that www.sustainablesewer.net, you’ll find all of those Wastewater Wednesday weekly vlogs, a lot of good information on septic to sewer conversions, and some of the gravity main slip line repairs that we’re doing.

So it’s a lot, it’s a cool way to stay connected to all of the happenings, and how we’re spending repair money responsibly.

Caleta:

I really wanna thank you, Mike, for making the time to share the good work that’s being done by the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority. Joining us on this podcast is a great way to achieve heightened public awareness, and highlight the coordinated intra-agency management of our Indian River Lagoon ecosystem.

Before we go, if you can make one wish for the Indian River Lagoon, what would it be?

Mike:

To grow all of its seagrass back and to get all the manatees back, and maybe a few less people.

(laughs). I’m just kidding.

Caleta:

(laughs). That’s okay. That’s your wish, Mike. And again, thank you so much for joining us.

Mike:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Caleta:

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