Water, tax dollars, and public trust continue to ooze out of Tampa Bay Water’s C.W. Bill Young reservoir
July 28, 2009 at 6:14 am by Kelly Cornelius
By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist
I have been following the developments on the concrete-deficient, cracked CW Bill Young reservoir in eastern Hillsborough County for quite some time now, mainly because if that heap actually has any water in it when if it breaks, I won’t have to drive to the other coast to go surfing! (Or in my case drive to the other coast to go fall off my surfboard.) Tampa Bay Water voted recently to repair the cracks in the reservoir at a cost of $125 million (let’s not forget the whole thing cost $145 million to build in the first place). It was completed in 2005 and we first heard about the cracks in 2007 when the thing was just a mere two years old.
The fact that Tampa Bay Water is suing the company that designed the reservoir, HDR, is bad enough but the fact that Hillsborough County officials continue to give them millions of your dollars in other contracts is government at its worst. HDR received a $2.5 million contract for the Lithia Pinecrest PD & E study and most recently a $1.5 million contract from the Hillsborough County Commission for yet another project this past March! The only two Commissioners voting NO on that item (which had to be pulled from the Consent Agenda where it was buried) were Commissioners Rose Ferlita and Kevin Beckner. Ferlita pulled it off the Consent Agenda and later asked for a report regarding the Consent agenda itself (this earlier article suggests that she could support consent agenda reform) and Beckner asked for a report showing all the contracts HDR had been awarded from the County. Say it with me Thank You Commissioners Ferlita and Beckner! The other Commissioners happily voted to throw more money and work at HDR. It looked like the only Commissioners HDR contributes to was Chairman Ken “Half Truth” Hagan but then I stumbled upon this HDR, Inc a PAC that recently contributed to Commissioner Mark Sharpe (not a crime just interesting) This website shows the fortune that HDR contributes to political campaigns. By the way, it looks like HDR isn’t a stranger to lawsuits. No stranger at all it appears.
This article in the Times states that when Tampa Bay Water asked HDR for a copy of the computer modeling of the reservoir design that HDR said it was only on one engineer’s laptop and it was stolen from his car while he was jogging in Tampa. WTF? I have a very hard time believing this but let’s just say it is true. I wonder if there is only one copy of the other projects you are paying HDR millions for getting over-heated in an engineer’s car somewhere just waiting to be stolen? County staff tout HDR as the best company for their awarded jobs despite the fact that their track record looks like it has as many cracks as the reservoir. Should such incompetence be awarded with more contracts worth millions? Five of our seven commissioners thought so.
This column from Howard Troxler of the St Petersburg Times illustrates his frustrations at a regional water board and inability to hold them accountable. This is what we NIMBY’s, activitists and concerned citizens have been screaming about regarding TBARTA (the newly created regional transportation authority promising rail). By creating regional authorities and sprinkling their board with a few elected officials from surrounding counties NOBODY can ever really be held accountable. On Tampa Bay Water, for example, I can vote for (or against) only two of its nine member board. On TBARTA, I can’t vote for or against any of its members because the commissioner on that board from Hillsborough is not from my district. So, as much controversy and as many battles that I have already fought with TBARTA regarding the Green Swath of Death, I can’t cast a vote for or against any of its 15-member board, yet they have control over whether a toll road would have destroyed my community.
Here is the real kicker – who came up with the idea for these regional authorities? Special interests that is who. The Partnership created not only Tampa Bay Water but also TBARTA and now ONEBAY. Seems to me they want to take control of anything having to do with growth (water, transportation and land use). By creating regional rather than local boards and peppering them with elected officials from several counties it dilutes any power the local voting public might have over these entities but at the same time they get government to fund them……and bail them out. Pretty good deal, huh?
Sadly, the general public appears to have no idea that local control is severely weakened if not completely handed over as the State Legislature creates these quasi-governmental agencies at the requests of special interests and then sends you the bill for it. The reservoir issue illustrates the dangers of giving away local control for the regional “good”. It makes life easier on our politicians because they only take a fraction of the blame and we can’t hold them accountable. Jackpot – for them! Not that some of our local bozos are any prize but at least we can vote them out. Little by little the public is losing any voice we might have had.
People have been building reservoirs for a long time (according to this article as early as 600 B.C.) and so this doesn’t seem like new technology yet ours failed miserably just two years after completion and now it will cost almost as much to repair as it did to build. TBW’s other big project the desal plant has its own poor track record. (and also appears to be a money pit)
This is a basic service that we rely our government to provide us with – water and yet they have major problems doing it efficiently and this is at a regional backyard level. And some of you want big government to run Health Care. Think about it.
Update: I did hear from Commissioner Sharpe this morning and he relayed that he is meeting with the General Manager of TBW tomorrow. He promises answers ASAP.
