Customers may foot bill for FPL Turkey Point sewage plant. Shouldn’t Biscayne Bay benefit?
State lawmakers may sign off on Florida Power & Light charging customers to cover the cost of building a wastewater treatment plant at Turkey Point — key to a nearly half-billion dollar plan to fix its troubled nuclear cooling canals.
A Florida House committee last week approved a bill that would extend “cost recovery” programs, which allow power companies to raise rates to cover expensive systems and updates, to include sewage treatment plants. The measure, supported by Miami-Dade County, is specifically tailored to help FPL resolve long-running problems with its sprawling and leaky nuclear cooling canal system, which has created an underground saltwater plume that threatens surrounding drinking water wells and adjacent Biscayne Bay.
Environmentalists argue the measure doesn’t go far enough and should be expanded to also help the bay, which has struggled with algae blooms and fish kills and needs far more freshwater itself. They want to see the county and FPL team up on a larger plant to help revive coastal wetlands and waters in the south bay and offset decades of damage from the plant and development that has blocked historic water flows.
“I would like to see lawmakers and FPL make this plant scaleable to recycle all wastewater generated in this area and help make it available for Biscayne Bay restoration,” said Laura Reynolds, a Friends of Biscayne Bay board member and Florida Keys Fishing Guides advocate. “Cost recovery is a step in the right direction; without the help of FPL and cost recovery this plant would likely be too cost prohibitive for a restoration project because of the high cost of energy. But the plant should be used for a greater purpose.”
The sewage treatment plant is part of an agreement struck last year between the utility and Miami-Dade County and could benefit both.
The county faces a 2025 state deadline requiring it to stop dumping partially treated sewage into the ocean and to reuse 60 percent of its wastewater. FPL, meanwhile, has been seeking more freshwater for its Turkey Point power plant.
The proposal emerged after a decade of discussion about ways to reduce salinity levels and other issues in Turkey Point’s cooling canals, which have leaked underground in surrounding areas. The unique system, used to cool the plant’s twin nuclear reactors, also has struggled with higher water temperatures and algae blooms that have at times reduced its effectiveness.
Originally, FPL intended to use up to 60 million gallons a day of treated sewage at Turkey Point, with some of the water pumped into the leaky canals and another portion going to a cooling tower attached to a natural-gas-powered generating facility called Unit 5. Last year, the utility dropped plans to use treated sewage in the canals after citing high processing costs to meet Biscayne Bay’s rigorous environmental standards.
Now, FPL intends to use up to 15 million gallons of treated sewage in the cooling tower of Unit 5 only. Then, if state environmental regulators agree, the company would be able to divert water it currently pulls for that unit from the Floridan aquifer, deep below the Biscayne Aquifer that supplies Miami-Dade much of its drinking water, to freshen up the nuclear cooling canals.
Using treated wastewater to restore wetlands also has long been considered an option to help the bay, which has been plagued by dwindling freshwater flows and harmful nutrient loads. But there are potential issues with that idea as well because it can be challenging and expensive to clean wastewater, particularly when it comes to certain chemicals and drugs that make their way into municipal sewage and can harm marine life.
When Miami-Dade and FPL announced the deal in June last year, the utility’s CEO Eric Silagy raised the possibility that the plant could be used to recharge the Biscayne Aquifer and restore water flow and quality to Biscayne Bay and wetlands. The company didn’t reply to questions this week on whether a scaleable plant is still the plan.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a proponent of more ambitious plans for the wastewater treatment plant while she was a commissioner, said last year she hoped the county would revisit plans to use the Turkey Point plant to treat more wastewater. She said that it was essential to create a plan that went beyond FPL’s needs. The mayor wasn’t immediately available to comment.
The bill also comes as federal, state and county agencies are working to figure out how to send more freshwater to the southern Everglades and Florida Bay, as well as to Biscayne Bay, which will benefit from Everglades restoration projects for the first time since the multibillion-dollar program started over two decades ago.
The House Tourism, Infrastructure and Energy Subcommittee last week approved a bill including treatment plants for cost recovery charges. It now needs to pass two more committees, while its identical bill in the Senate needs to pass one more.
The proposed cost recovery would potentially add to a four-year rate hike plan that FPL filed last week at the Florida Public Service Commission. The proposed base rate increases would lead to most customers seeing gradually more expensive monthly bills, starting with a $1.1 billion increase in base-rate revenues in 2022, or a 10.6% rise.
It’s not clear yet what the costs for the planned sewage treatment plant would be and how much FPL customers would pay. Last year, the county agreed to pay FPL $6.5 million per year through 2053 to support the project. The new sewage treatment facility is scheduled to be operational in 2026, according to the plan. While the county is expected to make a total of $182 million in payments, FPL will invest an estimated $300 million in building and operating the project, according to the agreement.
Turkey Point, the only nuclear plant in the country with a cooling system that uses canals instead of towers, received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate until 2053.
FPL originally planned to use wastewater in cooling towers for two new reactors. But the utility scrapped those plans after Westinghouse, the company that would build the reactors, filed for bankruptcy in 2017. Former Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez then proposed dumping the treated sewage into the canals to help cool them.
But because the unlined canals seep water into Biscayne Bay and surrounding groundwater, treated wastewater going into the cooling system would need to be processed to a much higher standard than what’s used in other power plants, which would make the project too expensive, FPL said at the time. Those costs will likely be addressed during discussion of the bill, a potential opportunity to discuss expanding the scope of the sewage plant.
“This would be a win-win-win for Everglades restoration, the recovery of Biscayne Bay and to help put an end to ocean outfalls,” Reynolds said.
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 9:27 AM.
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