ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The city of St. Petersburg has accelerated its flood infrastructure projects and hopes to keep the sewers flowing during the upcoming hurricane season, according to Mayor Ken Welch.
“Originally, many of these projects weren’t scheduled to be completed for another three to five years,” he said. “We’re expediting timelines, elevating critical infrastructure, flood proofing buildings and installing new pump stations.”
Welch and other city leaders gathered on a new platform for generators, elevated to 11 feet above sea level, at the Northeast Water Reclamation Facility on Tuesday to highlight the city’s disaster preparedness efforts.
Public Works Administrator Claude Tankersley said the $70 million project to harden the sewer plant facility, which began in 2022, will be complete ahead of schedule.
“The project was originally supposed to be completed next year, next summer,” he said. “Some of it is going to be completed this summer and the rest will be completed either by the end of this year or early next spring.”
Last September, a 6.3 foot storm surge from Hurricane Helene flooded critical equipment at the Northeast plant forcing the city to shut it down for the first time, affecting 25 percent of the residents. About two weeks later, when Hurricane Milton was predicted to send a 15 foot storm surge into St. Petersburg, the city shut down both the Northeast plant and Southwest plant, affecting 66 percent of residents.
“Our goal ultimately is not have to shut down during a storm that would be similar to what we saw in Milton or Helene,” said Tankersley. ”That we would be able to safely protect the equipment as well as the employees.”
Tankersley said to protect against a 15 foot storm surge, public works plans to build a 4 foot wall on top of the 11 foot platform which will surround and protect the generators.
“We’re building a wall around the edge,” he said. “That will lift it up to the 15 feet.”
Last year, during a storm press conference, Welch said, “we responded to what was a decades-long vulnerability at these plants.” On Tuesday, Welch said the city is addressing the problem in real time.
“Now, some may ask why did the city wait so long to act? And the fact is, we did not. These projects were already in the pipeline based upon the best available science and projections at the time,” he said. “What we’ve done is take aggressive action to accelerate these projects based on our updated data and our experience with our current realities.”
The mayor said current plans call for spending $545 million in additional infrastructure project investments over five years. For the upcoming hurricane season, the city has purchased an AquaFence for lift station 85 and has purchased three new high-water vehicles for St. Pete Fire Rescue to respond to flooding.
The improvements were supported by the St. Pete Agile Resilience Plan (SPAR) to strengthen the city’s infrastructure. In the last nine years, the city has invested nearly $1 billion in funding for resiliency projects, according to the communications office.