The first-ever visit by an aide to Sen. Rick Scott–or by any senator or his aides–to Palm Coast’s troubled Waste Water Treatment Plant #1 today left City Council member Charles Gambaro, who arranged the visit, thinking “it’s a 50-50 chance” that the city may get financial help to lessen a projected $240 million bill to upgrade and expand the sewer plant.
The more federal and state grants the city can secure, the less residents will have to pay in higher water and sewer rates. Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed what would have been a $35 million appropriation for the sewer plant.
“Through the congressional process, there are no guarantees, but they’re willing to try,” Gambaro said moments after Barry Cotton, Scott’s Central Florida District Director, left the grounds of the sewer plant after a 90-minute visit. “They’re willing to provide letters of support for any grant, federal grant applications, or even appropriations projects.”
City staffers briefed Cotton on the plant’s history and challenges before he toured the 30-acre facility in the heart of the Woodlands. Cotton, who’d never been to Palm Coast before, took copious notes and asked numerous, technical questions–it was not a PR visit by any means–but made no promises.
“This is a critical need for our community, and we have to take action by asking for help or look at how we can generate that revenue locally, and it’s not a fun discussion,,” Gambaro told Cotton at the beginning of the briefing. “This is a critical need for our community, and I think we have to have an honest discussion about it.”
Palm Coast has two sewer plants. ITT, which built the original part of Palm Coast, built the older sewer plant in 1971 with a capacity of 300,000-gallon-per-day. The plant expanded over the years, adding capacity and changing hands, until the city bought it for $83 million in 2003. It now has a capacity of 6.83 million gallons per day.
But it’s officially at 99 percent capacity, with just 313,000 gallons per day of capacity left, and 70 to 75 percent of new utility customers’ waste streaming into the plant, Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo told Cotton. The rest flows to the city’s second sewer plant, which is being expanded from 2 to 4 million gallons per day.
When rain events drench the city, the plant goes over capacity, sometimes by millions of gallons: during Hurricane Milton last October, 18 million gallons per day were flowing through the plant for several days. Less than two weeks ago, a 1.5-inch rain storm caused capacity to be overrun by 1.5 million gallons the first day and 1.3 million gallons the second day, Interim City Manager Lauren Johnston said.
The state Division of Environmental Protection calculates capacity based on averages, and makes no distinction between house waste and stormwater, even though the two are significantly different. Because of rain events, those averages have exceeded the plant’s capacity for several months in 2024. And because of that, the plant is under a consent order by DEP to upgrade the plant. Hence the $240 million bill ahead. (That sum will rise over time because of inflation and rising costs.)
Cotton’s briefing was conducted by Peter Roussell, the city utility’s deputy director, Danny Ashburn, the utility manager of the wastewater division (he’s been with the utility since 1981, when it was still an ITT operation), Johnston and DeLorenzo.
“Everything we’re talking about today is capacity-driven’ Ashburn told Cotton. He outlined the priorities for the plant’s expansion, starting with a needed, 6 million-gallon “equalization tank” that could accumulate excess stormwater during heavy rain events so as not to overburden the plant.
The plant itself is facing a $90 million modernization, to be in line with state environmental regulations. The city is also hoping to build an additional 9 million-gallon equalization plant off site to store recycled water until it can be distributed. The equalization tanks can be built faster–in about a year–than the broader modernization of the plant, and provide immediate relief.
For residents and businesses, higher rates are on the way regardless, but that’s been the case every year since 2011. What’s still uncertain is by how much the rates will increase once the City Council approves the next schedule. The council hears a key presentation along those lines next week.
Ultimately, Gambaro said today, development impact fees–the one-time charge builders and developers pay every time they build a house, an apartment building or a business–will account for 60 percent of the needed capital costs, while rates will account for 40 percent. The council raised impact fees last year, but resisted raising rates just yet, as a previous schedule of rate hikes had still not rolled out completely (2024 was the last year of that cycle of rate increases).
The governor vetoed all water appropriations last year because those requests were shifted to the relatively new, $400 million fund generated by the Seminole Tribe gambling compact. “To this point we haven;t been able to unlock those dollars,” DeLorenzo said. “We submitted for this project, but it didn’t really meet the criteria,” Those criteria must be expanded if the city is to have a chance at some dollars from that pot, he said.
“We understand that we have to have some skin in the game for this part of the funding. We’re just asking for help now,” Gambaro told Scott’s senate aide, underscoring the fact that city residents and business will be doing their share.
Hurricane Milton was barely done dumping flood-level rains on Palm Coast when Gambaro, appointed to the City Council just days earlier, donned boots and fatigues and toured the city to take the measure of the storm’s impact. The city made it through almost unscathed, but at a cost, especially to its utility system. He contacted Scott’s office to understand the process for requesting federal infrastructure funds, then met with Scott’s policy team in D.C., setting up Cotton’s subsequent visit.
Gambaro said he is replicating the same efforts in Tallahassee. “What’s nice about being born and raised here in Florida is that a lot of my college classmates are the number two guy in the State Senate, and other representatives from around the state,” he said. “I’m doing everything I can to leverage my personal network and professional network to fight for the citizens of Palm Coast.”
