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Mayor Kriseman: Cost of St. Petersburg plan for preventing sewage spills could top $3B

Rick Kriseman said the city doesn't have a sewage problem, it has a stormwater problem.

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman announced Monday the city has completed its stormwater and wastewater master plan.

Kriseman said the long-term plan to address the city’s increasingly stressed infrastructure will be a hefty but necessary investment.

“Our integrated water resources master plan takes everything into consideration. It is ambitious and quite frankly it is expensive,” Kriseman said. “It may ultimately cost the city about $3 billion over the next 20 years.”

According to city staff, St. Pete has already invested more than $280 million into repairs and enhancements of its aging infrastructure. Kriseman said it all started with a 2015 phone call from a Creative Loafing Tampa reporter asking about a sewage spill in Clam Bayou.