Potential St. Petersburg sewage plant solutions include a massive wall

Roughly two-thirds of the city’s residents depend on the vulnerable northeast and southwest facilities, which were shuttered during recent storms.

Storm-hardening two of St. Petersburg’s wastewater treatment facilities shuttered during recent hurricanes was a prominent topic at a recent City Council meeting.

Administrators will consider any innovative storm resiliency solutions amid increasingly severe extreme weather events. Efforts to elevate the Northeast Water Reclamation Facility — rendered useless during hurricanes Helene and Milton — are underway.

The most vulnerable sewage treatment plant in St. Petersburg can withstand a 7-foot storm surge, which the city had never experienced before Helene. A $70 million project will increase that threshold to 11 feet, 2 feet above the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood elevation.

However, meteorologists expected Milton to inundate the area with a 12-to-15-foot wall of water. At the Dec. 5 City Council meeting, Claude Tankersley, public works director, said the estimated storm surge for a Category 5 hurricane is between 25 and 42 feet.

“If we were to raise the plant to be safe under 42 feet of a storm surge — that’s probably not feasible,” Tankersley said. “We probably couldn’t afford to do that, and I’m sure the surrounding neighborhoods probably wouldn’t like to see a four-story wastewater treatment plant right next to them.”