The mayor of St. Petersburg has presented a plan for the sewage problems plaguing the city.
The mayor is laying out both short term and long term plans and neighborhoods with overflows are ready for action.
“We actually had sewage coming up in our shower and in the main bathtub in the main bathroom and that’s not nice,” Dominick Griesi said.
Not nice is an understatement. You probably remember, the city of St. Petersburg was forced to dump tens of millions of gallons of partially-treated sewage into the bay.
Thursday, Mayor Kriseman shared his plans to fix the city’s sewer system. In the short term, he’s spend $45 million by April 2019. Long-term, spend another $259 million by 2021. The money would go toward lining, sealing and reliability improvements. He also plans to increase capacity at existing plants and repair manhole leakage.
The mayor’s fixes total $304 million but right now, the city still needs to raise about half of that. Griesi said as neighborhood president, he’s talking to the mayor about what’s needed.
“It’s something he inherited but he assured me he’s going to work on it, stay on top of it,” Griesi said.
The mayor said his proposed increased to the system capacity will be best to cut down on discharges, like what Griesi saw on his street.
“We’ve never had this problem ever, never, this is the worst it’s ever been,” Griesi said.No plans were set Thursday.
To find out more about the sewage plan, visit: http://www.stpete.org/public_works/index.php.
