Fort Pierce - Thursday February 9, 2023: The Fort Pierce Utilities Authority (FPUA) has received a $15 million grant from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to assist with the cost of relocating the FPUA sewer treatment plant.
The money will help cover the cost of constructing the new Mainland Water Reclamation Facility and for the restoration of 2.23 acres of seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon.
The funding comes from the Resilient Florida grant program. The award was announced last week by Governor DeSantis. The Resilient Florida program aims to enhance Florida’s efforts to protect our waterways, coastlines, and shores using a coordinated approach to coastal and inland resiliency.
On February 6, the Governor announced that money will be available immediately using already-appropriated funding. In the announcement DeSantis said that projects like FPUA’s wastewater treatment plant relocation “will ensure inland and coastal communities are prepared for the impacts of storm surge, hurricanes, and flooding, continuing our aggressive efforts to protect Florida’s natural resources and infrastructure."
“This award is an investment in the resiliency of Fort Pierce and our critical utility infrastructure,” said FPUA Utility Director Javier Cisneros. “The relocation of our aging sewer treatment plant is our single largest active project and we are grateful to Governor DeSantis and the FDEP for their tremendous support.”
This award also represents a proactive effort by FPUA to seek grant funding in support of the relocation project and other critical utility projects.
FPUA’s new Public Affairs and Sustainability Department, focused both on public engagement and grants, has submitted over $40 million worth of grant proposals in under one year.
“These grants will provide a great benefit to the FPUA utility and customers, who would otherwise be funding these projects through rates,” said Public Affairs and Sustainability Manager Rachel Tennant.
This critical project removes the existing island sewer treatment plant from the shores of the Indian River Lagoon, and places the new treatment plant five miles west, far away from the lagoon and in an industrial area away from neighborhoods. The project will replace aging infrastructure with new technology, increase resilience, limit potential environmental impacts, and better serve the community.
The upgraded plant will be more energy-efficient and cost less to operate, saving our customers money. Its location next door to the Florida Municipal Power Agency’s natural gas power plant adds a unique sustainability element to the project too. The project will reduce an average two million gallons per day of draw from Florida’s aquifers by instead utilizing reuse water from the sewer plant for the 300 MW power plant cooling towers.
To learn more about this important relocation project, visit www.sustainablesewer.net.