By Anne Geggis
After years of planning, the replacement of Delray Beach’s 72-year-old water treatment plant is officially underway with the City Commission authorizing $15 million for its first construction phase.
At the plant’s age, it is no longer able to break down synthetic chemical compounds, although the water it produces does meet state and federal drinking water guidelines, said Hassan Hadjimiry, the city’s utilities director.
The replacement, like the existing one, will filter water through a membrane that separates contaminants from the final product. The new one is being designed to better filter out PFAs in the water, better known as “forever chemicals” that don’t naturally break down and can build up in the blood over time.
Suzanne Mechler, client service leader with CDM Smith, the city’s contractor for the first phase of the project, said that if all goes well — and the company gets awarded the bid for the entire project — construction would begin in the summer of 2025 and be completed in 2027.
Built into the timing: qualifying for Florida’s State Revolving Fund grant program. The estimated total cost of the project has ballooned in recent years from $60 million to upwards of $120 million, so the city is looking for some help.
“That design is important because there’s also an SRF grant that’s out there that we want to help support and get that timing so that you guys are available for the next grant cycle,” Mechler said.
Challenges will include buffering the adjoining neighborhood to the plant — at 200 SW Sixth St. — from the construction, and building a new plant while the old one operates on the same site, Mechler said.
The unanimous motion to approve the contract marked a milestone for Mayor Shelly Petrolia, who won the mayor’s seat just as the condition of the city’s water came under increasing scrutiny, she said. The March 5 meeting at which the commission signed off on the deal was her last official one presiding on the dais.
She recalled a tour of the water plant where she saw key parts that looked like relics from the 1950s.
“It’s unbelievable that that’s what is operating this whole plant of ours,” Petrolia said. “It’s just amazing. … We have not done anything really to update that in decades. And it is well past time.”
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