By Anne Geggis
Delray Beach is getting ready to take on a whole lot more water — upgrading a 50-year-old barrier island pumping station to make it the city’s largest, able to pump almost five times its current capacity.
The $11 million upgrade to the Thomas Street Pumping Station, expected to start this fall, is being designed to handle a three-day storm so severe it’s only supposed to happen every 100 years. The upgrade, projected to be completed in 2026, will also be able to meet the 10- to 14-inch sea-level rise the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts for Florida’s East Coast in the next 30 years, according to city documents.
As it is now, the pumping station that protects a 50-acre drainage basin from flooding is reaching the end of its functional life and doesn’t have the capacity to clean stormwater discharge before it gets routed into the Intracoastal Waterway. At times, this station has stopped working and, in 2019, it landed on a list of the city’s 10 most urgent capital improvements.
First, though, the upgrade to stop flooding on beachside properties, including those on Thomas Street, Vista Del Mar Drive and parts of Andrews Avenue, is going to mean using some private property. Some of it is needed temporarily, some permanently, from the Ocean Breeze Estates subdivision along the Intracoastal, a couple of blocks north of Atlantic Avenue.
The City Commission on May 7 authorized City Manager Terrence Moore to offer the owner of 142 Seabreeze Ave. $179,500 for an easement to land at that address necessary for the upgraded pump station west of Seabreeze Avenue. The owner of 202 Seabreeze is going to get an offer of $139,750 for another easement, according to city documents.
If negotiations — which city documents say have been underway since 2021 — don’t pan out, the City Commission authorized eminent domain proceedings for the easements to begin because these easements serve a public purpose.
The entire properties have multimillion-dollar values. At 142 Seabreeze Ave., the property is valued at about $2.2 million, according to the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s Office. The 202 property is valued at $5.4 million.
The owner of the latter property, Terrance Shallenberger Jr. of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, said he’s aware the city wants an easement on his .3-acre property, but he doesn’t yet know the particulars.
An exchange of letters between the city and an attorney representing the property owners indicates that issues about aesthetics, the noise and how the new station may render key parts of their properties permanently unusable have not been resolved, it appears.
The city has budgeted $6 million for upgrading this pumping station so it’s capable of pumping 85,000 gallons of water per minute. The bulk of the remaining cost of the upgrade is coming from Florida Department of Environmental Protection grants that total $4.3 million, city officials said.
Such an upgrade will dwarf the capacity of the current Delray Beach station that can pump the most water. Atlantic Avenue’s station, located near Venetian Drive, can pump only 30,000 gallons per minute.
The city also plans to add a pumping station at Marine Way on the west side of the Intracoastal, south of Atlantic Avenue. When it’s finished, it’s going to be the second-largest pump station among the city’s eight stations, with a capacity to pump 60,000 gallons per minute.
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