Tampa Bay Water warns of dry start to year, discusses joint ASR concept with City of Tampa

Chief Science Officer Warren Hogg told the board the region entered its dry season early, with historically low rainfall and a 12-month river-flow deficit. He said river flow in the Hillsborough River is roughly 5,000,000 gallons per day below average and the agency delivered about 208,160,000 gallons per day to members for the first three months of the fiscal year. Hogg noted South Hillsborough recorded a December demand of roughly 59,600,000 gpd, a new record for that service area.

Hogg highlighted that the agency’s desalination facility is back online and producing approximately 14–15 million gallons per day, providing high-quality supplemental supply. He warned staff expect warmer and drier spring conditions that may push the system closer to permit limits and possibly to higher stages of the agency’s water-shortage mitigation plan.

On a separate but related topic, Hogg summarized high-level conversations with City of Tampa staff about the city’s water-use permit and a concept to jointly permit the eight aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) wells as a regional facility. The city’s renewal application requests continued withdrawals up to 82,000,000 gpd from the Hillsborough River; the joint concept would separate ASR well permitting and could, if feasible, allow the region to capture an estimated 3,280,000 gpd from high-flow events for storage.

Board members asked technical questions about ASR geology, storage effectiveness and risk; staff recommended continuing discussions with member utility directors and legal counsel and returning to the board with further-developed proposals and financial terms if the concept advances.