The City of Bradenton recently released 1.7 million gallons of partially treated sewage water into the Manatee River, but Mayor Gene Brown says work to fix the city’s chronic sewage system problems is already well underway.
The city reports that it released 1.7 million gallons of partially treated sewage on Sept. 8 in response to an overflow at the wastewater treatment plant property caused by heavy rainfall. The issue stems from aging sewage pipelines that allow stormwater to infiltrate the system and overwhelm the sewage treatment plant during times of heavy rain.
Despite recent issues, Brown told the Herald-Tribune that projects meant to address the problem are already in the works.
“It’s not wastewater that is overwhelming the system, it’s stormwater that is intruding into it,” Brown said. “We had to figure out what to do to make it better, so we came up with the ‘face it and fix it’ plan. That’s plant operations, lining the pipes and doing a lot of things. We are going to spend almost $250 million in the next 5 to 10 years to pay for that.”
Bradenton has a history of chronic sewage treatment problems
The city has at times been forced to release hundreds of millions of gallons of partially treated sewage water into the Manatee River in recent years, including at least 80 million gallons during the 2024 hurricane season.
Environmental advocates filed a lawsuit against the city that was settled in 2022 over an estimated 160 million gallons of wastewater discharged into the river between 2018 and 2021. Suncoast Waterkeeper Director Abbey Tyrna said the city is taking steps outlined in the settlement to address its sewage system problems, but said those fixes are taking longer than anticipated.
“Bradenton’s infrastructure is just so old that it was way behind the curve with updates that are needed to ensure that bypasses and spills were not continuing,” Tyrna said. “Due to huge delays in getting these things done we see that they continue to bypass into the river.”
The issue boiled over once again in 2024 when the city bypassed upwards of 79.8 million gallons of wastewater between Aug. 4 through Sept. 6 alone. The dates coincide with Hurricane Debby on Sept. 3 and heavy rainfall throughout the rest of the month. That led the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to issue a warning letter to the city as a result of the discharges.
“In 2024 they released over 100 million gallons within a period of a couple of months, and there has been a few smaller releases this year,” Tyrna said. “It’s definitely in the order of hundreds of millions of gallons that have gone into the Manatee River in the past few years. That’s not good, we don’t want to see these things occur. Sewage, whether fully treated, partially treated or raw has potential pathogens and nutrients and other things that can harm humans and the environment.”
More: Bradenton sewage releases continue to impact Manatee River; DEP issues a warning letter
Those figures do not include numerous other releases of partially treated sewage into the river that have occurred during other occasions, such as the 1.7 million gallon bypass on Sept. 8.
The city has already taken steps toward remedying the underlying issues, including ongoing efforts to line old sewage pipes citywide and outsourcing wastewater treatment plant operations to the Woodard and Curran engineering firm. The firm was able to hire employees who already work for the city at the plant as a part of the transition.
He said workers quickly identified overflows at the facility during the Sept. 8 incident and acted appropriately to bypass partially treated sewage water into the Manatee River rather than risk damage to the sewage treatment system itself.
“This is a company that has turned around plants, I think its 80 plants around the country that they manage and operate,” Brown said. “So now you have a network if there’s problems… They’ve been on since about 5 months ago, and things are operating smoothly.”
The bypassed wastewater “was up to 90% already treated,” Brown said. “That’s like an eyedropper in a bathtub when you do that amount. I don’t want to do any, that’s why we’re doing the equalization, that’s why we’re getting the clarifier up, but all of this stuff takes years to get going.”
The City of Bradenton is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into upgrades at its sewage treatment plant to address issues that overwhelm the facility during times of heavy rainfall. That includes a 1.7 million bypass of partially treated sewage on Sept. 8.
Nearly $250 million in Bradenton sewage treatment plant upgrades underway
The mayor estimates that about $100 million has already been invested into ongoing projects at the city’s sewage treatment plant, and that overall efforts will amount to nearly $250 million by the time the work is all done.
He said the city is working to build a new equalization tank to create a lined space to bypass excess sewage when necessary instead of being forced to bypass into the Manatee River. The city is also installing a large clarifier system, and aims to begin disposal of fully treated sewage water down an injection well soon, among other improvements at the plant.
From the archive: Bradenton settles lawsuit over 160 million gallons in sewage spills since 2018
The city expects to open a new $1.7 million equalization tank by the end of October. The facility will give the city the ability to bypass 3 million gallons of wastewater into the equalization tank, rather than the Manatee River, during times when the plant becomes overwhelmed by heavy rainfall.
“That means that when we do have a situation where we have to bypass excess flow we’ll be able to store 3 million gallons for a time period, then when the plant slows down we’ll be able to bring it back and process it,” Brown said.
The city is doubling the capacity of its clarifier system, which separates solids from liquid waste, by building a large clarifier that is three times the size of three existing systems already on site. The new $16.6 million system is expected to open by the end of the year. Brown said he is working with local legislators to lobby for a streamlined system after a prolonged permitting process that slowed the effort down.
“It took us a couple of years to get a Florida Department of Environmental Protection permit” Brown said. “We want to meet all the regulations environmentally, but if we could have gotten that permit a year sooner we could have gotten it open a year sooner. We’re working with our legislators, state and federal, and saying ‘can you help us get some of these things to make things happen quicker.'”
Bradenton is also building a $5.2 million injection well at the sewage treatment plant property to inject fully treated wastewater 1,600 feet underground rather than release it into the Manatee River. Brown said the effort puts Bradenton ahead of schedule on a mandate issued by the DEP in 2021 to stop releasing reclaimed water into Florida surface waters by 2032.
“We call it purple pipe water, and everybody knows if you see the purple backflows it means that its reclaimed,” Brown said. “Its safe to drink, but nobody wants to drink it so it goes to golf courses, it goes to Tropicana, it goes to Pirate City Plastics. We sell sometimes 2 million gallons a day to the Braden River watershed, which is the Lakewood Ranch area.”
“So we now have a well and we’ll be able to put water down into the aquifer instead of put it into the river,” he said. “The law says that we have to be out of the river by 2032, but if everything goes well we could be out years before that. That is our goal.”
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Bradenton releases 1.7 million gallons of sewage into river