How Residential Growth Forced Palm Coast's Hand on Infrastructure
: this is one of two related s today. See: " Palm Coast Approves 1st Steps Toward $240 Million Sewer Expansion; Higher Utility Rates Will Pay For It ."
A combination of sharp growth that's not paying for itself, a consent decree–or mandatory order–by the state and increasingly intense rain events have combined to force Palm Coast to rapidly expand its two sewer plants, resulting in significant capacity by 2028 but at significant cost: one of the two plant expansions will cost $245 million, between design and construction costs, and likely more by the time it's done around 2028. The city has no choice in that timeline because of the consent decree, just as the Palm Coast City Council will have no choice but to raise utility rates next year. (See: " Palm Coast Faces State Order to Build Up Sewer Capacity by 2028 as System Falters .")
The state Department of Environmental Protection enforces cities' and counties' compliance with water and sewer regulations, including what's called sanitary sewer overflows, or SSOs. The city's Wastewater Treatment Plant 1, or WWTF-1, went over capacity with such overflows several times this year: It processed 8.7 million gallons per day in September (averaged out over the month), well beyond the 6.83 million capacity, and so far this month, it's at 10.8 million.
On a single day during Hurricane Milton, 17 million gallons flowed through the plant. Not to worry: it can handle up to 20 million gallons, but that amount won't be treated at the standards required by state regulations. So while no wastewater is "backing up" anywhere, it's a matter of sanitation standards, not backflows, that concern state regulators. Because of those capacity problems, DEP issued a consent decree to the city in July. A consent decree is like a legal order requiring the city to do whatever is necessary to come into compliance, or face fines. Consent orders are not unusual. DEP issues about 1,000 such consent orders around the state every year. But no local governments likes to be under such an order. "There's other communities around us that also have received consent decrees, especially when you go through rapid growth in high periods of rain," Carl Cote, the city's stormwater and engineering director, said. "We're not the only ones."
The city's second sewer plant, which began operating in 2018, has not been overwhelmed, but operates at a much lower capacity of 2 million gallons per day. It's undergoing its own expansion to 4 million gallons per day, soon to be completed. It will absorb half a million gallons per day from WWTF-1, thus reducing the pressure on the older plant as it takes more time to expand.
Residents–and at least one council member–though the city could or should have capacity to handle all water flows no matter the severity of a storm. That's a misconception. It will never happen, city officials caution. "You're not going to build a wastewater treatment facility to take on peak wet weather conditions," Blake said. Yes, the city's larger sewer plant can handle 20 million gallons per day, but that can't be sustained day after day because that flow is not being treated at peak capacity. On the other hand, the water flowing at such a high rate tends to be stormwater, which requires less treatment. But there is also no question that growth has overtaken the city's infrastructure, and that, judging by the successive rate increases residents have paid over the last 15 years, and will continue to pay over the foreseeable future, the notion that growth in any way pays for itself continues to be proven wrong. The city is able to hold the line on property taxes, but only by shifting costs to water, sewer, stormwater and garbage fees, all of which have risen sharply over the years.
Over the last 24 years, a total of 32,200 houses have been built in Palm Coast, 25,200 of them on so-called "infill" lots laid out, or platted, by ITT before Palm Coast became a city, and the rest in subdivisions the city has since platted.
Construction has been especially brisk since 2020, though not matching the pace of 2002 to 2006, before the housing bust.
The city can't plan after the fact, either. One way or another, it has to plan for the future. It became a little gun-shy after the crash, which may explain why it was a bit slow with planning for more wastewater capacity. But it is doing so now, and again making population growth projections based on the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research (the state Department of Environmental Projection recommends that local governments base their projections on BEBR's projections.) These "may or may not be accurate," Blake said. "This is just a guess, basically an educated guess." Projections are in five-year increments, with low, medium and high estimates for each county. The low estimate for Flagler County's population in 2030 is 133,000, the medium projection is 152,900, and the high projection is 172,000. The middle and high-end projections have tended to overshoot. BEBR's 2012 low-end projection for Flagler County's population in 2030 was 137,000, and for 2020, it was 120,000–pretty close to the mark.
Blake said the city uses the high end projections, "the potential worst-case scenarios," he said. But those high projections have never panned out. In 2012, for example, the high projection for Flagler County (with Palm Coast accounting for 80 percent of that population) was 154,400 in 2020, and 188,000 in 2025. When BEBR issued its projections in 2006, right around the time when Palm Coast was planning that new wastewater treatment plant, its high estimate for Flagler County in 2025 was a population of 245,000.
The city looks at those future figures not only to plan for infrastructure, but to plan on new revenue. City officials had during those earlier boom years made several big construction plans based on expected future growth, including a utility plant, stormwater projects and the expansion of Old Kings Road south of Town Center Boulevard. After the crash, when expected new residents did not materialize–nor did the revenue they were expected to pump into city coffers–existing residents had to pick up the tab for those projects.
It's perhaps with that in mind that City Council ember Theresa Pontieri during a discussion on a different but not unrelated issue–the city's debt policy–raised a caution: "My concern is a reliance on future growth to pay debt," she said. "I don't like that. I think that we should be dependent on what our current rates are and what our current population is, to pay debt that we take out, rather than saying, well, we anticipate XYZ growth, therefore we will be able to pay this debt back. That is borrowing from several Peters that may be coming into the city to pay Paul. And I don't like that, and I also don't like that reliance on having to promote that growth in order to pay our debt."
Pontieri will be the senior member of the council when it contends with utility rate increases in a few months.
