A collaborative project to treat and transport water and wastewater in Levy County will undergo a major redesign after the community slated to house the new facilities withdrew its membership.
The Town of Bronson, Town of Otter Creek and Cedar Key Water and Sewer District formed the Waccasassa Water and Wastewater Cooperative, or W3C, in June 2023 with the goal of improving water and wastewater services in the three small municipalities.
Bronson left the cooperative in May following a 4 to 1 vote by its town council.
“I’m not looking for the best interest of Otter Creek or Cedar Key,” said Bronson councilwoman Virginia Phillips. “We have to do what’s best for Bronson, no matter how good it is for them.”
The cooperative’s engineers are exploring ways to move the plan forward without Bronson, said Zim Padgett and Sue Colson, chair and vice-chair of the group who represent Otter Creek and Cedar Key, respectively.
Following Bronson’s departure, “the project's not over,” Colson said. “It is going two directions.”
One option is to buy the land the cooperative needs to source water from Bronson. The other is to pump it out from somewhere else.
Buying from Bronson
The original $138 million plan included a well field and water treatment plant to pump out groundwater in Bronson, underground pipes to move it to Otter Creek and Cedar Key, and a new wastewater treatment facility in Bronson to process the returning wastewater.
Crews drilled a well in Bronson before the town withdrew to test if the area could sustain the level of groundwater pumping the project would require. State grants covered the $400,000 cost. The well passed water quality and quantity tests, results from March show.
Now, that well is in limbo. The cooperative owns the well itself, but the Town of Bronson owns the land.
Though the town council voted against it, “we have not completely given up on the thought that Bronson might be willing to sell us the property that the well sits on,” Colson said.
Bronson’s attorney, Walker Bullock, didn’t respond to WUFT’s question on the status of the negotiations by the time of publication.
Finding a new source of water
The cooperative is also exploring alternate sources of groundwater in the area. Those locations aren’t public yet, Padgett said, and will be discussed at the group’s next regular meeting in July.
All waters belong to the state according to Florida law. Still, the cooperative needs access to the land above its groundwater source to build the facilities and pipeline it envisions.
Staff from the cooperative’s engineering consultant, Dewberry, highlighted “a large planning area south of Chiefland” as one preliminary option at an emergency meeting in June, though it would have special environmental considerations because of its proximity to Manatee Springs.
“Before any more progress on a potential project location, Cedar Key Water and Sewer Authority is working to confirm their capacity needs, which drives the necessary size of the W3C facility, a critical first step prior to location alternatives,” a Dewberry representative wrote to WUFT.
Uncertain funding future
The three municipalities initially joined forces after a 2022 study commissioned by the Suwannee River Water Management District suggested they’d be able to tackle water concerns more effectively as a group than on their own.
Forming a coalition made the group more competitive for grant funding, Colson said, an important consideration as it aimed to cover the project’s full cost with grants.
”Rural counties have little municipalities that have no ability to raise money or get grants because they're too small and their problems are very, very large, " she said. “So this is a way to band communities together to be stronger.”
Padgett and Colson aren’t sure how Bronson’s departure will affect their funding, including $850,000 allocated to the cooperative in this year’s legislative budget awaiting the Governor’s signature.
“There's nothing out there on the table that says anything's changed,” Padgett said.
He emphasized that Otter Creek still needs the project. The town relies entirely on septic tanks and providing residents with clean drinking water is a “constant, expensive process,” Padgett said. “We get it fixed and then it goes out again.”
Colson previously echoed similar concerns for Cedar Key, saying the island’s drinking water requires extensive treatment and its wastewater facility is at a high risk of flooding.
“Eventually, it will happen,” she said of the project. “How fast? I don’t know.”
