Smelly, brown water in Palm River homes close to being tapped out

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Joseph Westbrook holds water samples from two of his neighbors, one showing sediment and the other cloudiness. He says people in his Palm River neighborhood are having trouble getting onto a public water system. JAY CONNER/STAFF

TAMPA — Pat Odor says he spends $35-$40 a month on filters so the water that flows from his faucets and shower isn't brown with iron. Still, when heavy rains fall and the water table rises, his well water smells like rotten eggs because of hydrogen sulfide.
So when Odor heard Hillsborough County utilities was going to start extending water lines into the Palm River area southeast of Tampa, he was overjoyed.
“That sounds just wonderful,” said Odor who has lived in Palm River since 1968. “It's not something out here that we take for granted. The water has always been bad.”
Palm River residents and business owners have been trying to get better water for decades. The working-class neighborhood is in Tampa's utility service area under an agreement the city and county signed in 1979. But Tampa officials repeatedly have said the city can't afford to supply the area with water.
“This has been a very long road for our neighbors out in Palm River,” said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a Tampa Democrat who worked on Palm River water issues as a county commissioner. “They were really caught in a horrendous situation where they were county residents in a city service area.”

When County Commissioner Les Miller took office in November 2010, he promised he would make it a priority to get county water to Palm River.
“Mr. Miller took it, said this is important to residents, and ran with it,” said Joe Westbrook, who grew up in nearby Clair Mel and moved to Palm River in 1998. “(Miller) and his staff stayed on this from Day 1.”
Miller was on a trade mission trip to Chile on Monday and could not be reached for comment.
The county has budgeted $2 million for the project, with construction likely to start next summer. Florida's Department of Environmental Protection awarded a $500,000 grant to the county for the project.
The new water lines will be extended from an area that already has public water service east of South 70th Street. The initial work is planned for two phases, ultimately covering most of the area east of Maydell Drive, between Causeway Boulevard and 16th Avenue South.
Expanding the coverage to the entire Palm River area will take “many years and many dollars,” according to a Nov. 13 county document.
“We're going to start with a genuine effort to extend water lines down a few streets and see how successful we are getting those residents to connect,” said Public Utilities director George Cassady. “The worst thing that could happen is we build this and no one wants to connect.”
Cassady said he doesn't know how much it will cost individual households to hook-up to the water lines once they're ready. The financial hit will be cushioned somewhat by allowing payment plans over a 10- or 20-year period.
“We're not going to come and charge someone $10,000 and it's due tomorrow,” Cassady said.
Even with a payment plan, the cost of individual hook-ups will be challenging for many Palm River families. According to the U.S. Census, the area that combines Palm River and Clair Mel, another unincorporated area to the east, has a median household income of $38,121 compared to $41,450 for Hillsborough County as a whole.
Palm River, bounded by U.S. 301 to 50th Street east and west, and Causeway Boulevard and Adamo Drive in the south and north, also has problems with crime, illegal dumping, unpermitted structures and overgrown lots, community activists say.
Construction of a modern water-delivery system would help, said Pat Shafer, who owns several small businesses in Palm River.
“It would be very advantageous for the people living here, for the businesses here, and it will be advantageous because it will bring in more businesses that have better-paying jobs,” Shafer said.

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