PANAMA CITY BEACH — Some major additions to the local wastewater system are around the corner and Mark Schaeffer, utilities director for Panama City Beach, says they will drastically reduce response times after natural disasters.
According to Schaeffer, the city will use an almost $90,000 grant from the Florida Division of Emergency Management to design an underground utilities administrative building at its second wastewater treatment facility, which is being build near Conservation Park.
Approved by officials during a recent City Council meeting, the grant will be used to design a building with "hurricane resistant features," Shaeffer noted.
"It's for our underground utilities group, (and) it will also accommodate the administrative needs of our lift station group, which is our wastewater pumping station group," he said. "It's important to coordinate the efforts between the two groups. ... (The new building) also, during a hurricane, gives us a place to have utility assets shelter in place so they can deploy immediately after a natural disaster."
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In addition to the new facility and administrative building, the city has taken other recent steps to improve its wastewater treatment, including a more than $1.2 million project to eliminate sewage odors throughout the area.
The smell is a common problem along Back Beach Road.
Odors will be nixed using six new filtering devices positioned across the city, the first of which already is installed at the existing wastewater treatment facility off North Gulf Boulevard.
The devices feature two tanks that will use charcoal and thousands of small plastic balls designed to collect bacteria and eliminate practically all wastewater odors.
Looking ahead, Shaeffer said he expects designs for the underground utilities administrative building to be complete within about six months. It will then cost the city additional money to fund its construction.
As of Tuesday, work was ongoing to build the wastewater treatment facility, but the project appeared to be in its beginning stages.
"(The new administrative building will) reduce our response time," Shaeffer said. "We have funding earmarked (for construction, but we still) have to go through the advertisement and bid process."