No project timeline available yet
On July 13, 2021, the Sarasota County Commission agreed to the recommendation of Mike Mylett, then the county’s Public Utilities Department director, to upgrade the Venice Gardens Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) to Advanced Water Treatment (AWT) status.
The goal was to reduce the level of nutrients in the reclaimed water produced by the wastewater treatment plant, in an effort to improve water quality in Sarasota Bay.
Already, such a conversion was underway at the Bee Ridge WRF, which stands at 5550 Lorraine Road in Sarasota. The Bee Ridge facility is the county’s largest wastewater treatment plant.
Additionally, the commissioners agreed to the expansion of the Venice Gardens plant’s capacity.
On Sept. 29, 2021, they adopted a $5-million budget resolution to allow county staff to appropriate funding for the design of the Venice Gardens initiative, a county staff memo in the agenda packet for the commission’s Sept. 9 regular meeting pointed out.
During a presentation on July 13, 2021, Gregory Rouse, a county utilities engineer, noted that the Venice Gardens WRF is able to treat 3 million gallons of sewage a day. Staff would like to see the figure climb to 5 million gallons a day, Rouse said.
Moreover, Rouse explained, with the AWT upgrade, staff would be able to expand the facility’s capacity in the future to 15 million gallons a day, if that proved necessary.
Mylett told the commissioners that his goal was to begin the work at Venice Gardens in late 2024 or early 2025.
Since then, county staff has dealt with three major hurricanes and a tropical storm, the latter of which inundated many county communities that never had experienced flooding.
While it took a bit longer than Mylett had anticipated, on Sept. 9, as the County Commission was meeting in Venice, the board members voted unanimously to adopt a resolution that will enable the county to issue $158 million in bonds to cover the expense of the Venice Gardens project.
The county staff memo in the Sept. 9 agenda packet explained that staff had determined that the bond funding was necessary, as the construction cost had been put at approximately $154 million. The memo also noted that other sources of revenue would be used to cover the overall project budget of $210 million. Among those would be prior bond issues, sewer capacity fees related to new home construction, customer rate payments and American Rescue Plan Act funding that the county received in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then the memo pointed out that the Venice Gardens WRF, which is located at 375 Venice E. Blvd. in Venice, is permitted to treat 3 million gallons per day (mgd), based on the daily flow averaged over three months. The increase in capacity will raise the total to 6 mgd, the memo added, a bit more than Rouse had proposed in 2021
The memo also referenced another point that Rouse made in July 2021: Because of the configuration of the Venice Gardens WRF site, the initiative will entail the construction of a new plant, with no effect on operations of the existing one. The memo in the Sept. 9 agenda packet put it thus: “Normal, 24-hour, 7-day operating conditions must be maintained to meet permit requirements for treatment, storage, and disposal.” In other words, the existing facility has to remain fully functional while construction is underway.
Further, in regard to construction planning, the Sept. 9 memo said, “[S]upport facilities or buildings may also be necessary to provide additional office space, a laboratory, and/or storage.” At the same time, it continued, the new facilities — and those in place — may be hardened to make them more resistant to hurricane damage.
Although no definitive timeline for the start of construction was included in the memo, staff did indicate that the company hired to oversee the project is expected to have the guaranteed maximum price (GMP) ready for County Commission review in the spring of 2026.
A Sarasota News Leader check of the county webpage devoted to the Venice Gardens WRF says that the project is “in the design process.”
The Sept. 9 agenda item was listed as a Presentation Upon Request, meaning that unless a commissioner wanted to ask questions about it — or members of the public had signed up to address the topic — no staff remarks would be offered.
No commissioner asked for staff comments, and no member of the public had signed up to speak. Therefore, Chair Joe Neunder asked for a motion and a vote. Commissioner Teresa Mast made the motion to approve the resolution, and Commissioner Mark Smith seconded it. The ensuing vote was 5-0 in favor of the motion.