Florida Airport Storm Water System Still Inexplicable
According to the Panama City News Herald, the Panama City Airport Board is still spending—this time, $113,695—to understand the shortcomings of the storm water filtration system built by Phoenix Construction that has been in place for almost two years.
The consensus: Besides Mother Nature, they just don’t know what the problem is.
The Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport has been under a high state of scrutiny from the Florida Department of Environment Protection (FDEP) over storm water discharge since before its May 2010 opening. Since completion of the system and its certification shortly thereafter, the state-of-the-art system has failed to meet permit requirements over the filtration and discharge of storm water back into the ring of streams and waterways surrounding the $325 million airport. It could cost as much as $1.5 million to determine what is going wrong and fix the current problem, and the board approved $435,339 last month to begin the assessment.
Airpot consultant Richard Zipperly told members that his team is continuing to find out things about the filtration system that they just do not understand. For instance, sometimes the water going into the system is cleaner (less muddy sediment) than it is coming out, and sometimes it’s the other way around. In addition, more volume is being released at a higher velocity than was planned for. The soil composition at the airport site also is causing puzzles.
Source: Panama City News Herald
