More than a quarter of St. Petersburg's residents are impacted by a sewage treatment plant closure late Thursday night.
The Northeast Sewer Treatment Facility was taken offline to protect it from storm surge damage from Hurricane Helene. City officials estimate it’ll be at least 48 hours before the plant is back online as they inspect damage and make repairs.
Residents and businesses located north of 30th Ave. N. and east of I-275/Haines Road are affected. If you're in that area, do not drain water. That includes taking showers, doing laundry and flushing toilets. Draining water will cause sewage to back up into homes and businesses.
Residents and businesses can contact the city's water resources line at 727-893-7261 to see if your address falls into the affected area.
St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said during a news conference late Friday morning that an expensive improvement plant project was already underway to help prevent this from happening.
“The city started a capital improvement project at the plant in 2022 and has budgeted $70 million for those improvements. This project will allow the plant to sustain up to 11 feet of storm surge. Construction on this project began last year and is scheduled for completion in 2026.”
He said the city is exploring ways to expedite that construction.
“We've known for some time that that was the lowest plant, since it was built I think in 1955, that it's always been susceptible to that amount of unprecedented storm surge. This is the most storm surge St. Pete's ever had.”
Welch said if the plant had not been taken offline, the damage could have been more extensive and resulted in significantly longer delays in getting northeast St. Petersburg residents access to water drainage.
One hundred and fifty portable toilets are being brought in for residents affected by the outage.
Drinking water has not been shut off. Running water is still accessible. However, it is critical to not drain water out of sinks, tubs or toilets. Draining water may cause sewage to back up into homes.
Other highlights from the news conference:
- St. Petersburg has rescued 70 individuals, and as of 7 a.m. Friday, processed over 300 calls to its emergency lines.
- More than 230,000 homes and businesses in Pinellas County are without power.
- At least five people in Pinellas County were found dead by emergency rescue crews. Two deaths occurred on Treasure Island, two in Indian Rocks Beach and one in Dunedin.
