If things go according to plan, the city of Temple could earn about $1 million a year piping effluent from two wastewater treatment facilities to the Panda Energy plant proposed for construction on the city’s southeast side.
Last week, the City Council approved a potential agreement with Panda that includes the sale of about 7.5 million gallons of effluent per day.
“It’s a good deal for the city of Temple. We’re taking something they’re not getting anything for and purchasing it,” said Bill Pentak, spokesman with Panda Energy.
Panda’s natural gas-fueled generating station will use the effluent in its cooling towers, Pentak said. It will cycle through about five times until 90 percent is dissipated. The other 10 percent will be released into an evaporation/ detention pond.
Pentak said the size of the pond would not be known until construction plans were finished. Panda is using this type of system in another plant location. Although this practice is not widespread, Pentak said, this system is becoming more common.
Temple Mayor Bill Jones said power plants are typically thirsty beasts, and since Temple was merely releasing the effluent back into local waterways, the plan benefits both parties.
The agreement, which has not been finalized, works like this.
n Panda will pay for the pipeline construction and maintenance, which would run from two wastewater treatment plants - Doshier Farm and Temple-Belton Regional Sewer System - to the Panda facility in the South Temple Industrial Park.
n The initial 20-year term is renewable by mutual agreement.
n Temple will sell Panda potable water only if the supply of effluent is exhausted.
n No wastewater will be returned to city treatment facilities.
Cyrus Reed, conservation director with the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, said projects like this could be detrimental to the watershed downstream, in this case the Leon and Little rivers. Although it is treated wastewater, effluent is important to wildlife in summer when flow is typically low.
But Temple city officials said the environmental impact would be minimal.
“For comparative purposes, the Leon River flow this week has been around 60 million gallons per day, with Panda requirements averaging between 5 and 7 1/2 million gallons per day,” Shannon Gowan, city of Temple communications director, wrote in an e-mail.
City officials say this in one in a series of steps that has to be negotiated and executed before the plant can become a reality.
Particularly important, an issue regarding how the agreement could affect tax-exempt bonds issued for improvements to the wastewater treatment plant must be resolved, city documents said.
