St. Lucie County officials knew their 7,500-square-foot bunker of an Emergency Operations Center was undersized and low-tech.

“We didn’t realize how inadequate it was until we had to live there for 30 days,” former County Administrator Doug Anderson said, referring to the 2004 hurricane season, when the county took a direct hit from two storms in three weeks.

When Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne raked over the area, emergency workers camped out at the EOC to coordinate the county’s recovery. They slept on floors, in hallways, under desks.

They won’t have to endure those conditions again.

Last week, the county opened its new EOC — a $12.75 million, 27,282-square-foot building that replaces the 23-year-old center on Rock Road.

Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light Co. wrote the county a $400,000 check last week to help cover the tab. In exchange, the state’s largest utility wants to use the state-of-the-art EOC as a backup hurricane command center, just in case its Miami and West Palm Beach centers end up in the direct path of a major hurricane.

“Then we would bring our team here,” Amy Brunjes, external affairs manager for FPL on the Treasure Coast, said at the EOC last week.

Unlike the old emergency hub, which was mostly underground, the new EOC at the St. Lucie County Fairgrounds was built with eco-friendly features: lots of natural light; chairs made from recycled materials.

The building has sleeping quarters, enclosed generators, a morgue available on site and a helicopter pad outside.

STUART — Two weeks after a natural-gas pipeline rupture shut down the two major thoroughfares leading to South Florida, more than 20 miles of the pipe remain closed and investigators are still trying to figure out why it failed.

The May 4 blast along Florida’s Turnpike in Martin County caused a 113-foot-long segment of the pipe to be ejected from the ground and hurtled alongside the highway, according to an initial report from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Though the cause of the rupture remains unclear, the report raises the possibility that a seam in the pipe may have been a factor. The 18-inch-wide pipe was manufactured by Youngstown Sheet and Tube in 1959. (more…)

The Fort Pierce Utilities Authority is requesting that all customers located on South Hutchinson Island boil their water for 72 hours — until Sunday — after a contractor damaged a water main on Seaway Drive.

The advisory, issued before 9 a.m. on Thursday, is for 72 hours and began immediately. The boil water notice is in effect until Sunday.

Customers will need to boil all water used for drinking or cooking during this time period. Utilities authority officials said in a statement that they regret any inconvenience to customers.
TCPalm.com

PORT ST. LUCIE — Seven city employees from the Engineering Department were laid off on Friday because of a lack of work, according to city officials on Monday.

Officials aren’t sure if or when more layoffs will occur because of the slowdown or because of the city’s upcoming budget cuts.
(more…)

Wondering if Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed 300-mile natural gas pipeline will cut through your property?

The utility is hosting a meeting 4-8 p.m. today at the Indiantown Civic Center to give residents an up-close look at its plans for the proposed $1.5 billion project.

FPL announced plans for the Florida EnergySecure Line earlier this month, pitching it as a way to make the state less vulnerable to disruptions in natural gas supplies from the Gulf of Mexico.

If approved by the Florida Public Service Commission, the pipeline would run from Palm Beach County to Bradford County in north-central Florida, with about 10 miles in Martin County.

FPL wants the pipeline up and running as soon as 2014.

Thousands of job-seekers are expected to descend on Indiantown this week to vie for a chance to help build Florida Power & Light Co.’s new solar energy plant in Martin County.

Workforce Solutions is hosting job fairs on Friday and Saturday to attract some of the 1,100 workers needed to construct the solar-thermal facility about 8 miles west of Indiantown.

Roughly half of the workers will be basic assemblers, said John Dinger, business services consultant at Workforce Solutions, the Treasure Coast’s workforce development organization.

“From what I’ve been told, if you can work a wrench and do some mechanical assembly, you can swing it,” Dinger said.

Other workers needed during the two-year project will include plumbers, carpenters, electricians and concrete finishers. (more…)

TREASURE COAST — The Treasure Coast could receive $102 million in property taxes from Florida Power & Light during the next four decades because the power company has announced plans to run a 300-mile natural gas pipeline through the region.

It would also create 7,500 jobs, of which 3,500 will be for construction.

The pipeline, to stretch from the FPL Martin Plant in Indiantown north to Bradford County, west of St. Augustine, is to increase the supply of natural gas at the Riviera Beach and Cape Canaveral plants, which are being converted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, said FPL spokeswoman Jackie Anderson. “We’re making them more fuel-efficient,” she said. (more…)

Indiantown’s home-grown telephone company is about to invest big bucks to link fiber optic lines to homes in the central Martin County community.

ITS Telecommunications Systems Inc. got an $8 million loan this month from the Rural Utilities Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that makes sure people living in the country have access to electricity, water and telephones. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — City Commissioner Reggie Sessions, perhaps the most vocal critic of the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority, hasn’t been paying his utility bills on time for the past year, records show.

And to help Sessions remember to pay his bills, the utility has been giving him preferential treatment, including special calls from the utility director’s office and customer service. These services aren’t generally extended to the utility’s other 28,619 customers, utility officials said.

Sessions, who lives in a 1,200-square-foot home on North 22nd Street, said he hasn’t been paying his bills on time in protest of “high rates.”
(more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — Layoffs are hitting city employees because of the suffering construction industry and housing bust of the current economy

Last week, 15 utilities department employees were laid off and six new employees still in their probationary period were terminated. Eleven others were reassigned within the department. Officials said the cuts were because of lack of work for utility hookups in new homes and not the anticipated $10 million shortfall in next year’s budget.

The positions were needed during the housing boom a few years ago. City Manager Don Cooper denied a utilities department request to hire even more people then because city officials said the boom would eventually slow and potentially cause layoffs.
(more…)