The City of Tampa has settled with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection after state inspectors documented illegal discharges, permit violations and persistent sewage odors at the Howard F. Curren Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, south of downtown.

The city was staring down a fine of nearly $590,000. Instead, under a deal state regulators call an “in-kind project,” Tampa will spend the money installing stationary generators at two pump stations — with the requirement that the project’s value run at least 1.5 times the original penalty.

Whether that arrangement counts as accountability or a convenient escape hatch depends on who you ask.

Carlos Carillo, a member of the Palmetto Bay Community Association in east Tampa, says residents have lived with the consequences for years.

“Residents for years have dealt with very unpleasant smells,” Carillo said. “When you’re out on a walk, and you get a whiff of it, it just smells like raw sewage.”

State records reviewed by Spectrum News show FDEP inspectors visited the plant twice in 2025 and found odors escaping the site because two digesters weren’t functioning properly. City wastewater director Eric Weiss says the city believes someone illegally dumped waste into the sewer system near the plant, souring the digesters and creating the smell. He says the city has since added chemical treatments and stepped up efforts to find illegal dumpers.

The odor complaints were only part of the settlement. State regulators found that between 2022 and 2025, water Tampa treated and released into Hillsborough Bay failed to meet quality standards more than 80 times — issues the city says have since been resolved.

The bigger numbers came from the 2024 hurricane season. Nearly 13 million gallons of untreated wastewater spilled into Hillsborough Bay during Hurricane Helene, and another 2.9 million gallons of partially treated wastewater entered the bay during Hurricane Milton. A separate 250,000 gallons was discharged unrelated to either storm. Weiss says storm surge flooded seven low-lying pump stations during Helene, and the city lost roughly 100 pumping stations during Milton until portable generators or TECO power could be restored.

Eleven of the discharges during Milton were not reported to the state on time — a lapse the settlement flags directly and that Weiss attributes to a clerical error, not a cover-up.

Not everyone views the raw totals as alarming on their own. Sarina Ergas, a University of South Florida wastewater expert, notes that hurricane-driven overflows are typically a small fraction of the total pollution load entering the bay during major storms. But she was equally direct that the rules exist for a reason, and called the in-kind arrangement a better outcome than a straight fine, since it puts the money into fixing the underlying problem rather than into state coffers.

That’s a reasonable argument — and also exactly the kind of arrangement taxpayers should watch closely. A government agency citing a government utility, then letting that utility redirect the penalty into its own infrastructure, keeps the money local. It does not, on its own, guarantee the fix gets done on schedule or that oversight continues once the headlines fade. The two generators from the April settlement aren’t expected to come online for another two to three years.

The city’s compliance record since April suggests the underlying problems haven’t gone away. In the three months after the settlement was finalized, Tampa was fined $32,000 for a separate incident — more than 500,000 gallons of reclaimed water and nearly 15,000 gallons of partially treated and untreated wastewater discharged into the bay. Rather than pay that fine either, the city again opted for an in-kind project: a robotic water-quality monitoring system Weiss says will be used daily.

Weiss attributes ongoing overflows to a mix of factors, including residential grease, third-party construction damage and aging pipes — he says 60% of the city’s sewer infrastructure is 60 years old or older. He was careful to note that at least one recent incident traced back to aging infrastructure from 2006, not operator error.

For Carillo, the settlement raises more questions than it answers.

“It almost feels like a slap in the face just because all this is going on illegally, we’re not aware of it, we don’t know if there are any health concerns with it,” Carillo said. “It’s only fair that the problem gets resolved, and it gets resolved in a permanent manner so that you can take care of the taxpayers and the citizens of Palmetto Beach.”

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