By John — Desalination News
A $21.05 million intake pump station project tied to Tampa Bay’s seawater desalination plant has won a 2026 National Design-Build Project/Team Merit Award from the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA), capping an 18-month construction effort that finished on budget and without a single safety incident.
Built Inside a Live Power Plant
The Tampa Bay Water Desalination Intake Pump Station – Phase II project, in Gibsonton, Florida, connects new intake infrastructure to Tampa Electric Company’s (TECO) Big Bend Power Station, which is retiring the older cooling water tunnels the desalination plant had previously relied on. Because construction took place inside an active power plant that was itself under simultaneous construction, Tampa Bay Water, design-builder Archer Western Construction, engineer Wade Trim and owner’s advisor Black & Veatch had to run frequent coordination meetings with TECO’s own contractors to keep both projects moving without conflict. Crews also worked around previously unknown utilities uncovered during construction, and elevated critical electrical systems above the floodplain to guard against coastal flooding.
The new station can draw up to 50 million gallons of seawater per day, feeding the adjacent Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant, which has supplied up to 10 percent of the region’s drinking water since it opened in 2007 as the largest seawater desalination facility in North America. The plant produces up to 25 million gallons per day of drinking water and returns roughly 19 million gallons per day of brine, which is diluted at a roughly 70-to-1 ratio with the power plant’s cooling water before discharge into the bay.
Clam Habitats and a Manatee Viewing Area
Because the site sits near a public manatee viewing area, the project team built in environmental monitoring and controls, and partnered with the nonprofit Clams for Clean Water to design and construct clam habitats intended to improve water quality in the bay — part of a wider West Florida effort that uses bivalves, which can each filter up to 20 gallons of water a day, to naturally clean bay waters.
Part of a Bigger Capacity Push
The Gibsonton award comes as Tampa Bay Water, Florida’s largest wholesale water supplier, ramps up capital spending to keep pace with growth: the region added more than 123,000 residents in a single recent year, and planners expect the area will need an additional 25 million gallons per day of capacity by 2043. The utility has separately approved a $15.5 million Reverse Osmosis Trains project meant to restore the desalination plant to its full 28-million-gallon-per-day design capacity by late 2027, and broke ground in March 2026 on a $181 million expansion of its regional surface water treatment plant with Veolia and CDM Smith. The Gibsonton project will be formally recognized alongside 31 other national merit winners at DBIA’s conference in Cleveland this November.