Naples Daily News
Two Southwest Florida utilities said they use remote access in their computer systems at water treatment plants but have security measures in place to protect water supplies from events like what happened in Oldsmar last month.
Bonita Springs Utilities and Marco Island told the Daily News they have remote access to their computer systems, a vulnerability cited when the Oldsmar water plant was hacked. BSU has in place certain protocols that make an attack like Oldsmar less likely, BSU spokeswoman Jennifer Hamilton said in an email.
Hamilton said remote access for BSU is limited to approved vendors and staff access through secure firewall configurations.
1 million gallons of untreated wastewater spilled in Charlotte County
Published: March 2, 2021 6:01 PM EST
Updated: March 3, 2021 2:37 PM EST
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A million gallons of untreated wastewater spilled in a Southwest Florida county as crews were working to improve the area’s sewage system.
The Charlotte County Utilities director says that when crews worked on a new sewage system, they noticed pressures in their pipe system looked wrong. When they shut things down, built-up pressure caused a pipe to rupture, which led to a massive spill on old Landfill Road in Port Charlotte.
The huge multimillion-dollar project is underway to bring sewage flows into the wastewater reclamation facility more quickly and with less pressure.
CLEARWATER â The consensus was full steam ahead to the draft 2021 state legislative program as presented during a Dec. 10 Pinellas County Commission work session.
Brian Lowack, special assistant to the county administrator, presented the guiding principles, which he said âsends a positive message to legislatorsâ as priorities of the county that align with priorities at the state level.
He will bring the final program back for approval in January.
Among the local priorities is support for legislation to increase the time governments can declare an emergency from seven days to 30 days. Since the COVD-19 pandemic began and the first local state of emergency was declared, county government has been required to extend it every seven days. In the beginning the commission scheduled meetings every week, but recently delegated authority to the county administrator to extend the emergency on weeks when meetings were not already scheduled.