An Open Letter to the Sanctuary Advisory Council (SAC)
SAC Members:
As a former SAC member for six years, a current member of the Mote Marine Advisory Board and a consultant who is working with the Sierra Club and NRDC on national air quality issues, I share your love and concern for the environment. Over the last thirteen months I have questioned the economics of the Cudjoe Regional Wastewater System, its social disparity, its likelihood of actually working as designed and most recently, its potential detrimental impact to the very environment we are trying to protect. As I learned more and received information from other concerned engineers, water quality experts and national trade and advocacy groups, I have become even more alarmed. Yesterday I had the opportunity and privilege of presenting my thoughts and speaking at the Florida Keys Sanctuary Advisory Council Water Quality Advisory meeting.
I am attaching a copy of the information I provided to this group. Please review and share it. Please consider how we can either take action to reverse the current design, institute controls for testing and monitoring, and for developing a set of procedures for our response teams to react when failures occur. It may be a few years before problems occur with this system, and many of us will be retired and long gone, but rest assured, it will fail. Why am I confident of that statement? There are a number of reasons: First and most important, this system is designed by humans and all human systems fail in time. The pressure sewage system consists of hundreds of miles of pressurized plastic wastewater lines buried just above our salt water aquifer, multiple water crossings, including one of the longest underwater crossings ever attempted for a pipe of this design, over 300 lift stations and 1,500 grinder pumps on individual homes sites. We are installing a system that is prone to failure due to environmental conditions in the harshest environment one can select. Tropical temperatures and sun, salt laden air, a water table that engulfs much of the equipment, and occasional tidal surges and hurricanes will all hasten an earlier than anticipated failure.
Do you want to be here in ten years when the system fails and tell your children you could have done something, but decided not to? The SAC has the responsibility and ability to address this issue. Thank you.
Walter P. Drabinski
Sir Isaac Newton Coalition
Sadly — and alarmingly — the deafening silence of the Sanctuary Advisory Council and NOAA on an issue so critical to nearshore water quality speaks volumes about credibility. Like Casey at the Bat, both groups have struck out when the Big Game (water quality) is on the line. So much easier to punt, to sit at frequent meetings in strategically-placed, comfortable chairs near the hors d’ oeuvres and spew rhetoric about resource protection and evil user groups. Meanwhile, the fox is stealing the chickens. Blind acceptance of an obviously flawed sewer plan — with more than 1,500 grinder pumps — will be the haunting Nero-like legacy of both groups and the BOCC.