BOATER SEWAGE PUMPOUT: Audit Shows Monroe County Spent 85% More Than Bargained For Last Year

Boaters in Monroe County pay 50% more to register their boats than boaters in most other Florida counties. Almost all of this extra 50% coming from the more than 22,000 registered boaters in Monroe County is currently spent to provide free pump-out service to at most 500 boaters.

Fishing, diving, cruising the waters of the Florida Keys is what it’s all about.  Those turquoise waters are our only true luxury.  But owning a boat in the Keys is not cheap. Marina dockage can cost as much as an apartment and then there is the registration tax.  In Monroe County an average 26’ runabout costs about $ 125 to register per year and it can cost as much as $ 350 a year to register a 110 foot commercial boat. The extra 50% collected from Monroe County boaters creates revenue of about $ 400,000/year. Almost all of it, $ 340,000, is currently being used to pay a private company to provide free sewage pump-out  to offshore boaters – with a price tag of nearly $ 64.00 per pump out.

Here’s how it works.  A special little twist in Florida law allows Monroe County to charge local boaters the extra 50% for their yearly registration.  That money goes into the Boater Improvement Fund [BIF].  It is meant to provide special boating infrastructure, like moorings, boat ramps and channel markers and can also be used to make improvements to water quality.  That was how, on December 12, 2012, the Monroe County Board of County Commissioners was able to approve of a two year contract with Pumpout USA, Inc. for Keys-Wide Mobile Vessel Pump-out Services meant to commence on January 1, 2013.  Payment terms for the agreement were based on a projected 1300 pump-outs per month at a unit price of $21.81 per pump-out.

However, on July 17, 2013, the county commission voted to give up basing payments on the number of pump-outs provided and to give the contractor all the money that had been projected for 1300 pump-outs a month, no matter how few pump-outs were actually performed.  At the time Commissioner Danny Kolhage asked that the county’s comptroller conduct an audit, which was presented to the commission last month.

This is a direct quote from that audit report:

“The amount paid under the contract amendment for calendar year 2013 was $340,200.85.  The total pump-outs for calendar year 2013 was 8,419.   Therefore the actual price per pump-out paid to the Contractor by Monroe County, amounts to $40.41 per pump-out.  This represents a unit cost of 85% more than the original agreement unit price.  The total pump-outs performed in 2013, (8,419) amounts to approximately 54% of the number of pump-outs (15,600) required by the original agreement prior to the amendments.”

“If Monroe County would have paid the Contractor based on the original agreement at a unit price of $21.81 per pump-out, Monroe County would have paid the Contractor $183,618.39 for pump-outs performed.  According to the terms of the original agreement Monroe County paid an additional $156,582.46 for pump-outs not performed.”

So, Monroe County paid over $40 per pump-out last year.  Other documentation obtained by The Blue Paper shows that [even at the end of the year when just about all liveaboard boaters had been signed up for the program] the number of individual boats serviced each month was, on the average, less than 400.  Interestingly, a private company runs a profitable business running a pump-out service for boats out at Safe Harbor on Stock Island and charges only $25.00 per pump-out with no government subsidies.

It gets better.  Pump-out USA is not actually charging $40.41 per pump-out.  It is charging a lot more, because in fact it also gets grant money from the state’s DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] which pays all of the company’s operating costs including boat rentals, salaries, fuel, etc plus an additional $13.85 per pump-out.   All in all, during the final quarter of 2013, the contractor was paid $63.95 per pump-out.

[The DEP grant money comes from the federal Clean Vessel Act.  The funds for the CVA program come from boaters and anglers through excise taxes paid on fishing equipment, motorboat and small engine fuels, and import duties.]

When, the free pump-out contract was up for a vote before the BOCC back in 2012, Commissioner Rice said, “It’s a controversial issue,” when asked what he thought about providing this service at no charge to boaters while everyone else in the Keys not only paid monthly sewer bills but were also being forced to spend thousands to tie into a central sewer system. The total cost to taxpayers to provide liveabaord boaters this free sewage pump-out was over $800,000 last year.

Mark Tait, the City’s Key West Bight Marina manager says the pump-out program is a success.  “We used to pump-out maybe five anchored boats, now they pump about fifty each day.” Until 2013 the City of Key West was running the pump-out service in the Key West area.  At that time it was charging $10.00 per pump-out.  “The pump-out business was always in the red,” says Mark Tait.  His ‘guestimate’ was that it cost the City around $20.00 per pump-out – still a far cry from $64.00.

Key West Bight had been looking for a way to get all of the offshore liveaboard boaters to pump-out.  The problem was that the law only required people to have a holding tank;  there was no requirement to prove that the tank was actually being used.  One of Tait’s ideas was to require boaters to purchase monthly passes for pump-out service along with their payments for dinghy dockage.   Since every anchored boater needs dinghy dockage to come to shore, the whole issue could have come under control quite rapidly.  This plan was de-railed when the County decided to provide free Keys-wide pump-out.

The current system is a financial embarrassment or at least it should be.  But, it is a great success as far as water quality is concerned.  According to the Lower Keys pump-out boat operators, water quality in anchorages like Boca Chica has drastically improved.

“The water in Boca Chica is pristine.  It is a lot better than it was,” says one pump-out boat operator, “We see so much more wildlife.  You even see people jumping in the water now, going swimming.  Something you would never see before.”

Keys-wide pump-out is great.  But why should so many have to pay for so few is the question.  And why is the government agreeing to pay more than twice the price of the established commercial rate? Well, the contractor is supposed to “educate” boaters in ways like talking with dockmasters and explaining how to use a toilet.  Taxpayers paid the contractor over $37,000 in 2013 for these “educational programs”.  And they paid $260,000 in boat rental fees when Key West, Marathon, and Islamorada already had pump-out boats in operation.

For the first quarter of 2013 the clerk’s audit shows that under the initial agreement’s basis of $21.81/pump-out the County would have paid $6,499; but instead paid $98,267.  That’s $329.75/pump-out for the County’s share alone.

Presentation of a full audit including actual costs incurred by the contractor for providing the pump-out service is scheduled for May of this year.

Stay tuned.