Contact Monroe County Commissioners to express your support for CLEAN WATER NOW! Encourage the commissioners to vote YES to provide Key Largo with advanced wastewater treatment.The commission will be meeting soon on this important issue.
Email to:
Commissioner Murray Nelson boccdis5@mail.state.fl.us
Commissioner Dixie Spehar boccdis1@mail.state.fl.us
Mayor George Neugent gneugent@mail.state.fl.us
Commissioner Sonny McCoy boccdis3@mail.state.fl.us
Commissioner Nora Williams noraw@mail.state.fl.us
Background:
The Monroe County Commission has voted on several occasions to proceed with acceptance of the low bidder to design/build/operate a central sewage system for Key Largo that would provide advanced wastewater treatment, a reuse option, a low impact vacuum collection system, and remote monitoring at a cost-effective price.
The proposal has been held up due to a legal challenge that Florida Government in the Sunshine Laws were violated by the Technical Advisory Committee that ranked the wastewater bids and conducted some of their deliberations by email and telephone, rather than in public meetings. As a result, efforts to improve water quality for Key Largo have been delayed and your help is needed to keep the project alive. Key Largo may lose priority standing to receive federal funding should the Water Quality Protection Act that was approved by Congress last year be funded through appropriations this year. Matching funding is a key element in gaining local support, but such funding will be unavailable unless the project meets the "Readiness to Proceed" criteria list. Our county commissioners must take action to move forward in order to qualify for state and federal funding.
Commissioners will be given the option of approving or delaying action until a local sewer board has been established by state legislation, a move recommended in order to satisfy Key Largo residents who have asked for more control over the project. However, that legislation would not be approved until May with an election for sewer board commissioners perhaps months thereafter. Once the newly-elected commissioners become familiar with this subject, they will no doubt consider a similar course of action, but the project will be more expensive and critical time will have been lost. Some residents have asked that no action be taken until funding is in place. But that is not the way it works. Key Largo must meet the "ready to proceed" criteria first and that means taking steps now to cure the Sunshine Law violations and move forward with the current proposal to sewer Key Largo. If the process is begun anew, Key Largo will not have a qualified bidder for months and maybe years to come, depending on local politics.
Monroe County is under a statewide mandate to improve sewage treatment by 2002, a deadline which will be difficult if not impossible to achieve if further delays occur. The county must also comply with a county work plan tied to the comprehensive land use plan that requires efforts this year to improve sewage treatment. Lack of compliance jeopardizes the issuance of building permits from the county.
More importantly, the options available for Key Largo are very limited. The proposal under consideration provides the needed high level treatment to remove harmful nutrients from the sewage-nutrients that are now leaching into nearshore waters from illegal cesspits, shallow injection wells and leaky septic systems that are currently in use. The pressing need to improve water quality for the surrounding coral reef ecosystem, which is suffering from an abundance of nutrients due in part to inadequate sewage treatment, is the most compelling reason to move forward now. Our coral reef ecosystem cannot wait....we need Clean Water Now!
Please send your email of support to the county commissioners or call them at (305) 294-4641. Thank you. For further information, contact Reef Relief or call (305) 294-3100.