Stop Wastewater Injection Before It’s Too Late
We cannot risk the final deathblow to our fragile coastal reef system and fishery with the decision to inject inadequately treated sewage waste into the highly fractured regional karst aquifer system below us.
The Florida barrier Reef is the third largest coral barrier reef system in the world expanding 4 miles wide and 170 miles long. Coral reefs need pristine, clear and nutrient-free waters to survive.
There is no geologic barrier that prevents commingling of waters in this karst aquifer. The Commission should delay their approval of this decision until they can get properly constructed testing of the permeability of the rock thousands of feet below to the surface.
The wrong decision could spell economic death of the lower keys when the reef system dies. The deep wells will not hide the pollution and will not protect the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the jurisdictional wetlands on Cudjoe Key. Polluted water from deep well injection will damage the reef system.
Deep well injection effluent transported through fractures has made it to the Marquesas Keys 20 miles west of Key West from Marco Island. Aquifer injections at the Marco Island facility have occurred as early as January 1, 1991 according to FDEP.
Fractures were discovered and documented in 2014. Samples taken at those keys have the Marco Island sewage signature. The injected waste fueled the growth of benthic macroalgae and explains the death of the coral heads in Mooney Harbor Key.
It is a real tragedy that sewage injection from Key Largo killed Carysfort Reef. Life has vanished there.
The Florida Aqueduct Authority and the Monroe County Commission should not make a decision based on bad science. Injection of wastes into the aquifer has not worked so far. It is a cheap fake solution. It is unfortunate that the local civic leadership would attempt to allow a repetition of this failed technology.
The real alternatives to eliminate environmental destruction from shallow and deep wells are to:
- Construct a reverse osmosis wastewater treatment plant like the 1 MGD facility in San Diego
- Design a closed loop system using that water as the source water for municipal water plants.
- Bring back cisterns for every household.
- Construct an anaerobic digester co-located with the RO facility to convert the sewage sludge into methane gas for energy to power the facility.
Stop injection before it is too late.
December McSherry
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December McSherry has been fishing and swimming in the Florida Keyes since the 1950’s.
She has studied Florida’s natural water systems and advocated for conservation
and protection of Florida waters since the 1960’s. To this day she still enjoys the
lower keys with her family.
December brings up valid points. It is expedient to believe that if it is out of sight it is harmless. I recall stories of nuclear waste being discarded in steel drums in Boston Harbor many years ago. I worked with a US Navy submarine crewman who related how they would discard spent nuclear fuel rods overboard as soon as they were 12 miles off shore. The use of shallow injection wells with the home aerobic systems that people have been forced to install in their yards while awaiting central sewage has visibly deteriorated the adjacent canals. Who is the genius that concluded that injecting tank effluent fresh water into the salt water of porous rock would be superior to distributing it over a wide area of normally dry surface containing a proliferation of thirsty plant roots? Mother Nature has been treating animal waste successfully for millennia, but man always thinks he can do a better job of everything. Witness genetically modified organisms. Central sewage treatment plants that use shallow injection wells have also been blamed by residents for rapidly deteriorated water conditions that they were supposed to improve. The effluent has been traced to surface waters in every case in the Keys. .Anyone who has worked with central sewer plants knows that they are frequently overloaded and “treatment” amounts to screening out the big stuff and throwing some chlorine at it as it blasts through the plant. The people living on closed canals in the Lower Keys for decades still have clean swimming water in spite of a high density of septic tanks. One group of residents had the canal water tested and compared to open water, and the canal was far superior. If they are installed correctly and are still functioning properly, septic tanks work effectively. EPA research found that if they have 4′ of dry material to leach through, the quality is significantly superior to Advanced Wastewater Treatment. With only 2′ of dry material, they challenge AWT. You will never hear about a septic system blowing hundreds of thousands of gallon of raw sewage into the ocean. I believe deep well injection is a vast improvement over shallow well injection but is also the wrong idea. Reverse Osmosis (RO) treatment is fine in theory, but will never be sized to handle the occasional gushes of sewage. Plus, what do you do with the concentrate? The concentrate will be at least 20% of the total flowing through the plant and will contain all of the nutrients and pollutants that were in the whole. It is about 5 times the hazard and too much to truck out (and to where?). RO is very energy intensive and we have a limited supply coming down. I would not want to witness construction of another Turkey Point reactor here. I don’t have the answer. Development equals pollution. Septic systems will allow some nutrients (and more) to escape, but insignificant compared to what comes from agricultural and residential runoff from South Florida. The SAFEST choice is septic tanks. If modified to provide that 4′ of dry granular material, the quality would be far superior to AWT and the cost far cheaper. This entire central sewer program is just a toilet tax and a means to allow increased density, but is obscured with sham claims of protecting the reefs. It will destroy them.