Florida Keys sewer and drinking water scandals and other between the devil and the deep blue sea half-shell raw bar tales at thebestlittlewhorehouseinthecaribbean.com

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In the past few days, I have reported demonic possession in the Key West’s police department and city hall and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, rooted in the Charles Eimers case, as illustrated by Arnaud Girard, co-publisher with wife Naja, of Key West the Newspaper, www.thebluepaper.com.

Before the dawn’s early light today, Bonnie, a long-time employee of Good Foods Conspiracy health food store on Big Pine Key,

kept coming around in a long dream, in which holes where being dug in black dirt, and I kept trying to ignore her.

Bonnie is very much into organic food and clean water and protecting the environment. So, on waking, I started ruminating on the horrible lies and deceit being perpetuated in and around the Cudjoe Regional Sewers System by Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority (FDAA) and Florida Department of Environmental Protection, on which I have reported many times in the past, and which were comprehensively reported in last Friday’s edition of www.thebluepaper.com..

The Bonnie dream also pointed me toward recent comments on www.bigpinekey.com‘s popular Coconut Telegraph regarding FKAA’s drinking water.

[Corrosive Water] Every morning I hear the radio commercial about how great our Florida Keys tap water is, award winning etc.. If so, why do the plumbing fixtures in my house have to be replaced every few years. This weekend I replaced an expensive not-so-old bathroom faucet that was crumbling apart. My shower heads get clogged and rot out every few years. The drain stopper in the other bathroom stopped working and when I took it apart the stainless steel rod that opens and closes the drain had rusted and the end was missing. My parents up north have had the same plumbing fixtures since I was a kid and that was a very long time ago. What is in our water that destroys all the fixtures? Good thing we have PVC pipe or we would be replacing the pipes as well.

FKAA’s “pure” drinking water leaves an orange coating on the interior of my pipes. Imagine what it does to my body!

[FKAA Adds Salt To Water] I feel your drain pain. A few possible reasons: brackish water. In the winter, FKAA adds some salt water to stretch the fresh water supply during our dry, but busy-with-tourists season. Periods of no use (if you are a part-time resident) allows longer periods of air to contact wet, slightly salty plumbing, causing oxidization and rust.

[“Corrosive water”] I like the tap water here. I suspect the corrosion comes from the salt air. The same thing that eats our cars (OK, mine are old and not fiberglass) and anything else metal we have. My six apartments have not needed new fixtures for many years, but then again I try to buy quality items to begin with. Boats have the same problem. Cleaning with bleach without rinsing it off adds to the problem since the chemical make-up of bleach is the same as salt.

[Dirty Water] They tell you that the water that travels one hundred plus miles in a pipe from Miami is safe. A pipe that’s exposed to the elements and open for anyone to taint the supply. If it’s clogging and corroding your plumbing fixtures, think about what it’s doing inside you. Put a filter on your drinking water source and tell us how it looks in 30 days. I have not drank from the tap here in a long time. FKAA is in the water business. Their job is to sell it.

[“Corrosive drinking water”] The problem is most surely caused by our extremely hard water. While not unhealthy, our water is loaded with calcium (as much as 10+ grains per gallon) that can be very corrosive to metallic plumbing components. The corrosive effect will eventually eat away at those components, clog shower heads with calcium deposits, corrode faucets etc. One solution is to install a water softener on your incoming water line. Another is the installation of a Reverse Osmosis (RO) system. Neither is cheap but you will eventually save on the replacement costs of plumbing components, see better cleaning from the washing machine and dishwasher (no more water spots on glassware) and use less soap and shampoo to get a lather. You can buy a good system at Home Depot and if your a bit handy they can be fairly easily installed or arrange for an installer to do it for you (get bids before hand, of course).

[“FKAA’s drinking water”] I thought they cleaned their pipes yearly with a mild solution of bleach. For those dew days they tell us not to drink the water.

[Brita Water Filter] I use a Brita filter for all the 15 years I’ve been here. NYC has the best tasting water. There is a distinct difference between NYC water and Keys water. The benefits of a Brita water filter lays in its ability to filter out heavy metals and other impurities, such as lead, which are most likely not in your tap, but may be due to poor plumbing.

I read somewhere that during peak season FKAA mixes a small amount of saltwater into our water to help with the demand. If that is true then no wonder the pipes and plumbing are taking a beating.

[“Our corrosive water”] Don’t forget that our water is legally brackish. Don’t forget that a weak salt solution is more corrosive that a strong one (more ions in solution). My house was built in 1965 and plumed with copper, even the drains and sewer pipe. All the pipes are original.

I recall that FKAA switches from the fresher water aquifers after the snow birds go back north. The year round residents are then given tap water from a more brackish aquifer. Who do you think asked them to do this? the TDC most likely. Lousy tasting and looking water would not fair well with the tourists. When I moved into my house, the frig’s filter was so filthy that a thick, black goo came out of it. My house also has concrete spalling that was most likely due to cement being mixed during this time of year. The water really sucks and may be responsible for me getting a cancerous tumor in my kidney as I always drink a lot of water. I wouldn’t even trust getting water out of those machines. Don’t drink the water – Drink beer instead.

[“Corrosive water”] Metal plumbing fixtures rot out here even without FKAA’s water in them. They rot on the shelf. FKAA controls the pH to a little over 9, partly so that the water will not be as capable of picking up metals from the piping. That is not to say that FKAA water is advisable to drink. Lots of nasty chemicals and drugs are in the aquifer that supplies most of the water to the plant, and these go right through the main treatment plant and then are piped to your faucet. Many contaminants are not tested for. The Consumer Confidence Report that you are sent every year is not at all representative of what reaches your home. That report is mandated by the state to make the customers feel better about what they are drinking and is another exercise in deceit. Sometimes the very fine print will tell you that the numbers in the report are not even from the past year.

You can get your own Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter online for about $15. My water in BPK contains typically 2 to 4 times what the report says. I tested a friend’s water in Bay Point and found 16 times the TDS! What is in it besides calcium? who knows? When FKAA water evaporates it leaves a lot of nasty looking brown crud behind that can plug your showerhead and make it look like you never clean the sink. The water is disinfected with chlorine and ammonia (chloramine) in Florida City. Both disinfectants are corrosive and carcinogenic. The disinfectant is depleted along the way creating disinfection by-products (DBP) that are powerful carcinogens. Additional chlorine is added along the way for the lower Keys. Because certain people at FKAA insist on over-sizing water pipes, there is a good chance that if you are near the end of a side street, your water has no disinfectant left– just the DBPs.

FKAA also adds fluoride to the water to protect your teeth, which is nonsense. If you live in the Keys you may not have many real teeth left, but even if you do have a few, the fluoride in water goes right past as you ingest it. Fluoride then carries the aluminum that was added to the water past your body’s blood-brain barrier that would normally block it. Hello, Alzheimer’s! Fluoride also disrupts your endocrine system, reducing thyroid function among others effects. It is stored in your bones where it makes them brittle. Hip fractures were found to be near double in fluoridated communities. Fluoride is strongly associated with bone cancer, especially in boys. Fluoride reduces IQ by about 10 points in children, and was used as a pacification agent by the Nazis. You may know that fluoride is a very hazardous industrial waste also used as an insecticide, and is now mostly supplied from China. Testing of Chinese sodium fluoride has found shocking contaminants including uranium.

At the least, you should put a carbon filter between FKAA water and your showerhead to prevent breathing chlorine fumes which are associated with lung cancer, and use a reverse osmosis (RO) filter system on water you drink to remove almost everything including fluoride. My TDS reading is about 200 before and 0-1 after the RO filter. Here is a very informative letter discussing the hazards of tea drinking, just because of the fluoride content. Link

According to their own records, FKAA loses about 1/4 of the water that they treat and pump for distribution to your meter. A small percentage of that is wasted to flush out pipes in areas with water quality complaints and such, but the vast majority is unaccounted for or included in their leakage estimate. If they also lose 1/4 of the wastewater pumped towards the Cudjoe treatment plant, they will be injecting about a quarter million gallons per day of raw sewage into the tidal groundwater …. every day! Since this “low pressure sewer” collection system runs at higher pressures than the potable water distribution piping, the same size hole will spray out sewage even faster than a water pipe would. This is no way to improve the lower Keys water quality! Dump the Pumps! This fubar project is not worthy of completion as designed. There are just too many opportunities for increased pollution. If you missed it, be sure to read the open letter to DEP that highlights some other very serious issues. Link

[FKAA Water] I like our water delivered by FKAA. They have made vast improvements to the system. I remember the 70’s and 80’s when the old mains would break and the water would be off. Constructing the new bridges enabled the FKAA to replace the old water mains. Pressure is good, the water is clean, and it tastes good, plain or with Scotch

[Drinking Water] I first moved here in the late 70’s, and back then the water flow went out more than City Electric did. But back then they were making fresh water out of salt water. There is something seriously wrong with our water here in the lower Keys. We own homes in other places and only here do we have to replace bathroom and kitchen fixtures frequently because the water destroyed them. Some agency should investigate the real quality of our water and inform potential home buyers and tourist of the possible dangers of drinking, showering or brushing our teeth in water that can dissolve metal. I read a while back about the high level of cancer in the Keys. Did anyone check the water? Since the water company has always been run by Bubbas it may be difficult to get an honest answer, except their families are using this stuff too.

You don’t like FKAA water? They use to have cisterns before FKAA. They’re still legal. Put one of those in. I’ve lived on those before. The water comes from rain. How could it get purer? I never drank that water, but I do drink FKAA water. Just turn your water off and see what happens. You won’t have to deal with their nasty stuff anymore, but it does become a little difficult in the bathroom. I love having the water they ship over 100 miles to my house. I also like the cistern idea too. That’s because if FKAA does stop the water I can still flush that toilet thingy.

Before hearing FKAA’s radio advertisements, many times, I, Sloan, had never heard of a public water company spending money on radio ads to promote its own drinking water. That just don’t pass my smell test. It makes me think FKAA is trying to get me to keep my eyes and ears wide shut.

Yesterday evening, I bicycled over to Higgs Beach

to visit with the seasonal VVDCs (vicious van dweller criminals) who hang out there in the evening and watch the sunset, for free. Key West has not yet figured out a way to charge money for sunset watching, or for being on it’s artificial sand beaches, or for swimming in its flesh-eating bacteria infested salt water.

En route down White Street, I cut through the city side of Higgs Beach, behind the dog park, which used to be open to the public and was where Glad Tidings Tabernacle Church fed homeless people Sunday and Thursday afternoons. Near the outdoor handball courts was a box truck with a man in the back unloading boxes to people. One of the people was the Unitarian Universalist Church’s Rev. Doctor Randy Becker. Off to the side on the table under a kiosk I saw boxes of food.

I hailed them with something like, “So, illlegally feeding homeless people again?” Randy said, no, they were getting their weekly shipment of produce from an organic farm co-op in Homestead. I asked if they paid at the truck, or if they bought shares in the co-op’s annual production? They paid at the truck, Randy said. They buy the organic farms produce to get decent food to eat, compared to what’s in the grocery stores down here.

I said I once belonged to an organic farm co-op in Colorado, and I grew my own organic produce in gardens for many years. I asked where the produce they were getting was grown? All over the place, Randy said. Not just in Homestead? No, everywhere. Like, California, Mexico, Central America, Chile. But it gets to Homestead a week faster. I said it’s still half dead by the time it gets to Key West.

I did not say, they probably would be just as well off ordering dry seaweed and organic brown rice and beans from mainland health food distributors, shipped UPS, and buying whole cabbages and the tropical produce found in Key West grocery stores. I wanted to ask, if they were so darn worried about what they ate not being fresh, what were they doing living in Key West, or even in the Florida Keys? And, did they consider how much it cost for what they were unloading from that truck to be shipped to Key West, and for the truck to return to Homestead?

I bet they don’t drink FKAA tap water. I have drunk it since I was 14 years old, when I first came to the Keys with my family during spring break, 1954. I drink FKAA water today. I suppose eventually it will kill me, or give me Alzheimer’s or cancer, or rot my teeth and bones and destroy my liver and kidneys.

I ate early dinner at the Flagler Avenue Soup kitchen yesterday; filled me up. I wonder if Randy and his health food co-op friends ever ate in that soup kitchen, where I have eaten hundreds of meals?

A VVDC (vicious van dweller criminal) eating at the soup kitchen yesterday ask me what became of the free public showers at the police station? I said, I used to work at those showers, when I was in Florida Keys Outreach Coalition’s turnaround shelter program, I cleaned the showers after each day’s use by homeless people. Parents in the next-door middle school finally started complaining about their children not being safe near homeless people, so the showers were closed. I never once saw a homeless person bother or threaten a child. I was far more worried for those parents’ children being molested and otherwise abused by their parents, siblings, uncles and aunts. A homeless man at our table smiled, nodded, yes.

Meanwhile, the same big demon also is rotting plenty of other things down here, which, the same big demon, I never was able to get health food nuts to accept as even existing, much less them dealing with it.

I know for a fact that Randy’s church is home to that big demon; I got to know it quite well in that church, before Randy became its minister. I got to know that big demon quite well in Glad Tidings Church. And in the Unity Church. And in St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral. And in St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church. And in a few other churches in Key West. And in Keys Energy Services. And in the Monroe County Government, and in the Monroe County School Board and District.

And in the Friends of Higgs Beach Committee, co-headed by Monroe County Commissioner Heather Caruthers and Key West City Commissioner Teri Johnston. That committee was formed for one reason: to redesign Higgs Beach so no homeless people would be able to be there. I know that because I was an original member of the committee. I attended a number of its meetings. I felt like I was in Nazi Germany, and started saying so in those meetings.

If you really wish to know what put Adolph Hitler and his henchmen into power - so far, I have not found one person in the Keys who wants to know - it’s laid out in chilling detail in The Spear of Destiny, by Trevor Ravenscroft. Still in print, www.amazon.com has it.

The Devil is very real, and that has nothing to do with religion, other than the Devil invented religion to steer people away from God.

Meanwhile, the first chapter of The Second Coming in the Best Little Whorehouse in the Caribbean flopped out of me yesterday. To say the new “novel”, set in Key West, is looking like it’s going to be a bit weird, is a bit conservative.

About the prospective new tail, er, tale, the Australian novelist Ann Massey, featured in yesterday’s further adventures of Super Cop and the Second Coming in the best little whorehouse in the Caribbean (Key West), egged on by a bit of down under Great White Amah intrigue post at goodmorningkeywest.com, wrote to me:

“Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!”

I’m trying to think how I’d approach the project. Most people don’t give a damn what happens to homeless people-and yet people go to a performance of “Les Miserables”, and come out weeping. Why? Because Hugo humanized the victims. No reason why you can’t do the same for the homeless of Key West.

Try to get a copy of “Stone Cold” by Robert Swindells. Great book! Well worth reading before you start your opus.

Best,
Ann

I replied:

The “Opus” started itself this afternoon, it’s looking seriously mongrel-ed, blend of real people and allegedly fiction people, so far. Will need to clear with Naja and Arnaud Girard use of blue paper cartoons and perhaps some of their other stuff.

Was wondering if I could send you the chapters, as they are written, for safe back up away from me, away from here?

I had a Heavy Wait sequel, of sorts, not about homeless people, start coming out of me 5 years ago, before I moved up to Little Torch Key, and it was slow coming out of me and very different style from anything before, and I wasn’t liking it all that much because I had a direct character role in it, and it was way beyond the edge, and finally someone stole my day pack and the laptop in it out of the coffee shop where I hung out, and the back up CD was in the day pack, and that was the end of that, and, frankly, I was sort of but not entirely relieved.

This first chapter today reminds me some of the method of that lost novel, I’m directly in this one, too, but not so difficult, so far, for me to ingest, as that one.

Will see if Stone Cold is in county library system, but when I write a novel, there ain’t a lot of research, it just starts coming out of me and if I run into something that needs looking up, to get facts straight, I research it then, but that is a rare thing.

My experience in homeless area is vast, probably several novels in it. Would be nice though, to have people weeping for homeless people; I don’t weep, however; never have, as far as I recall. Living with and being one them affected me in ways I doubt could otherwise happen. I became detached; which, I suppose, was necessary; for it I were emotionally attached and otherwise identified with them, I might not have been able to represent them realistically.

Do you want to receive the chapters as they come out of me?

Ann wrote:

Yes please send them to me. Do you want feedback? I’ll save your work in my documents

Can you return the favour? I’ve finished the draft and am into editing. I’ve attached the file. I’d to know what you think.

Cheers,
Ann

Ann Massey
amazon.com/author/annmassey

I replied:

I don’t have Word in this laptop, so I cannot work with it. I’m still a dinosaur, actually, and, I just couldn’t bring myself to buy Word, after paying for a new computer, and another new computer, and another, and another, I wear laptops out.

I don’t know about feedback for the best little whorehouse in the Caribbean, let me sleep on that. I worked with a desktop publisher in that way with my first three novels, and it helped with the first novel, in which the heroine was undeveloped, and when I fixed that, everyone fell in love with her and the poor hero kinda got kinda down-staged, although he was the catalyst for most of the action and sudden turns and the snap ending. Angels really seem to like sudden turns and snap endings.

I’m going to look over what I put together for the first chapter, it felt finished a few hours ago, before I wrote to you about safekeeping it as it comes out of me. I’m going to store it at one of my other websites, a chapter at a time, and I need to get a CD to download it to. Maybe I’m pre-dinosaur.

I wrote later, accompanied by the first chapter:

Still perhaps a draft, but it’s weird enough mongrelized to be good enough before I sleep on it and perhaps hear back from you … I have heard of people being brought back from the dead, but not sure I ever heard of people in novels being real people all along, but nobody but them knew it :-).

Ann wrote:

I’m not sure if this is autobiography or fiction. I know the two aren’t exclusive -aspects of my WIP are autobiographical, however, I would think about giving your protagonist a different name. Just a thought. That said, you write really well and this is great beginning would definitely go on reading. I’m guessing your character feels used and undervalued…I’m starting to become curious about what is going to happen.

Ann

I replied:

It is what it is, the Muse is not bound by human conventions and thinking :-).

Did you ever read Marlo Morgan’s Mutant Message Down Under? Totally rejected in Australia, but a smash hit in America and elsewhere. She said it was real, her critics in Australia said she made it all up and insulted the aborigine people.

I myself met two members of that aborigine tribe, who call themselves the real people, when I was in Kakadoo, east of Darwin, November 1995. They came to me out of dream time when I was with several young Australian men and women, who saw and heard nothing, as the man and woman aborigines and I briefly conversed telepathically, then they welcomed me into their tribe and went back into dream time.

That particular character in the first chapter IS used and undervalued. Maybe that will get righted in the tale, maybe not. The Muse has her own reasons that reason cannot know :-). Today’s chapter is starting to show parts of itself, sort of.

Also on author and other stuff, first-time book author, Key West’s psychiatrist emeritus Jerry Weinstock, M.D., wrote to me:

Of interest your family and feelings——most of us humans have tender spots.
( cloudy but going swimming anyway )-received edited book
copies —-emotional-this AM—-
have a better than just decent day Sloan—-Jerry

I replied:

As far as I know, all humans have tender spots, in which lie potential for healing and change, or further fossilization.

In the old days, my oldest daughter, Nelle, and her husband asked me what their children should call me? After a little thought, I said, “Grandfossil”. Their oldest daughter, Jordan, called me that, the younger daughter, Avery, was only six or so months old the one time I visited them, when they lived in Louisiana in 1998. I was just coming out of the black night of the soul and weaning from the psychiatric meds, which had nearly killed me.

Nelle and her younger sister, Alice, the eye surgeon, and and their mother all viewed me as mentally ill, needing to be on meds. I view other people as mentally ill, needing to be on God full-time. On God, not on religion, which is a mental illness. It is impossible for me to be who I really am around anyone who is not having a like experience, and right now there is only one person close to there, Brenda.

I can’t remember when I had a better than just decent day, by human standards - or for that matter, a just decent day. Anyone I know, who lived in my skin one day, except perhaps Brenda, would be in a hospital, an asylum, or dead.

Working with publishing firms and book editors was exciting for me, not necessarily fun exciting. After the books were published came the wanting to pull our all of my hair out and theirs, too. Hope you have more fun than I did. Now all I have to deal with is angels feeding me writing topics and editing me as I write it down, which is a different kind of exciting and fun.

Jerry wrote:

Sloan; decent is pretty much the best I have experienced lately——
some good spots -some miserable sections of time-trying to learn,
adapt, adjust, ( editing has been problematic -it has to be collaborative
or it is just about worthless..) relationships varied -some stable and excellent
but then there comes a damaging terribly hurtful one—it happens
( the publishers for a first time book will not let the writer and editor collaborate
that is incredibly frustrating ) ( especially in a COMPLEX non-fiction book.)
watched the game -that was escapism and enjoyable—-a recess from problems
a temporary one.————[-fishing and nature top of the list !!!-]—hope you have some
insightful dreams———Jerry

I replied:

Hi, Jerry -

I self-published my first book, HOME BUYERS: Lambs to the Slaughter?, a racy how to by a home book, and then a regional publisher’s rep moved to Birmingham and he, too, was a whitewater paddler freak like me, and he heard I had written a book and could he see it? I gave him a copy, it was a little saddle-stitched production, and he said he liked it and wanted to republish it under his company, if I would expand it (make it longer), so I added more to it, and then his book editor called me, and that was the beginning of my learning how to write a book, instead of whatever else I had called myself writing, which I was doing plenty of as a lawyer. Oh, my, she corrected nearly ever sentence in what I had written, and I had to agree with 99.9 percent of her corrections, and I felt like an idiot, but I was glad she did it.

Later, I hired my own publicist firm to promote the book, and they ended up getting me on “Today Show” with Jane Pauley, but we were way ahead of the publisher getting books into book chains. By then the book had been sold to Simon & Shuster, which sent the book over to its newly-acquired Prentice-Hall subsidy, along with the equally racy sequel, Selling Your Home $wee Home for home sellers, which also was getting big media warm welcome, but like its predecessor, there were no books in the market place. That continued into the third book, KILL ALL THE LAWYERS? A Client’s Guide to Hiring, Firing, Using and Suing Lawyers, for people using lawyers.

Three damn terrific books, which went nowhere, basically, because my promotion efforts on my own dime, and my impatience with the by NY publishing house, especially, poisoned that lake and left me without a publisher and 3 great books going pretty much nowhere. Hard lesson, I hope never to forget, if such an opportunity comes back around.

Also, the popular local bookstore in Birmingham, in business for decades, told me I’d be better off without a publisher, than have Prentice-Hall. I ignored that; maybe it would have gone differently if I had put my foot down and objected stronger. I did object when I learned of the assignment to Prentice-Hall, but I let the local publisher’s rep and the 2 NY City literary agents he had brought into it, to pitch the book to Simon & Shuster, talk me into letting Prentice-Hall have the book. Besides being just acquired by Simon Shuter, a hugely reputable publishing house, a writer’s dream to be in that fold, Prentice-Hall was in shambles and disarray, I quickly learned.

What I had thought, and hoped, was the start of a successful writing career, became a Stephen King nightmare under Elm Street’s needful things, not all my doing, but my pushing and getting ahead of the publishers’ marketing, adverting and sales forces was not helpful. People were trying to buy the books, but no bookstores had them. The local bookstore in Birmingham stocked 100 copies of KILL ALL THE LAWYERS? for the book signing there, which was filmed by a local TV station, and The Birmingham News gave the book a super rave review, and the bookstore ran out of books pronto, and Prentice-Hall did not even show up, or provide backup. I bet 50,000 copies of that book could have been sold in Alabama alone, if the books stores had the book in stock.

I also was on CBS Morning News, CNN, and several nationally syndicated radio shows. I was on maybe a dozen regional TV shows. I was interviewed by over 100 US radio stations about KILL ALL THE LAWYERS? LA Times gave Lambs to the Slaugher? a rave review. That’s like a rave review in the NY Times.

I’m reaching for Malox just dragging this all back up, hoping it will help you cope with what you are going through. Many writers never even get a publisher, or a literary agent, or an editor, to drive them nuts :-).

Sloan

The only sure way to kill all the lawyers is for people to stop using lawyers 🙂

sloanbashinsky@outlook.com