Depress ctrl and + keys together to increase text size; depress ctrl and – keys together to reduce
Moving laterally, a beaut on Facebook yesterday:
Via My Alliance with Science
-
Thomas Corbin You know I would agree with the statement more if it wasn’t uttered by such a douche bag. Signed an Agnostic -
Haig Born I havfta agree with you Tom. I struggled with posting this knowing what an A Hole Dawkins is. However truth is truth and I honor it when it resonates in my soul.
It may be the only worthy statement he ever made and definitely doesn’t mean I align with any of his standard ravings
But he has a point and it points to the fact that all religions are guidebooks to steer is home. Back to the heart and soul of Truth if we deign to read between the lines and go beyond what has clearly become indoctrination. We must rise above Religion and through the guidance of the practices find true Spirituality. It is not in any books and religion can only offer a sign post with many cheerleaders screaming for personal attention. -
Karl Baba The statement may say a lot of human beings, psychology and religion but doesn’t prove or disprove anything about God. Humans could be often or completely mistaken but the divine existence doesn’t depend on that, anymore than electricity depended on our knowledge of it in the year 800 -
Haig Born Amen Karl
Moving laterally,
Jerry Weinstock, M.D., Psychiatyy, replied to yesterday’s idiocracy and kindred Key West affectations post at goodmorningkeywest.com:
SLOAN: religion has screwed up civilization in every way possible…
Reality is so much more fascinating—along with rational thought
a combination impossible to surpass-we now have an effective Ebola vaccine
NOT from God.—-what suffering may be prevented. best rest of the day-good wishes-Jerry .
I replied:
can you say more about the Ebola vaccine?
Jerry wrote:
Yes, I can—- the original article was in Lancet
it was report on a fairly long term study;
involving 2000 people—-in an infested area of high risk-
NO ONE that was inoculated got sick —-16 that had another
placebo substance got deathly ill——there were other results as wellthat i am not -at this time privy to all the data … but the Lancet is the most prestigious ENGLISH medical research journal -like the New England Medical Journal;
this study met the GOLD standard ——-we have a vaccine !!!!!!!!!!!!
no question -now it needs to be produced .—-great news —-Jerry
I googled “Ebola vaccine” and found several articles, here’s the link to the one at the top of what came up:
Ebola Vaccine News
Vaccine offers 100% Ebola protection: trial results
AFP Relax News via Yahoo! News23 hours ago
An Ebola vaccine provided 100-percent protection in a field trial in hard-hit Guinea, researchers and officials said Friday, mooting “the beginning of the end” of the killer West African outbreak. The…
-
Moving laterally, great poop news compliments Key West the Newspaper (www.thebluepaper.com), I added the fun poop pics:
Water Quality Disaster: Whistleblower Accuses Department of Health
by Bud Meaker and Arnaud Girard…….
A whistleblower claims the Department of Health (DOH) has turned a blind eye for years on thousands of gallons of sewage that has been seeping into Florida Keys waters.
“It’s their duty, their legal obligation under Florida Statutes to monitor the performance of all on-site sewer systems in the Keys, but they don’t do it,” said the insider to The Blue Paper, “It makes me sick.”
The source asked to remain anonymous, but this is what we have been able to verify:
Multi-million dollar grants from EPA have apparently been tainted due to misrepresentations regarding DOH’s performance monitoring of on-site sewer treatment systems.
DOH fails to require testing of effluent samples for onsite sewer systems countywide in violation of state regulations and has even signed a lax agreement with FKAA waiving the requirement altogether.
But lets start at the beginning.
1999, Linda Eng. Linda was the “tall, tanned, beautiful woman from Norway” who captured the imagination of millions when she was described, in a New York Times article, swimming off Smathers Beach, splashing, laughing, and flashing her 60-watt smile until a passerby informed her that the water was contaminated with human feces. A lot of it.
That was the year the coral began to die along with seagrass beds and fish. Many beaches were closed due to fecal contamination and even the seemingly unassailable waters of the ocean began to turn from turquoise blue to pea soup green.
Scientists pointed the finger at unbridled development and a dysfunctional sewer system that allowed harmful nutrients to flow directly into Keys’ ocean waters.
So that year the Florida Legislature amended Florida Statue Chapter 381. In short, it forced every sewer system in the Keys to meet a high standard of treatment for sewage effluent, setting very specific maximum levels of nitrogen and phosphorous and requiring the County to be fully compliant by July of 2010. [For some older systems this deadline has since been extended to December 2015.]
While DEP was put in charge of systems producing more than 10,000 gallons of residential sewage effluent per day, the DOH had been made responsible for all of the small on-site systems for individual households. In 2012, according to the EPA, there were still about 30,000 of these “decentralized” systems in the Keys.
According to a 2001 study, initially published by FSU, bringing these small on-site systems into compliance with wastewater treatment standards is crucial for improving water quality. At the time, H Darden, wrote, “EPA estimates that the septic tanks and cesspits alone introduce over 1,200 pounds of nitrogen and 326 pounds of phosphorus each day into the surrounding marine environment, accounting for over half of the total nutrient loading in [Keys] waters.”*
DOH Mission
Florida Statute 381.0065 4(l)(5) and (6) leave no ambiguity as to DOH’s mission:
5.?Onsite sewage treatment and disposal systems must be monitored for total nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations as required by department rule.
6.?The department shall enforce proper installation, operation, and maintenance of onsite sewage treatment and disposal systems pursuant to this chapter, including ensuring that the appropriate level of treatment described in subparagraph 2. is met.
Yet, our whistleblower assures us that DOH doesn’t require sample testing for any of the on-site systems in the Keys and that the agency doesn’t even conduct the required DOH yearly inspections.
In fact, when Blue Paper contributor Bud Meaker asked Monroe County DOH representative, Jane Parthemore, for records of effluent sample testing for on-site systems he was informed that DOH has no such data and does not require effluent sample testing.
How monitoring of treatment capabilities of on-site systems could take place without effluent sample testing is anybody’s guess. DOH has not returned our calls regarding this issue.
The Controversial $3.65 million grant
DOH’s admission concerning a lack of effluent sample testing becomes even more disturbing when one looks into a multi-million dollar grant application filed with the EPA with DOH support.
EPA awarded FKAA a $3.65 million grant “to demonstrate decentralized wastewater treatment in the lower Florida Keys” and show “the capabilities and advantages of decentralized treatment systems with centralized management.”
These small individual systems are meant to treat wastewater in areas that are too remote to be reached by centralized sewer plants. They are located in areas called “cold spots.” The ultimate goal is to hook up as many Florida Keys homes as possible to centralized sewer systems; however, in 2012 EPA estimated that 30,000 homes in the Keys were still not connected to central sewer and only 3065 had on-site sewer permits.
The year 2000 Monroe County Sanitary Wastewater Master Plan estimated that 1080 homes would remain unconnected to centralized treatment plants. Today the number of “cold spots” is still fluctuating. The $3.65 million EPA grant is aimed at comparing and evaluating systems designed to meet Florida Keys unique conditions and, according to the grant application, will include “the review of performance sample data collected by the Department of Health, from other relevant OWNR [On-site Nutrient Reduction] technologies.”
On the good faith of that commitment, EPA approved the grant in 2010. However, a document signed by DOH shows that the agency entered into an agreement with FKAA, waiving testing requirements for the on-site systems that FKAA will be installing.
Apparently the DOH has for years misrepresented its commitment to monitoring the compliance of on-site sewer systems in the Florida Keys. In a 2012 EPA survey, Case Studies of Individual and Clustered (Decentralized) Wastewater Management Programs / State and Community Management Approaches, Monroe County appears as one of the stellar shepherds of the environment. On page 20 it appears the EPA was led to believe that DOH requires and maintains a database of sample testing results for every on-site sewer system in the Keys:
“The maintenance entity submits inspection reports and sampling results to the state as specified in the operating permit.”
But, apparently no sampling records exist.
The Failure
Fifteen years after Linda Eng ran away from Smather’s Beach searching for a shower and a bottle of disinfectant, the coral reef is practically dead.
Last April the research vessel Baseline Explorer made a sensation on Stock Island with its two deep dive submarines. During an interview onboard, Chief Scientist, Dr. Todd R. Kincaid, indicated that the Florida Keys reef tract was in such dire shape that in some circles it is no longer considered a viable reef ecosystem.
“I had forgotten how beautiful it used to be,” says Sean Matthews, a longtime resident who just came back from a sailing trip through the Bahamas, “All that coral, all those colors in crystal clear water. I worried at one point I was going to run aground because I could see coral heads beneath the boat. In fact, I was in 30 feet of water. That’s how clear the water was.”
Two months ago the ground began bubbling up around a controversial sewer injection well on Cudjoe Key. The shallow well, dug in the shadow of a mountain of trash, had been fully permitted by DEP. And DEP bureaucrats were still defending their permit as the water was shooting up out of the ground. It took a vote by the County Commission to override DEP’s indifference. The county is now funding a deep injection well for the Cudjoe Regional plant. It will replace the shallow wells that many residents believe would have pushed millions of gallons of effluent through the porous base of the toxic dump.
This week we learn that the Department of Health appears to be failing in its mission to monitor on-site sewer treatment systems.
So what is going on with the bureaucrats in charge of protecting our fragile and priceless environment?
Stay tuned.
~~~~~~~~
*H Darden, Wastewater in the Florida Keys: A call for stricter regulation of nonpoint source pollution: Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law, 2001
7 Responses to “Water Quality Disaster: Whistleblower Accuses Department of Health”
Moving laterally, in today’s Key West Citizen (www.keynews.com), Key West has most expensive tourist lodging in America, I added the pretty pics:
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Lodging study gives insight into Florida Keys’ tourism
BY MANDY MILES Citizen Staff
mmiles@keysnews.com
Hotel room rates in the Florida Keys have increased every month for the past 64 months. That’s more than five years of constantly increasing hotel revenues, Jessica Bennett, market research director for the Monroe County Tourist Development Council, told members of the local lodging association during their luncheon Friday.
“Forbes named Key West the ‘top luxury hotel market’ in the country,” Bennett said to the Lodging Association of the Florida Keys and Keys West. She then introduced tourism researcher Neville Bhada, whose company Tourism Skills Group recently completed a four-part lodging study of the Florida Keys.
The study compiled traveler interviews, property surveys, review of lodging trends and review of comparable destinations.
What lodging officials learned Friday was what travelers think of the Keys, how much more they’d be willing to spend on accommodations, what would make them choose another destination and the role attractions and excursions play in vacations.
Perhaps the most surprising statistic showed that 47 percent of Keys visitors said yes, their price of their accommodations was reasonable. Nearly 80 percent of travelers found the price of souvenirs, food, drinks and excursions also to be reasonable, though Bhada pointed out that the survey did not define “reasonable,” rather letting participants use their own definition.
Eighty-eight percent of visitors said they’d return to the Keys, while the top reported dislikes were the cost of Keys accommodations, students on Spring Break and the Duval Street atmosphere.
“We were here conducting our one-on-one traveler intercept surveys in March, at the height of Spring Break,” he said. “And the ferocity of people who didn’t like the Spring Break crowds was intense. Also, many of those people felt the timing of Spring Break has driven up the cost of their accommodations.”
Bhada also pointed out that “people either love Duval Street or hate it, with many of them comparing it to Bourbon Street in New Orleans. “People seemed to either come for the party scene, or they avoided it entirely, and were here for nature or relaxation,” he said.
In analyzing their study results, Bhada’s team was surprised to see that most travelers spent an average of $3,062 for total trip expenditures on a four- or five-night stay.
“That’s the highest we’d ever seen, and the Keys were the only place where more than half of the total trip cost was spent on accommodations,” Bhada said. “We encountered several people who were spending $800 to $1,000 per night.”
Business owners in the audience questioned the statistical significance of Bhada’s study when he said, upon questioning, that his team only surveyed 75 visitors throughout the island chain, with 80 percent of them in Key West.
“We conducted 75 one-on-one intercepts with people answering a 30-question survey,” he said. “When done in such a way, anything more than 50 responses becomes statistically significant.”
The TDC paid Tourism Skills Group $47,000 for the study, Bennett said after the luncheon.
“When we received Neville [Bhada’s] results, I immediately compared his percentages and extrapolations from the 75 surveys with the 4,000 visitor surveys we conduct each year through all parts of the Keys,” Bennett said, acknowledging some lodging members’ concerns about the validity of Bhada’s methods.
“The comparison was the first thing I did, and his interpretations from those 75 surveys aligned perfectly with our figures and percentages, so I was satisfied that we got a good and accurate picture of people’s perceptions of their Florida Keys vacations.”
mmiles@keysnews.com
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
Good article! Please clarify what or which Department of Health (DOH) you are referring to in the article. I am assuming it is the Monroe County Department of Health?
The Monroe County DOH used to require tests back when they first started selecting victims to accuse of having a cesspit so they could force them to install an aerobic system with an additional nutrient removal tank. I think that was 1999.
The purpose of the “cess pit elimination program” was more to gain “cess pit credits” that could be used by favored developers for a building permit than for water quality. If the intention was truly to prevent sewage from reaching the ocean, then they would have made an effort with Pigeon Key’s cess pit that has been researched and found to definitely be polluting. Instead, they selected “unknown” systems that were “presumed to be cess pits” that were often located far from the shoreline. Then they refused to accept proof that the presumed cess pit was actually a septic tank.
A septic tank and drainfield that is far from shore will never have its freshwater effluent reach the ocean. This is not the mainland- fresh water does not keep going down unless forced. It floats on the denser saltwater-saturated ground. There are too many thirsty plants between the drainfield and the ocean, eager to suck up any freshwater riding above the salty ground water.
The DOH selected the very few engineered on-site systems that could be installed, and threatened to come after the engineer signing off on the permit if the system did not get the desired results. In any event, not a single “engineered system” successfully met the required BAT standards for effluent.. So they just quit testing instead of admitting that their program was a .failure. Now, a license fee is paid and a government employee comes around yearly and asks “is it working okay for you?”
Many of the engineered systems required a shallow well injection, which guarantees that the heavily chlorine poisoned effluent will enter into the tidal ground water where terrestrial plants cannot benefit. The high efficiency phosphorus and pathogen removal of a good drainfield is lost when a shallow injection well is used. My guess is that more harm than good was done by the inland conversions.
As for Pigeon Key’s cess pit polluting? It still is. The BOCC has approved forcing No Name Key properties that do not have electric to install an electric grinder pump and the homeowner is tasked with how to power the abomination. Why doesn’t the County shows a little good faith and install a grinder pump on Pigeon Key to push the sewage to Marathon’s central treatment facilities instead of just dumping it in a hole in the ground a few feet from the shoreline? Or install a more contained on-site system. There is no sincere concern for water quality amongst the government agencies. If it will affect their budget, environmental concerns be damned. If it will increase income and power for them, they will push any program through claiming urgency for water quality…. and hardship on citizens be damned. It is disgusting in every way.
How sad that turning a blind eye to impropriety has long been the banal operational mode of agency personnel responsible for water quality protection: DOH, NOAA, DEP, and USFWS (offshore refuges and freshwater lenses within jurisdictional boundaries). Negligent supervisory personnel from these agencies, and certain appointed or elected officials from FKAA and BOCC, have failed miserably in their duties as public servants and should be held accountable (if nothing else, names listed on Hall of Shame monument at mile marker 0).
The laudable consensus-seeking Sanctuary Advisory Council sometimes seems to be more interested in closing off sandbars than tackling major solvable root causes of water quality degradation like shallow sewage injection wells or the ludicrous placement of a massive sewage treatment plant at a toxic landfill — a bit like worrying about a gnat in their meeting chambers when thousands of starving rabid dogs surround the building. Or blaming the janitor when shoddy construction causes a building to collapse.
When I was at Arnaud and Naja’s home the other day and heard them talking with a third person about what would become this article, I asked which regulatory agency oversaw this, and was it local or state agency? I was told it actually is a state agency, although it’s called Monroe County Department of Health. I said, well, we already found out that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are useless, so is DOH any different?
More than human sewerage from various keys killed the reef, but that had heavily contributed. Also contributing was cruise ships dumping their sewerage offshore. And development and dredging, which clouded the water and made it more difficult for sunlight to penetrate and algae corals feed on to reproduce via photosynthesis. And the chemical run off from the mainland and also from the various keys contributed.
The local water is full of MRSA bacteria, google image MRSA to get a view of that terrorist.
During last year’s Key West mayoral, incumbent Mayor Craig Cates categorically denied my statement that there is MRSA in the water; the ocean is clean and beautiful, he said at a candidate forum.
The actress was well advised to get out of the ocean. And that was a long time ago.
Unfortunately, most people choose to ignore the entire topic of sewage and sewage disposal, perhaps as a vestige of Victorian era attitudes. However, without strict enforcement of existing regulations, we’re continuing to foul our own nests, and dilution is not the solution.
Water quality is important… for today and for our future. Must we sue the DOH and DEP to get staffs to do their jobs to protect us?
Outstanding article and informative comments.
Competent individuals doing their job, certain that their performance will be evaluated, were the wheels of progress that maintained a standard of excellence that could be relied upon by the American taxpayer.
It appears that we’ve arrived at a place that mandates a ‘new job description’ for all government enterprises: “whistleblower”.
Kind of sad…
Blessings & Respect
History has shown that ALL previous civilizations failed because of internal corruption, greed, apathy. Well here we are and unless U’ve got your head in the sand(apathy) you should see the writing on the wall. It’s only a matter of time before America collapses because our government is only interested in getting MORE