the bare facts - Key West’s channel-widening “study” referendum
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What the channel-widening “study” advocates really want is for the referendum to pass so they can use it as a political argument to get the Federal rules changed so the channel can be dredged wider, for two reasons:
1) to accommodate cruise ships, such as those in the photos below, presently calling on Key West, which cannot get into port on days when the wind blows from the wrong direction and causes them to be unable to crab (tack) into the channel;
2) to accommodate even larger cruise ships which presently are too big to get into Key West’s channel regardless of wind direction.
What you see in the two pics below will continue, if the channel is dredged wider.
circa 1998
spring 2013
Share these two photos with people who want the channel widened. Tell them the photos represent only part of the legacy they are leaving their children and grandchildren, if they don’t oppose cruise ships calling on Key West altogether. What else cruise ships do is dump their highly toxic semi-treated human sewerage into the sea, and also their ground up food wastes. Both excrements pollute the ocean and kill the reef.
Consider this mid-2013 chat on Reef Relief’s Facebook page [Peter Anderson now is Chairman of the Board of Reef Relief, DeeVon Quirolo was a co-founder of Reef Relief].
Peter Anderson Cruise ships do not dump raw sewage into the sea anymore, Janet. Reef Relief and many others made them change those habits years and years ago.
DeeVon Quirolo Not so. The cruise ship industry made a big deal about agreeing to go to secondary treatment–settling the solids and adding chlorine ON NEW SHIPS ONLY; but they will still dump the highly concentrated liquids overboard and this will at best eventually include only a small fraction of the cruise ships on the high seas. The worst part is that they dump outside the reef tract on their way to Key West from Port Everglades.
Port Everglades
The Everglades are thrilled to have this unholy place named after them.
DeeVon also wrote to me:
The current situation is that cruise ships routinely dump thousands of gallons of partially treated concentrated waste in the ocean outside of the reef on their way to Key West from Port Everglades. They run just outside the reef to avoid the offshore counter current of the Gulfstream, which is why the Area to be Avoided was established by the International Maritime Organization to keep them far enough off critical areas where many large ships ran aground the reef. When I was on the Cruise Ship Task Force for the City, we tried running a sample of cruise ship waste through the sewage treatment plant, but it was so anoxic that it would have shut down the anerobic action of the plant by depleting all the oxygen needed. Plus it was in salt, not fresh water, so that was an additional negative factor that reduced the potential for the biological treatment that is employed at the plant.
All the best, DeeVon.
I have no business interests in Key West. My interest is drawing a line in the sand
on Mother Nature and future generations’ behalf.
wild queen conch
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com