Greg Veliz, executive director for the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on with our water.
The Aqueduct Authority makes pretty regular trips to Tallahassee.
Veliz said, “All the work you see going on, and some of the stuff you don’t see, the new RO plant out of Marathon, everyone sees the pipe project and knows the effects of the pipe project, but those are big dollar items, and we spend as much time as we need to in Tallahassee, trying to convince people the need for that and how important water security is, so that we can get funding for those projects.”
What are some of those projects?
Veliz said, “We obviously opened our new RO plant this year. It’s producing. It runs at 50% most of the time, just producing, just to keep it running, and keep producing some water and take some pressure off of Florida City, so we’re generating about 2 million gallons a day out of that, but Crawl Key is in full swing. It went from just two years ago, from just being an idea to now. It’s a full fledged construction site covered with four foot feet of fill and ready to get started building tanks and pump stations and moving along with that RO plant. So there’s a lot going on. And then, of course, the whole PFAs remediation thing, and we’re going to have to redo Florida City. So there’s a lot of things on the horizon.”
Replacing the pipe line is a big project and traffic has been going pretty well.
Veliz said, “I think it’s proven that I have no way of knowing what’s going to affect traffic or not. I played that one up pretty well, and I thought, for very good reason, I thought it was going to be as bad as I thought it was going to be, and then it ended up not being so. I’m going to probably give up trying to forecast and just be prepared.”
How are vacancies going in the aqueduct authority?
Veliz said, “We’re always looking. Things have changed so dramatically. When I graduated from high school, getting a job at the aqueduct was like hitting the gold mine, and now we hold job fairs up and down the Keys doing everything we can to recruit people. It’s not easy, and we struggle, and the city struggles, and Keys Energy, everyone’s struggling to get the same talent pool, so it’s tough. And we think we’ve got it licked, and then we don’t.”
Is AI having an impact?
Veliz said, “I can tell you that it’s not big in our conversation. Right now we’re trying to get people to do jobs. What’s killing our situation is the shortage of people to do those jobs. I don’t see them being taken over by technology right now. Someone still has to go fix that leak in the middle of the night. As far as running a plant, yeah, a lot of it’s mechanical. A lot of it’s more technological now than it used to be just mechanics and someone turning valves, that has gotten more modern. But until they can figure out how to dig a hole and fix a pipe, that’s still going to have to be done by human hands. People are going to have to make decisions. So, no, we’re not actually addressing that right now, but it’s coming. I mean, I probably won’t see it, but it is coming.”
Wastewater is also a constant consideration.
Veliz said, “We take steps every day because it is the smaller part of our company. Everybody talks about water, and everybody likes water, and wastewater is not a pleasant subject, but we’ve moved some of our personnel down here so that they don’t seem to fall through the cracks. We want some of the leadership from wastewater from our side here, so they’re starting to do some split time where we’re concentrating our efforts on getting more funding, because there is a lot of funding out there for wastewater, and in that system, if you have a water leak, it goes through the ground, it goes back into the water table, and yes, it’s inconvenient for everyone, but when wastewater breaks, then you start having health issues. And while it doesn’t travel in the same pressures, when it leaks, it’s not a good thing, and we’ve got to make sure that that system stays sound, and that we keep salt water out of it, because that’s bad and for the processing of it all. So, it’s a big task, but I think we’re putting the effort in now. I think now more so than before. We’ve worked with the city of Key West as far as reducing some of the pressure on our system, we’re now able to feed some flow to them, because they have a very high capacity. So we work well with other entities in order to try to process the wastewater.”
For more information, click here: https://www.fkaa.com/