Greg Veliz, executive director of the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about water.
The former mayor of Marathon, Luis Gonzalez, was recently appointed to the board of the aqueduct authority.
Veliz said, “It’s great news. We want to give our great things to Toni Appell, who served for many, many years on our board. She decided to move away and go spend some time with family and we were absent of board members for a while. Now that we have Luis, we feel really good about our situation. We have a full board now, and we look forward to moving forward.”
There is $7.5 million appropriated from the state budget to the new reverse osmosis plant project in Marathon.
Veliz said, “This year, we heard all of the horror stories and everyone was in fear this year because of the budget cycle. But we were happy. We were very happy with the seven and a half million dollars. It goes a long way to keeping us working yet another year towards our end goal of completing that. We’ve improved the entire property, raised it four feet. Now we’re ready to bid out the first phase, which is a tank and a pump station and we got the bids back in yesterday. We’ll be in contract soon, and then we’re going to break ground up there. All of that’s moving at record speed, when on 9/12/22 at 8:30am that’s the first time we ever talked about it. So we have it written down on a board in here. Write it down. This is the first time. And we opened up business yesterday, and we’re starting work.”
The plant on Stock Island saw the governor visit for the ribbon cutting.
Veliz said, “It’s currently serving the customers today. It has four individual trains, each capable of a million gallons a day. We run obviously, alternating schedules. We run one train a day, which means we’re getting a million gallons and we keep alternating throughout the cycle. We have the generator. We got a chance to use that last week when we lost power. So we had to test under fire with the generator. So everything seems to be working out. We’re working the bugs out. There’s a lot of moving parts in that operation, from getting water from the ocean right there and turning it into drinking water and pumping it right into the system. There’s lots of things that have to happen. We have a lot of safety measures that kick in place, but with those, bring risks too. Whenever we have a drop in power, you have a drop in pressure, and then a sudden increase in pressure when the power kicks back on. That’s always problematic for us and trying to put check valves in place that capture those moments of inconsistency, where the pressures fluctuate. A great fluctuation in pressure could cause a pipe to bust. As long as water is running continuously through it, we’re pretty good. But when those pressures fluctuate, then it starts to get dicey.”
How much water runs through the Keys in a day?
Veliz said, “We’ve gotten as high as 24, 25 million gallons a day. We try to keep it in the 21 to 22 million gallon a day range and we do that through use of reserves and pump systems and alternating so we can keep the keep some of the demand, some of the pressure that we’re putting on the system down.”
Are there any concerns for water quality?
Veliz said, “We’re still steady, moving towards our PFAS remediation, where we have that five year mandate, which they’re talking about moving the date and moving the numbers. We’re going to continue down the path we’re on. We’re going to zero emissions, and we’re going for the five year window. So we were working on this well in advance of of them putting out the regulations, and we feel like we got a good head start. We’re going to continue down that path. Can’t put that genie back in the bottle, regardless of what they do with the numbers or they make the adjustments, we’re going to continue down the path of zero and that way we’ll be secure in what we’re doing.”
Are our near shore wasters somewhat healthy?
Veliz said, “When I worked for the city, we did a lot of that. I was involved in that very much. And I’m not concerned, personally. I mean, everyone’s downstream of someone. The water supply continuously moves, and there’s a great amount of dilution that goes on. So, no, I’m not overly concerned with the near shore waters, although we need to take care of them and be vigilant, but concerned about them, as far as concerned about going in them? No.”