Greg Veliz, executive director of the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority and Key West City Commissioner, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
How did the trip to Tallahassee go last week?
Veliz said, “We’ve been kind of like a single stream request for a number of years now. All of our requests surround our RO plant that we’re building. In 2022 it was nothing more than just an idea, just something that we came up with, and we’ve been going to Tallahassee, and we’ve been getting great response. So now we’re out on the ground. We’ve started construction, permitting is done, so it’s moving along nicely.”
What about budget negotiations at the state?
Veliz said, “Ultimately, the number of dollars that they get down to are the number of dollars that are available. And then we’ve got to start splitting the pie. But we try to emphasize all the time that water should not take a back seat. Without us, the whole thing comes to a grinding halt. It’s a good sales line, but it’s also a reality. We’ve got to keep the water flowing. And I think so far, that the improvements that we’re making about the pipeline and guarding against any kind of leak, and there will be more leaks. I mean, in the water world, that’s just a reality. Also, the RO plants are going to help a great deal.”
What is an RO plant?
Veliz said, “In its most simplest form, it’s taking water from the ocean and making it into potable drinking water. It’s an expensive process, however, it does give us the ability to make water further south, which reduces our dependency on Florida City, and we can make up right now, with what we have in place in Stock Island, we can make up to 4 million gallons a day. Just for perspective, we use about 22 a day in the entire Florida Keys. So four just about covers Key West for the day. We’re in the process of putting the one in Marathon which gives us another 4 million gallons a day. Now we’re getting into some real numbers where we’re approaching half of what we take in every day, and that’s huge for us.”
What’s the actual water source?
Veliz said, “It’s the Biscayne aquifer, and we bring that down and we draw out of that. Now you’re hearing about water shortages and where things are getting critical due to lack of rain. It’s the Biscayne that’s being affected. So there have been some water warnings placed. Nothing mandatory has been put into place as far as restrictions. But we’ve brought our take down. We take up to 18 million gallons a day out of there. We’ve lowered it by a million gallons, and we’re making it up from both Ro and what we’re taking out of the other Florida and brackish aquifer that we pull from every day.”
How much fluctuation do we see between seasons here in the Florida Keys?
Veliz said, “We do see quite a bit. When it’s a big weekend, it’s a drain on us. When we see a big weekend and we experience a leak or we experience some kind of shortfall in production, that’s a really big deal for us. So as long as we can maintain our water sources and everything operable, we can keep our levels up and sustain anything that happens, as far as visitors. It’s when one of those arteries gets shut down, when it becomes problematic, and then we have to really work on keeping our levels up in our tanks.”
Is there ever any danger of outgrowing the system that we have now?
Veliz said, “With the BPAS units that are in place, we don’t see a problem maintaining or being able to service anything they can build. Back when the anti building and it still is obviously a topic of conversation, we’re the first people they point to. Well, the aqueduct can’t keep up. Yes, we can keep up. That shouldn’t be a reason to build or not to build. Just understand that whatever they decide to build, we can get water to it.”
What about wastewater?
Veliz said, “Wastewater is always a problem. People get very upset when wastewater hits the ground. Not so upset when regular water hits the ground, so it’s much more of a touchy situation. And we work hard to keep that side of our operation. We handle all the wastewater for the unincorporated areas in Monroe County, plus each municipality has a wastewater system as well as does Key West, and they operate their own systems. We work a lot together. We try to help each other out. We send some of our excess capacity to Key West because they have some, and that kept us from making a major renovation of one of our plants. We were just able to utilize some old pipe that was already in the ground, and we hooked up to their system, which helped us a great deal.”
How is replacing the pipeline going?
Veliz said, “In the next month or so, we’re going to be tying in the subaqueous we did with the open cut that’s come across the front of the school (Coral Shores). That’ll give us a continuous run of I want to say somewhere on 15 miles thus far, and we’re shooting in another seven starting at the 84 mile marker, which will take in four bridges, so four subaqueous crossings. It’s going to be quite an undertaking. Right now it’s just keeping the money out in front of the project. The project is clear. The mission is clear. What we have to do is clear. It’s getting money to pay for it. That’s going to be the thing that continues to be the challenge. It’s also some areas where we’ve seen some pretty bad pipe due to tidal flows. You get a lot of high tides there. Some of the pipe years and years and years ago, we’re not finding the bedding in there that we should be finding. So there’s a lot of factors that lead to that. Everyone always asks, are you coming by? Yes, we’re coming by everybody eventually. If this goes well and we do it right, everyone’s going to see us. We’re just not coming to everybody right now.”
What about the side streets and tributaries?
Veliz said, “I would say a majority of the people that work for us do nothing but that all day, and they don’t get as much credit as the pipeline that’s drawing all the attention out on US 1, but on Facebook, you’ll see it every day. Every time we have a break, it’s on Facebook. We’re putting it out there, and people are responding. If there weren’t leaks, there wouldn’t be any need for us. Everybody complains that aqueduct water companies exist to deal with leaks and mishaps, and that’s what we do most of the day.”
What about the federal mandate to remove the PFAS from the water?
Veliz said, “It’s ongoing. We feel as though we got a good jump on it. We knew it was coming. We didn’t know what the final number was going to be. Final number was lower than we thought. So we have to bring our emissions down to zero. Everyone does. We are the most southern city, and it seems to be more prevalent in the southern part of the state. So we have the highest levels. We’re not seeing where it’s getting anymore in our system. It’s coming in that way, and it’s getting to Key West that way. So we have to take it out. In the next five years we have to have it out of our system. We are redesigning our plant in Florida City to use basically another reverse osmosis system, which will take all of the PFAS out and that’s going to be to the tune of $100 million, so that’s no small project. Just everyone be safe. Please be patient. The traffic will come and the traffic will go, and we will impede traffic again, trust me, just please be patient, and we’re going to get through it as fast as we can.”