Greg Veliz, executive director for the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about their projects.
The biggest drain on water usage is irrigation.
Veliz said, “I was very, very surprised to find out that the peak hours of the water that we sell is between three and six in the morning. I would have assumed it would have been after school or after work, when I first came over. But evidently, everybody waters their lawns in the early morning and all the irrigation kicks on. That’s our biggest hours. That’s when we pump the most water. So irrigation and if, in fact, they have the automatic shut offs when the rain comes, we see a marked difference at that point.”
There has also been an increase in the projects that the Aqueduct has taken on.
Veliz said, “It’s odd because you see it goes out over five years, and it’ll go up, up, up, and then it drops off. Because what happens is you don’t start getting legislative funding and things of that nature right up until the last year or two before, so you’ll see a drop off, and in the end, down the road, in 2029 it’ll drop off. But that’s only because the funds haven’t been secured. The only thing standing between us and doing more and more capital projects is money. Funding is obviously, we have a lot of infrastructure issues that we can address and our goal is to do as many of them as fast as we possibly can, without impacting the consumer that much. You will see slight increases from time to time. But when we go to Tallahassee, that’s the first ever question they ask, have you raised rates, or have you applied for loans? They want to make sure they’re not your single stream of money and that’s understandable, and so far, we’ve had to check those boxes.”
Has Tallahassee been responsive to our needs here?
Veliz confirmed, “They have. It’s very difficult, because, obviously, when you have that situation that we had a couple of years ago, where we had the three leaks in a row, and we ended up not having water, that gets people’s attention, and at that point, everybody’s ready to throw money at that problem. So unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, when you don’t have a leak and everything’s running smooth and that wheel is not squeaking, it doesn’t get the grease that it got when it was squeaking. So we try to go up to Tallahassee and tell them, yes, we are maintaining and yes we are running and everything is doing great, but in order to stay that way, we need funding. That’s a little bit more difficult of an argument to make.”
What are the needs for capital improvement projects?
Veliz said, “The RO plants are big. The plant that we put in Stock Island, and the one that we’re now putting in Marathon, those are huge. Those will be able to produce 8 million gallons a day, which is about a third of what our total usage is for a day. So those are big. Obviously, any transmission repairs you do are big and then we may, sometimes we tend to neglect wastewater. We also do wastewater for a lot of the Keys, and that kind of doesn’t get the attention, and yet it should. So we try to balance our efforts in fundraising, to include them, but to also include water, but everything’s so expensive. I mean, we’re talking about that blue pipe you see going in up the Keys, that’s $10 million for every mile. That gets to be really expensive when you talk about 130 miles.”
Are RO plants expensive to run, too?
Veliz confirmed, “It is. It’s probably the most expensive water you can produce, but it’s also the most plentiful. We’re pumping water out of the ocean, which makes it pretty easy. Then you get projects like this new Seven Mile Bridge Project. I don’t know how that’s all going to work out because we really haven’t been contacted that often about it, but we’ve got our water line running through that, and we don’t know how that’s going to work out. The feds came out with new limits on PFAS levels that are allowed to be in the water, and that’s a good thing, but understand that that cost us $100 million and $100 million that was unbudgeted, that we need to finish in five years. That creates a challenge.”
The projects run pretty much the length of the Keys.
Veliz said, “You look at age, you look at history, have we had a history of problems in those areas? Then it could be nothing more than let’s assume for a moment, the city of Key West is planning a major renovation of Fleming Street. Well, we need to replace the pipes on Fleming Street, so we’ll get on board with them, and then we’ll get out in front of them and lay all new pipe and get everything brand new on that street. So once they fix it and pave it, the thought is that we won’t have to go back and tear it up. In years past, I know it’s been very frustrating, the city will come in and redo a street, and then the Aqueduct comes and cuts it open. Well, we’re trying to stop that, so we’d prefer if the city came and said they were doing Fleming Street, Fleming Street may not be first on our list, but we’ll do it just to do it in conjunction with them, and it minimizes the cost to either the taxpayer or the ratepayer, depending on what they are. I mean, and they’re both.”
Design can also be expensive.
Veliz said, “I tend to believe that shovel ready projects are more right for money than ideas on paper. So we’ll go through the exercise of actually getting a working design. So when the money becomes available, we show up with a shovel ready project and shovel ready projects tend to get money before projects that are just conceptual. We believe in spending our money on design, so that we can go get other people’s money to do the project.”
Are the water storage tanks used just in an emergency situation?
Veliz said, “No, they’re used every day. We pump into the tank and then from the tank into the system. We have to. When you’re talking about water, age is not your friend. The longer the water sits, the more it degrades. So water can actually spoil. So we have to continually cycle that water through. Now, obviously, once there’s a leak and we have to shut off at a certain mile marker, then they become the only source of water, along with the RO plant that we currently have, and we will pump whatever’s in there. We had I believe, two leaks, which would be about 24 hours of water in those tanks. When we hit the third leak the last time we were just out. So every leak is about a 12 hour fix, and we’ve got two of them in those tanks. All of our pump stations have generators, so we are able to operate during power outages. It’s water outages that really concern us, and whether it’s one major break, as we’ve had on our transmission line, or like during Irma, where there was just a million small breaks on private property, which are impossible to chase down because a lot of people have evacuated, and we’re just bleeding from a million paper cuts. But however you’re losing it, once you’re losing it, your stores get drained upon it, and when they start draining, you only have so long.”
With the heat, it’s important to stay hydrated.
Veliz said, “The heat is very, very bad out there right now and it tends to get away from you, and by the time you realize it’s affecting you, it’s too late, so stay hydrated. Take breaks. Let’s get through this hot season and we’ll get to the rain this weekend, and it might maybe help cool things off a little.”