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 aqueduct authority is always ready if we should see a hurricane.
Veliz said, “We’ve done some things to mediate some of the things that we experienced during Irma, how we lost water in Irma was just private properties that had been evacuated suffered small leaks. So we had small leaks everywhere, and we were basically just bleeding dry from a million paper cuts. So our messaging has changed from the old days, where fill your bathtub. So if you’re leaving, please turn off your water. And if you can’t, call us, we’ll come turn it off. It’s the number one thing I can say. If, in fact, you plan to evacuate, please call us. We will come turn your water off, and that way it’ll save everyone after it’s all over. If you lose a fence while you’re gone, or a tree while you’re gone, or a dock, all of those will cause a leak. So better to come back, turn it on. We’ll find out where it’s at, and we’ll address it at that time.”
How long did it take to restore water after Irma?
Veliz said, “What we’d have is water for a couple hours in the morning, and a couple hours in the afternoon, and they would try to build up, because it was draining at an alarming rate. But it came back slowly, and it would only come back for a couple hours a day, until it became more regular.”
The replacement of aging pipe in the Keys is ahead of schedule. Knights Key will be ending soon.
Veliz said, “It’s pulling pipe as we speak. It should be finishing up pretty quick. That was a bad spot that if we had had a leak there it could have been catastrophic. So getting this new pipe in the ground is going to help a great deal there, making everybody’s water security better. We’ve got projects going pretty much everywhere. I think we’re at almost $90 million projected. Now, we project 90, we probably will end up doing somewhere in the 60 to 70 range, just because sometimes grant funding, and you’re waiting on different funding sources, that’s a huge part of what we do every day, is juggling funding sources and when to trigger this and when to trigger that. It’s a delicate balance, trying to keep it all in the air.”
What does that money represent?
Veliz said, “That’s what we’ll be spending next year. That’s just one year spending. You’ll notice, when you pull up our five year plan, the last year will only be like $20 million and people say, well, are you planning on doing less? No, we plan on doing the same. Just we haven’t secured the funding for those projects yet. So before we can plug those into our five year plan, we got to have some type of funding source attached to them.”
The project in Tavernier will move towards the school in the Upper Keys.
Veliz said, “I met the new superintendent the other night and I apologized right off the bat. This isn’t going to get off to a great start, but we’ll work through it.”
It’s Coral Shores High School that will be affected and the time of school may be changed to try to help the traffic flow.
Veliz said, “We will work through it. We’ll get past it and then it’ll be over. I think we’re going get there sometime in October, and I would hope it would be far less than a month, a couple weeks, maybe, just to get us through that area. We’re laying pipe pretty fast. It’s a contractor, and it’s been the same contractor throughout, and they’ve been doing a fantastic job. They’ve completed everything. They’ve worked with everyone, and everybody understands what everybody’s up against, so they’ve been very responsive.”
Reverse osmosis is also helping with the water supply.
Veliz said, “We’ve got the new RO plant on online and currently running at 2 million gallons a day. We’re going to alternate off 2 million gallons from each side over the course of time, just keeping all the trains running.”
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