Letter to CC Commissioners: Utility Meeting July 16, 2024

Dear Commissioners;

This is Percy Angelo. Rob Robbins and I are writing on behalf of the Cape Haze Property Owners Association and the Friends of Cape Haze. Our CHPOA president Rob Matthews, Rob Robbins and I have already made comments about the County’s sewer conversion plan for Cape Haze, and I won’t repeat them here. The CCU information for the July 16 Utility meeting however, reveals some assumptions which are deeply troubling given your interests (and ours).

CCU assumptions about costs focus only on CCU costs and lead to seriously inefficient and unaffordable nitrogen removal decisions by the County-On April 26, 2024 Brandon Moody hosted a meeting between Rob Robbins and I with a number of CCU individuals about issues including construction schedules and costs for utility upgrades and sewer. When asked, Luke Wright, the CCU constructions/monitoring individual who was participating by phone distinguished the importance of sewer conversion costs because those costs would be funded from a different pot, by MSBUs, not the utility through its budget.

This is a troubling acknowledgment. As described in the attached exhibit, based on construction costs and first year operation, using CCU’s own data, including its grant request approved July 9, it’sLow Pressure Sewer alternative for Cape Haze will cost $5.62 million for removal of Nitrogen of 1 ton per year. This is a cost of over $2810 per pound removed!

In contrast, the Nitrogen removal cost projected for the East Port Advanced Wastewater Treatment project will be not quite $9 per pound of removal. Septic conversion is over 300 times more costly than AWT.

And yet CCU is focused on septic conversions because the money will come directly from the public and not through its budget. To the taxpayer/ratepayer money paid to MSBUs is just as important as money paid to the utility/County. Clearly the CCU priorities about costs are out of sync with the priorities of the citizens and the Commissioners as we understand them.

Cost efficiency is a key component of affordability, as discussed further below.

CCU assumptions about testing show that water quality is not relevant to its decisions- Following up on commissioner comments at the last Utilities meeting, on several occasions over the past months Percy Angelo has offered to facilitate siting of testing locations in Cape Haze. Originally I was told that 5 locations would probably be required. There are publicly owned and CHPOA owned locations within the community that were possibilities that would ease the testing process.

Now, some months later, the testing process is still not finalized but may involve 19 permanent wells on private property requiring easement grants to the County of between 5 and 10 years. The program seems designed to discourage participation.

Most surprising is the fact that none of the testing actually involves testing in the waters of Lemon Bay surrounding Cape Haze, even though the stated reason for Cape Haze sewers is to protect those waters. (We have been told that the County is not sure how meaningful testing in Lemon Bay would be. More on that below).

So what does the County expect to conclude from a bad test result, on land, assuming it gets one? Does it assume, without evidence, that that bad result in local groundwater- which would not necessarily be a violation) reaches Lemon Bay? At what concentration? Does one land based result drive a decision for sewers?

The County appears to be repeating the errors in testing at East/West Spring Lake where it kept testing, without finding issues, until it went to Health Department records and found a few failed septics to test. Not surprisingly it found high levels, but high levels WHICH HAD NOT MIGRATED as shown by surrounding wells. (See our April 2, 2024 submission).

If the County believes that contaminant levels in surrounding waters are really not relevant then why are we doing this?

Testing needs to be related to Lemon Bay water quality. If it isn’t it’s a wasted effort.

The CCU Water Quality Improvement Grant application approved by the Board on July 9 shows that water quality impairments are not the basis for sewer conversions- As noted above, CCU submitted a Consent Agenda item to the Board on July 9 to request state money for Cape Haze sewer conversion. In support of that application CCU supplied four figures citing water quality impairments as the basis for the grant request: there were three impairments in Coral Creek ( fecal coliform, chlorophyll A and Dissolved Oxygen, the latter two are associated with nutrients), and a fecal coliform impairment for Lower Lemon Bay.

There were NO nutrient based impairments cited for Lemon Bay.

As for Coral Creek, the University of South Florida, College of Marine Science, measures and models near surface current vectors and salinity distributions for the Charlotte Harbor Region, including flows in Lemon Bay and Charlotte Harbor. Charlotte Harbor Region near surface current (vectors) and salinity distributions (usf.edu). Using this site you can choose any date, choose “loop” for the drop down box, and watch the flows for Lemon Bay, Coral Creek and Charlotte Harbor. They show the obvious, water does not flow upstream from Lemon Bay to Coral Creek. Whatever is happening in Coral Creek it is not due to Cape Haze. Indeed the flows show almost no component from Lemon Bay to Charlotte Harbor.

So what about the so-called fecal coliform impairment in Lower Lemon Bay. Unlike the impairment for Coral Creek which cited actual test results, the impairment for Lower Lemon Bay is “because the shellfish harvesting classification is not fully approved by the Shellfish Harvest Area Classification Program”. In other words, the impairment has nothing necessarily to do with testing around Cape Haze or even in Lemon Bay, but because the Shellfish Harvest Area Program has not approved the area for shellfish harvesting (possibly because of the Coral Creek issue).

The County has argued to us that it doesn’t want to test in Lemon Bay itself because if it did hypothetically find an exceedance it might be due to a distant source such as Eldred’s which would be unfair to Cape Haze. This makes no sense and the ability to relate the data to flow modeling using tools such as the University of South Florida website described above demonstrates that it can’t be a valid argument.

The County’s and state’s own data show that Cape Haze sewer conversions will have no impact on water quality impairments. So again, why are we doing them?

The CCU materials prepared for this meeting appear to ignore Advanced Wastewater Treatment or AWT. Why?-We found no mention of AWT in the CCU material made available as of July 9. And yet, as demonstrated by the emails from Rob Robbins and me on January 16 and April 2, 2024, it is clear that the County’s reclaim water from its existing plants is a significant source of nutrients (Nitrogen) to the surrounding waters. AWT would remove most of those nutrients. Why aren’t we expediting it?

CCU has told the Board that its sewer plant renovation program is much more costly than anticipated. Initially the public, and maybe the Board, was led to believe that the additional costs were due to AWT…that has since been corrected and it appears that the additional costs are due to a need to expand the sewage plants for more development…not to install better treatment.

The CCU submission for this hearing says the same thing…it is all about expanded plants and not about better treatment even though the cost efficiency calculation with which we began this email shows how important removal efficiency is.

CCU priorities are inconsistent with water quality improvement. New development should pay its own way. AWT is especially important as the County looks to grow.

The revision of the Sewer Master Plan needs to take account of affordability, septic density and water quality-The sewer plan to date, and the revisions suggested by JonesEdmunds, misuse data and ignore affordability in many significant ways, including the following:

-Besides ignoring costs beyond basic construction costs they ignore costs of operation for LPS systems with a reputation for frequent service needs and the generator and other electrical costs to the homeowner including connection costs on large lots.

-As discussed above the JonesEdmunds work totally ignores the pollutant removal “efficiency” of its proposed solution. As discussed in the Angelo email of July 9, 2024 regarding the Cape Haze Sewer Project, the County’s assumption as to the Nitrogen contribution of Cape Haze is only 1 ton annually. This compares to the 58.8 tons per year measured Nitrogen discharge by the County treatment plants to the Coral Creek WBID. See the attachment below, Affordability must consider the cost efficiency of the expenditure or it’s a meaningless number.

-The JonesEdmunds work ranks sites for conversion based on proximity to Charlotte Harbor. (See p.7 Criteria 1 Proximity to Waterways referencing impact to the water quality of Charlotte Harbor). But Cape Haze is nowhere near Charlotte Harbor and the University of South Florida modeling shows that it does not impact Charlotte Harbor. This ranking criteria is entirely inapplicable to Cape Haze and the rank assigned is improper and unsupportable.

-The JonesEdmunds work adds a new criteria regarding the density of septic tanks. Several of the Commissioners have noted that the lots in Cape Haze are large and far apart. 61 are vacant. A straightforward density rank would put Cape Haze at the lowest priority.

The JonesEdmunds work seriously mistates the priority ranking for Cape Haze and must be corrected.

Cape Haze has tried to cooperate in testing and in supporting a science and fact based discussion of the issues. We will continue to do so. But we are troubled by the CCU pretext for sewer expansion in our area. It has not begun a testing program even as it moves ahead with sewer conversion work. This is just wrong. Getting valid test results, including results from Lemon Bay, should take place before any more work on sewer conversion.

Further, any update of the Sewer Master Plan should correct misstatements, encourage a transparent redrafting which avoids conclusions manufactured to implement an ineffective sewer conversion effort and, importantly, recognize the crucial role of Advanced Wastewater Treatment for water quality.

Thank you for your service and your concern for these issues.

Rob Robbins
Cape Haze

Percy Angelo
Cape Haze

Preview attachment Nitrogen Removal Cost Comparison (2).pdf