Science & the Big Dig: Steve Williamson and a top FIU scientist answer questions

CRITICS are seeking to pause the Big Dig sea level rise protection project in Key Biscayne. It's the biggest public works program in Village history. 

Critics challenge the science, costs, and the administration by Village Manager Steve Williamson, asking for new studies about whether the antiquated stormwater drainage system can last a few years longer

We have two guests who have the answers about the science, and the Village's plans. 

• Jayantha Obeysekara, the director of the Seal Level Solutions Center at Florida International University, and a former modeler for the South Florida Water Management District
• Steve Williamson, the village manager of Key Biscayne who is trying to move to the next step of Zone 1 

Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

The views expressed in the following program are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of the Key Biscaybe Independent or Miami Fourth Estate. portions were pre recorded

music: 0:11

and again and again I think of how

Announcer: 0:16

I think of you,and I want to puke. she will

music: 0:22

she will 'always be my friend,' though. Where did you learn to be this way? Well you don't know Key Biscayne.

Tony Winton: 0:40

friend. Live from Miami, Florida. This is anti social, the podcast where we're kind of, like smoothing out a bumpy carpet. You know, of social media, when it gets lumpy, we kind of just like stomp on our feet with it a little bit. I'm Tony Winton

Jan Dillow: 0:56

and I'm Jan Dillow.

Tony Winton: 0:57

Welcome everybody we have. This is going to be a really interesting show.

Jan Dillow: 1:02

I'm very excited about this one,

Tony Winton: 1:03

because this has been "Topic A" on our little island paradise.

Jan Dillow: 1:07

The WhatsApp chats have been sparking all for months on this one,

Tony Winton: 1:12

Right. you know, it's, it's, it's about what we call the Big Dig, which is officially, has an official government name the Resilient Infrastructure Adaptation Program. I thought I would note that for the record, since our guest is here, but we just call it the Big Dig. It's just shorter, but it is this set of projects that has been really the source of a lot of debate and concern, and it's completely understandably, why? Because there's a big price tag attached to it.

Jan Dillow: 1:46

Oh, no, not this music!

Tony Winton: 1:47

You know, we haven't used this one in a while, but, you know, it's hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's a big, scary number, because it's not cheap, but the problems are not trivial, and the solutions are going to be costly. And today we're going to be having a discussion with the village manager of Key Biscayne, Steve Williamson, and also an expert in this topic of fighting the problems of sea level rise and climate change that are threatening all of South Florida, really. And joining us also is Jayantha Obeysekera. I hope I got that right, the director of the FIU Sea Level Solution Center. And welcome both of you to Anti Social.

Jan Dillow: 2:34

I think you you short circuited, or you short shifted. Our guest, he's also the, formerly the chief modeler at the South Florida Water Management District, which knows a whole lot of stuff about this. What's actually happening in South Florida, right?

Tony Winton: 2:50

So, so our hope today was to get into like two general areas. The first one is just the science of that we're facing, of climate change, and the two big ones, there are lots of aspects of that, but the two big ones are sea level rise, and the other one is rainfall increasing, rainfall that's accountable to climate change. And the scientists have told us that both of these things are changing, and professor tell us a little bit about what is the accepted understanding of the threat of sea level rise here in the coast of South Florida, the village of Key Biscayne, has adopted something called the NOAA Intermediate High forecast. Tell us about that. Yes,

Jayantha Obeysekera: 3:34

let me step back a little bit. At the global level, there are two primary reasons for rising average sea level across the globe. One is obviously the what we call thermal expansion. You know, over 90% of the excess heat is absorbed by the ocean, so thermal expansion is a significant quantity. The second factor is the ice sheet melting, particularly the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctica ice sheet, and also the glaciers. There are other factors as well. So basically, because of these two factors, we have already seen data to show that sea level is rise is accelerating, accelerating, accelerating at a small quantity. But the thing is, in the future, because of the warming, the acceleration will continue, and the rate of rice will also increase in the future. So the historical data on on sea level rise is probably not a good indication of what may happen in the future, if I may zero in on that, because some people have taken a a chart of rainfall, and they kind of just do a straight line looking forward, and they say, look, it's not so bad, even if it gets worse. But.

Tony Winton: 5:00

You're saying it's the acceleration. These are the things are,

Jayantha Obeysekera: 5:03

yeah, when it comes to sea level rise, is the acceleration and, and the primary factor that will change in the future is the rate of ice sheet melting and, and believe it or not, they will affect us here in South Florida, in terms of regional effects of sea level rise, there are two or three other factors. One is obviously the nature of the Florida current, or gulf stream. And under future condition, there's expectation that that might slow down. In the future, when the current slows down, the sea level will rise. That's number one. Number two is and this is a factor that is that's hard for a lot of people to comprehend. When lot of ice come off of the two big ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica, the whole gravitational field around the globe could change, and that itself will have some, what we call gravitational effect on the regional sea level.

Tony Winton: 6:08

Does it get more gravity or less gravity? Near

Jayantha Obeysekera: 6:11

the ice sheet, there'll be less gravity.

Tony Winton: 6:15

So if I went to an ice sheet, I would weigh less,?

Jayantha Obeysekera: 6:17

yeah.

Tony Winton: 6:17

Okay.

Jayantha Obeysekera: 6:18

In other words, the water may go down near the ice sheet, but elsewhere, like a balloon will pop up. So that is the kind of gravitational influence or contribution. So when we look at regional sea level, we cannot typically use the global we have to account for all these other factors. So the NOAA in 2017 and I was part of that study and report as well, we developed what we call regional sea level rise projection, and they were the basis for this unified sea level rise projections that the and we are in the process of looking at because there's a nova 2022, report, and I can talk about that as well. So the current guidance is what you have the NOAA Intermediate High is one of the scenarios that were recommended in the 2019 guidance and and simplifying the question that is, the state of the science today that is accepted scientific consensus from for our region. It was developed by a group of scientists that I chaired, actually for the compact, and there were scientists around the around the region, and also some government scientists. We got together, looked at the science and agreed these are the best case scenario that we should be using for for any planning in this region. The beauty of that is that instead of using different sea level rise projections from Miami to West Palm Beach, we have some unified set of planning guidance that's based on science. And you're going to have another one that's based on 2022 so we're going to get some updates. We are looking at 2022 that's an important aspect we should talk about. So the NOAA 2022, I was also part of that study. They came up with new set of projections, and we are looking at that, and I would be happy to talk about that. Where we are on that, is it better or worse? So that's an important question you're asking. If it was worse, then we would be very worried. Okay, then they're not worse. But the problem is, the data shows, particularly at Virginia Key, since about 2012 there's some uptick in the sea level that hasn't come down for 10 or 12 years.

Tony Winton: 8:59

What?

Jayantha Obeysekera: 9:00

Yeah, th ere has been an uptick in the sea level since about =2012 that hasn't come down yet. So

Tony Winton: 9:10

What's going on in Virginia Key? I mean, Key Biscayne, no, no, no. Is something wrong with the gravity in key? Biscayne?

Jayantha Obeysekera: 9:16

It's not only Virginia Key, but it's also in in Key West and other places

Tony Winton: 9:20

I see

Jayantha Obeysekera: 9:22

So I think one of the things that we are deciding now is, does it make any sense to modify what we have even though New curves might be lower, because the data shows that we might be in the range that we have recommended and for, in my opinion, for let's say they're little higher, but you buy more time, you're more resilient, right? You already started planning. You know, it's not prudent to change this planning guidance very frequently. But we looked at the data and we looked at the. Curves, and we decide regionally, which we haven't done yet, but we are in the process of doing that. Does it make any sense to change what we have, or should we go to the new curves? And I must say, the state now has a new program called flood hub. They are also developing a statewide, statewide, regional sea level projections, but I think we should decide what is best for our region based on the data and the guy and the science. What

Jan Dillow: 10:31

I'm hearing from you, though, is we shouldn't be thinking that it's getting better. at all.

Jayantha Obeysekera: 10:36

It's not getting better when you look at the data,

Jan Dillow: 10:38

okay, all right,

Jayantha Obeysekera: 10:40

look at the frequency of tidal flooding like this week and and sea level extremes, because now we are at a higher level. It's not going to get better forever, because the sea level

Jan Dillow: 10:57

in our lifetimes, right

Jayantha Obeysekera: 10:58

The ice sheet melting is not going to stop.

Tony Winton: 11:00

All right, that second question, this is where doing this, we're gonna wrap up the science thing. The second question is rainfall. And as I've learned from listening to I can't count the number of presentations that the village of Key Biscayne has put on with the engineers. But it's not just total rainfall. It's rainfall rate.

Jayantha Obeysekera: 11:18

Yes

Tony Winton: 11:18

Because when you're designing a pumping system, what matters is both. You have to also know how fast the rain is coming down, because the goal is to pump the water off the street. So what is the prediction on rainfall and rainfall rate?

Jayantha Obeysekera: 11:33

Yes. I think that's a very important point. It's you highlighted an important aspect of rainfall. You know, there's a certain duration for different infrastructure project. You know, stormwater drainage system may, you know, may use, you know, 12 hours, six hour duration. So is, we have what we call intensity, rainfall intensity, which is what you're talking about, versus duration versus frequency, right? So they're called IDF curves, so the best available data are from Atlas 14, published by NOAA and and the issue is, when they develop those they didn't think about they use the historical data, right? And there's a consensus that in the future, the extreme rainfall might increase, or what we call rain intensification, might happen. There's a physical basis for it. Every degree Celsius of warming in the atmosphere, there is the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture, approximately

Tony Winton: 12:45

like a sponge.

Jayantha Obeysekera: 12:46

Like a sponge, it can hold that means more moisture in the atmosphere could lead into more higher rainfall rate. But it is more than that. It's not only that moisture availability that's also the dynamic effects of the storm. Just think about what happened in Fort Lauderdale, probably couple of years ago. Oh, sure, five inches in 12 hours. I mean, we see those types of events very frequently in the last few years. I mean, look at what happened in hurricane Milton and Helen. Even in Asheville, we looked at the data, it seems like the rain intensification is happening. The issue is that we don't have enough data on what I call sub daily duration. Sub daily

Tony Winton: 13:33

duration, hour by hour 25

Jayantha Obeysekera: 13:35

Yeah, right. Okay, so we have the physical basis that it might intensify. We are trying to look at the smaller sub daily duration, rainfall rate. Are we seeing a trend? But at the state level, there have been lot of studies and and what a management district has adopted this we are in, we are increasing the Atlas 14 values by a factor, right? So we are trying to determine what that factor is. Broward County is assuming 20% increase. And I think that's a reasonable number, right? And we're looking at climate model data. I must say, climate model data are not perfect, but we have, we know that it is going to intensify, so you have to assume a factor of increase from the Atlas 14 rainfall rates right now. There is a new effort underway, Atlas 15, by the federal government. It was

Tony Winton: 14:35

funded by the Biden administration infrastructure act, right? Yeah, that is right,

Jayantha Obeysekera: 14:39

and that they have just completed the study for Montana, but but the one of the co authors of that study is working with us through Florida flood hub to come up with what we call change factor. These are called Change factors. What is the factor we should use for rainfall intensification? And we are working on those numbers so we see from the models, they are more than there has to be a number that's greater than one, okay, yeah, 1%

Jan Dillow: 15:12

Can I just get I just want to clarify one thing when you're talking about rainfall intensification and the whole idea of when the atmosphere heating up and having more water that that could be intensification. Could be, you're going to have a lot more rain over a period of time, right? Or it could be, you're having a lot more rain. It with within each storm, and it's happening, you know, much more intensively and over a specific period of time. Is it both of those? Or is it one to the other? It

Jayantha Obeysekera: 15:41

is both. It's both of those. But more importantly, for stormwater drainage, the shorter durations you could have a high intensity rain, right? Which matters for the stormwater management project. And

Jan Dillow: 15:54

it seems like that would be more typical in a tropical environment because of the heating,

Tony Winton: 15:58

right? And with that, that is the segue to our next guest who's been that is one more well, I know, but I he's chomping at the bit, so I want to make sure, one more factor. Okay, one more factor. All right, all right, Professor, one more.

Jayantha Obeysekera: 16:11

You mentioned there are two factors, right? One is the rising sea level, and the other one intensifying rainfall. The third factor is rising ground water table. Oh, yes, right. And, and this is what I what we call a compounding effects of three things, three threats. One is, you know, sea level is rising around us. Rainfall intensifying, water table under the under the ground is coming up. All those will affect flooding.

Unknown: 16:41

All right,

Jan Dillow: 16:42

do we have good numbers on the groundwater increasing?

Jayantha Obeysekera: 16:45

We do have on the mainland, in along the coastline, but I don't think we have enough data on islands like Key Biscayne and I was suggesting that we should have a groundwater monitoring station in the island, if they don't all right. Well, that is, have one already,

Jan Dillow: 17:02

let's do that, Steve, t

Tony Winton: 17:03

hat's, that's it. We can put it next to the mulching, composting anyway, but, but the next part of this, and again, for our listeners, we wanted to start off with the scientific basis of the threats, because there is some skepticism. I hear it talking to people. I hear it at village council meetings. We and again to get back to my sound effect, it's a scary number. So people are looking at closely, manager of The village,manager of Key Biscayne, Steve Williamson, is here. And in 2022 the village set the level of service, the performance standard, and it adopted NOAA intermediate high. Then it pulled back a little bit from that, because the initial cost numbers were a little bit whatever. There was alternative for, I believe it was called, and that was the one that was slight modification. But basically the the that is the plan that was moving forward, and we got to the stage of dividing the village up into zones for stormwater. We're going to focus on that right now and then zone one, the very first, the tough area around the K-8 school, where it's soggy all the time, that is the first one. And we have a number of $75 million for that. And some people are very upset about that. Manager Williamson, tell us, you know, we had a vote this week in the council to move to the next step. The 60% design been kicked off a week going forward, lay it out for us.

Steve Williamson: 18:37

Well, Tony, it's a pleasure to be here. You just put a lot on the plate, and I really appreciate the professor in the background that he gave us. And I would just like to say he's the guy that we've been quoting for three years, not necessarily him, particularly, but people like him who have been doing this research, professionals like him who spend their life, spend their time understanding this complex information that they're able to look and they're the ones who are looking out for us in the future. And one of the things he said, which I really appreciate, is having a standard understanding of the impact in the future so that you can actually design your infrastructure. Because if you don't have that standard number, you're changing every 356, years. I'm not happy to hear that he says the sea level rise aren't going down, but it's good to know, because it lets me know what to design for. And it's interesting, as I was driving up here, and you put me through this traffic to get up here, it was intentional. It was because what I realized is what Miami Dade County is facing. They're facing two significant things, traffic and the impacts of changing environment, right? And what that means. That means infrastructure. Infrastructure is extremely expensive, and I think a lot of the skepticism that you've heard rightfully so. We all want to be challenged. We all want to be questioned, but in the end, it really comes down to money, right? And I think. Think that's where you start to see the concern is, wow, this is expensive,

Tony Winton: 20:04

all right, at the we have a number of issues that have come up, but just to the basic plan for stormwater, starting again with zone one, and then there are these other zones. And I guess the first question some people critics have said that this number is going to show that this overall project number, and I know it's not an official number, it's an estimate, 310 million, whatever it is, it's that is no longer a valid number, because if you extrapolate from the cost of zone one on a straight line basis, it'll be much more expensive. Let's just address that first. Okay, okay,

Steve Williamson: 20:40

you mentioned earlier about how we pulled back from no intermediate high. We did not, not the standard, the level of service. Level service, yeah, we were, we were designed to 3.2 cubic feet per second, and we decided to bring it down. And we debated between one and two, and we decided to go to two cubic feet per second. So that's what, that's what brought it down. And that is what we're doing right now, is we are designing a system that's able to go to two CFS to two cubic feet per second, but we'll start at one. So in other words, we will put additional pumps in if necessary to go to two cubic feet per second, but the pipes would be big enough to pipes will still be the same, okay, right? So ask me the question again, right?

Tony Winton: 21:20

So the question, the first question, is the extrapolation question, because zone one came in maybe higher than some people were expecting, that therefore, if you multiply that out by eight zones, you get a much larger number. Talk about that. But the zones are not all the same, right? That's

Steve Williamson: 21:38

exactly about Okay. Zones are all not but first and foremost is the council's only directed us to move forward on one zone, correct? So that's got to be clear, right? And so that's where we're putting our effort. And there's a reason why we've chose zone one. Chosen zone one because it is the most flood prone area in the village, number one and number two, it's a safety issue, as you know, it's our where our k8 school is, and it also buds up against our civic center as well. So So I don't think it's a fair statement to extrapolate it. There is some level of comparison. But look, we are focusing hard and heavy on zone one, as our council has asked us to. We've made it very clear that is our main effort. We're going to move forward with that. We've put in a very deliberate decision making framework that once it's done, we're able to monitor it, monitor it has. We've gotten the success we want to. Has it actually been able to bleed over and Impact Zone Two, zone three? So actually, actually going to see a greater benefit than zone one? So no, there is no ability to extrapolate. I just don't think that is a proper statement right now. We're focusing on zone one, and let's see where we go, and we'll make sure that we come back and assess it once we're done, all right?

Jan Dillow: 22:47

And so my understanding is that this, this whole system, is started being built in, like, the 1950s is that right?

Steve Williamson: 22:55

The current system? Yeah, yes. Again, parts of it, I would say that's, yeah, that system that we currently have, no, I mean, we started putting stormwater in in the 50s. The real system that we currently have now began to put in a little bit of the 1970s but really significantly in the 1990s after the village Incorporated. So 30 years ago, yeah, they recognized that they had, you know, significant flooding problem. And now that they were a municipality, had the resources to to address it. Okay?

Jan Dillow: 23:24

So there's this whole view that maybe we can change things with the outfalls and have it be much more significant of a of a system that maybe could, we could use for another, I don't know, 510, years, but it doesn't have, it doesn't have a filters for one thing, but it, it doesn't also have the pumping ability, does it? Given that we might, we have groundwater coming up, and that's

Steve Williamson: 23:49

the, you know, this is kind of leaves right in after what the professor was saying, you know, a, you know, this is the difference between a pumped and a gravity system, right? We currently have a gravity system, and gravity systems only work when you have the ability to have water to move into a space that doesn't have water to go downhill, yes, but as the sea level rises and the groundwater rises, we have an issue, and what compounds that is the density of sea sea, sea water is higher than fresh water, so you get it twice, right? So we've always thought that the current system needs to last another 10 to 15 years, because we know we cannot get the full program done, you know, in less than 15 years. So we are going to continue to maintain what we have, but to go back and really do a major overhaul. I think that's like, you know, I'll pick on my Chevy Vega I had back when I was in high school. That's like trying to repair my Chevy Vega, to bring it forward into 2024 let's not go backwards. We need to put our very valuable money into something that's going to make a significant difference for a future. And I want to talk about later, Tony, when we get to it, I really want to talk about the purpose for this program, because it isn't just about. It is. It's about protecting the viability of this bill. Let's

Tony Winton: 25:03

say that will be after we get this. I call it the list of grievances, because these are the things that come up over and over again and but there's these are people who work throughout the village there. They care about whatever, but it's that's it. So Jan asked about the gravity nature of the system, not enough, not enough, just to whatever. The second question is, using more wells? Now I understand that somehow the we need to re study the wells, there's this proposal to send video cameras down to the pipes, that somehow, if we rehabilitate all of the wells in the in the village, that it would somehow buy us more time, right?

Steve Williamson: 25:41

And look, and I would ask the professor, if you would like to chime in on this and not on this particular question. Please go ahead, because I want to answer this question directly. But I'm saying, but with his double background of being, you know, his his scientific background, and the fact that he worked for the South Florida Water Management District, he understands what we're facing right now. But let me, let me initially address it, and if he has something, I'd like to make sure he has the opportunity. Um, so will these wells work into the future again? Yes, they could. These things were built in some were built in 1990s some were built in the 2000s they generally have a lifespan of about 30 years. We have been rehabilitating them in the last through the end of this year, we will have rehabilitated 34 out of 39 of them. Unfortunately, there was a break in time between 2010 to 2020 where there wasn't a whole lot of maintenance being done. You know, I'll thank Jack Jake ozzyman For when he came on board, he recognized that that was not being done. We did 10 in 2020 we did, unfortunately, we want me to do one in 2021 with the pandemic and other things. We did three. Now we did another 10 in 2022 we did three last year, and we have 10 this year. You add that up, that's 34 we have a total of 39 wells. We're doing the maintenance again, but it's a piece of infrastructure that's antiquated. It's a gravity system. It's only going to work for so long, and they're not connected, right? No, yeah. They are a mixed match of different types of systems, so

Tony Winton: 27:06

they may not put them together. And they're very few in Zone One, right? Very few, yeah, so it doesn't whatever. But your question for the professor, well, that's

Steve Williamson: 27:15

my opportunity, if he wants to add, yeah, well,

Jayantha Obeysekera: 27:17

you know, let me step back a little bit. I think I feel like, you know, I think you mentioned you decided to go for two CFS, and then starting with this is what I we call dynamic adaptive pathways, right? I think that's a prudent thing to do. Now I would have go for higher on the high side, but the idea of having the pipes big enough to handle larger discharge while installing one pump, which where you can add other pumps later, that is exactly the dynamic adaptation. And I think that's the prudent way, and that's something we are promoting. And Miami did. Miami Beach has done it. You build the pump housing for more pumps, but you have big enough pipes to bring in water in the future when you need it, it should be more palatable to the decision makers or the council in this case, because you are not spending all that money for the biggest system that may not be required, needed for another 50 years, but you you face in your infrastructure expansion, I think that is the right thing to do now, with regards to Wells, you know, we are doing an inventory of all the stormwater wells in the main island like Miami did, yeah, and my colleague is doing that. It's amazing how many wells are there for storm water drainage. So there are few things you have to be concerned about. First of all, if you cannot discharge water by gravity and you only have to go to north of Miami Beach, there is a classic example of that. The gravity doesn't work. You had to pump out the water. We call that forward pumping right. But if you cannot pump out the water into the bay, either you store it on on land temporarily, like you know, timeami trail west of timaemi trail, that's an example of that. Or you pump into the groundwater. But when you pump into the groundwater with large number of wells there might be, and this is something I'm hoping consultant would do some modeling to understand how much the water table would come up and when you pump during the event. And the more the water table comes up, less space for the rainfall to absorb that rainfall water. So you really have to make sure that is, that is checked, right. Otherwise, you know that that's something it's not getting you anything, is what you're saying. It may not, but I think it think, if the water quality is not an issue, pumping water is it's a. Solution, if it doesn't have this other unintended consequences. All right, next

Tony Winton: 30:05

big one on the list of grievances, if I may, is this thing about pervious, impervious, permeable, that somehow, if we had driveways that had like Grass pavers on them or something, that if we dramatically reduce the amount of impervious surfaces, that we would lessen the need for this expensive infrastructure project.

Steve Williamson: 30:29

Well, I mean, I think Tony, first of all, pervious material is better no matter where you are, right? And unfortunately, when you travel across Miami, Dade County, we've done not a very good job of retaining our pervious materials. But we are where we are, and we've just recently seen the county pass in pervious ordinance that we're all going to have to be a part of, and that we're all have to going to do our own ordinance ourselves. We've got one year to implement it. Of course, I'd like to see more impervious material, but that is not going to what's going to solve the problem that may solve a problem in a very localized manner. You know, one of the things he mentioned about being able to put water in a retention pond. We don't have any place to put a retention pond and keep us gained. We just don't have the space. So, you know, we're almost left with our only option is to pump water off the island. You know, we cannot inject it. We cannot do gravity wells. We can't put it in retention ponds. You know that? That's the charm of the village, but we got to get the water off the boat. And

Tony Winton: 31:27

I have a just a question, let's This village is approximately one square mile, right? One point something, point one. Yeah, 1.1 if it was a golf course, that was 1.1 square miles, and there were no houses and no roads and no driveways, and it was 100% just lawn, right? How much does that buy you before the grass gets flooded in a rain event and the water runs off? What is the difference between that and what you have? I'm trying to understand. What is you had the maximum pervious available in the village. I'll start it

Steve Williamson: 32:01

from a practical perspective, and I'll ask the professor to go from but first of all, it's wide open space, right? Of course, it's going to be much more absorbent. Two they're usually some sort of water features in there, so they can act as retention ponds, right? And thirdly, there's no property on there that you're trying to protect. You know, there's no one's home, right? There's no safety issues. Hopefully, the people have gotten off and stopped golfing, but, you know, so you've got to, although I get to where you're going in terms of, you know, pervious versus impervious, it's a totally different concept. And maybe he can put the science behind it, yeah. I

Jayantha Obeysekera: 32:32

mean, we know, typically urbanization increases the runoff, yeah, volume of that's what I'm getting at. You have a lot of concrete on the land, right? So I think pervious pavement, or pervious surfaces, instead of hard concrete, is always a good thing, right? So, if nothing else, it might not reduce the volume significantly. It may some, but it might be good for water quality purposes, for sure, instead of sending water quickly into the bay through gravity or pumping or whatever, it might allow some form of treatment, because you're letting waters go to the groundwater table, and there is some some level of treatment. So I so the

Tony Winton: 33:18

benefit is mostly and pollution controls as not as much as the amount of water that the volume can

Jayantha Obeysekera: 33:25

be checked. But that's my my, you know, professional opinion at this time, but

Steve Williamson: 33:30

I think it would. It helps locally, right? You know, if you wanted to do something in your own yard, yes, I think it works in the global village level. You know, I think we'll see a little bit of benefit, but I don't think it's significant. But of course, we're going to do what we need to do based on the county's ordinance, to reduce our impervious areas. But that

Jan Dillow: 33:49

does bring up another issue that's been important in this discussion and sort of the list of grievances, and one of them is that our current our current system, doesn't have any kind of filtration or cleaning for the water to go into the bay. And so, you know, can you talk a little bit about like, where we stand with our current system and and the new rules that are out there for that?

Steve Williamson: 34:12

Yeah, so obviously, again, the same or same or passed the impervious material also passed the increase in water quality standards, and then they're aligning themselves with state standards, and it's all something that we really seriously need to look at as we're trying to protect the viability of the bay. Our current system, right now, we do not have any water filtration, any way to reduce, particularly the total nitrogen and total phosphates. That's the major impact going into the water. But what we're looking to do is, as we put this new system in place, that will be a part of it, we will use best management practices into our system, both at our pump systems, at our outfalls, and if necessary, we'll do it also at our catch basins, if you recall, over the last year, and I think. Dr samimi put the report out in our August council meeting, where we had actually used two technologies that we embedded into our put into our catch basins. One was, and I won't name the name of the companies, but one was a sponge technology that was actually intended to capture the chemicals. Yeah, chemicals. The other one was more of a base, more to caption hard materials, like your plastics, your rocks, your silt and that sort of thing, your runoff from your clippings on the yard both, both were effective, and we saw positive water quality improvements and a lot less materials into in our system. However, it was very maintenance intensive if you were to put one of these in every one of our did someone

Tony Winton: 35:43

leave their phone on? That would be right? Go ahead. If

Steve Williamson: 35:47

you, if you were to put one of these in every single catch basin, that, that would be, you know, very, very time intensive to do that. But we're going to consider that, you know, one of the things that the county has put, they put a very high standard on water quality, and so we are going to build into our designs, you know, what we can do, and I can imagine they're going to challenge, challenge us to do more. And

Tony Winton: 36:09

that's that's yet another objection on the list of grievances is that, because it will be so expensive, you'll have to possibly ship the water out miles into a water treatment plant to meet these standards and it's not achievable, you know, kind of almost a futility argument. I mean, what do you what is your take on on that?

Steve Williamson: 36:28

Well, I've got my take. I want to hear the professor

Jayantha Obeysekera: 36:31

in those situations. I mean, that obviously is not very practical, but I think to maximize this concept of green infrastructure, you know, pervious pervious surfaces, swales, and you know, locally holding storm water to the extent possible. I think you want to try those things first, and if you can demonstrate that could meet the water quality standards before you send the water out into the bay, I think that's something you need to try to optimize and maximize to the extent possible. That may require residents to cooperate. And, you know, have swales and, you know, locally, collect their own runoff and then let it filled out into the groundwater. Have supervised surfaces. I think you want to maximize that green infrastructure. I wish the whole county emphasized green infrastructure to manage the stormwater,

Tony Winton: 37:29

right? But, but is a very tough ordinance and and that is going to be in I mean, you do agree, though it's an engineering challenge and an unanswered question,

Steve Williamson: 37:36

I would, I would first say it's a policy challenge, okay, all right, and then then I would say it's a it's a environmental challenge, and then the engineering challenge to get there. So the policy is put in place at 85% to remove your phosphates and your nitrogen, right? Most people say that is not unachievable, but hard to achieve. However, if you read the second part of the ordinance, we are also asking municipalities or others who are putting in systems to develop and design a system that is better the one that you currently in currently have. And it is at the discretion of the director to say yes. So we have spoken to the director, we've spoken to her boss, Jimmy Morales, we've spoken to the mayor, we've spoken to about four or five different commissioners. They all understand that the difficulty of the 85% goal and the balance on not not just technologically, but also cost. And they have given the discretion to the director, the RE our director to and she won't, she won't be easy. I know she won't be easy. But to ensure the villages, do, cities, do? Municipalities do whatever they can, whatever is engineeringly capable in that environment to get to where you need to be, right?

Tony Winton: 38:57

I have one last question. Oh, do you want to go to go ahead. No, no, Jan, you go first.

Jan Dillow: 39:02

Well, you know, we've been talking about the, pretty much, the people that are very on the fence and want to make sure that we're spending our money wisely. But there's another side that's, that's that says we've been talking about all this stuff for a very long time, and we're spent, and people are complaining about how much money is being spent, and yet, we're talking about spending more money to go and, you know, to go and find out how long this system can last, or, you know, yet another consultant that we're hiring to see what's going to happen that's raising the price as well there. So what do you say to the people? I mean, so I guess my question is, we've got this current idea that we're going to go down and, I guess, scope out the system to see, you know, what are we going to find out that might change our mind, first of all, to justify the cost of doing that, you know? And what would you say to the people who think this is a waste of money? Why are we doing this when we've got a huge. Huge amount of money that we're going to have to pay for resilience in the first place?

Steve Williamson: 40:03

Yeah, that's a good question. And those are the people who believe this is an either or decision, and it's not an either or decision, it's an and decision, right? We're moving forward with zone one, and we intend to move forward with zone one, but it doesn't take overnight. It's going to take quite a while. I would imagine within three to four years, we'll have zone one completed. So we can't disregard the rest of the system. We need to be maintaining the rest of the system. But those wells are not designed to last forever. You know, we've rehabbed them. You know, we will continue to rehab and as long as they're capable, at some point they are no longer capable to do their job. So again, I'll go back to my Chevy Vega in high school, right? Why try to maintain that when you can move forward to much higher technology? Now, we are fighting against nature. The waters are rising, groundwater are rising. To rely on a gravity based system is just putting ourselves in jeopardy. We would exactly what you said. We would waste money to try to repair what we have, but we will maintain what we have until we get something new in place.

Jan Dillow: 41:03

Okay, so, and this new idea that we're going to that is going to be coming up next week, right on the on the dais,

Tony Winton: 41:10

well, yes, the the now there'll be two things I first, I was a discussion on whether or not to this money, to spend money on the inspection assessment that was somewhere on the order of $600,000 as I recall. And then now we have the Black and Veatch work order, right? That's also going to be on the agenda, correct? Yes. Okay, so, so that was a kick, kick down field. The one last question council member moss raised it. I want to make sure this is also asked. Is a new is to identify the outfall location for zone one, still being negotiated, right?

Steve Williamson: 41:45

We are still working on the location for the outfall for zone one. Okay,

Tony Winton: 41:48

so, but that is not a showstopper not having the location.

Steve Williamson: 41:54

It's a showstopper in the end. But it's not a show. It's not stopping the design. Now, we can continue to design, because we're designing all the way up to the pump, right? We're designing the pump itself. We have to know the outfall to do the force mains and the outfalls. We need to know the outfall location to do the outfalls, do force mains and the outfalls clearly. So we still have time. But that's also one of the topics that's on

Tony Winton: 42:19

the agenda for next week, and is it? Are you at decision time for that?

Steve Williamson: 42:22

I certainly hope the council is ready to make that decision. Okay, four options. It's

Tony Winton: 42:29

an easement, right? So

Steve Williamson: 42:30

it's an easement? Yeah, I will be offering four options. It's a difficult decision, but we're gonna have to come up with a decision, because otherwise we will not have the ability to discharge the full capacity of zone one. All

Tony Winton: 42:43

right, now we've, you have been very patient, and I know you have the the why? What is the big picture? So I know you've been waiting for that, Mr. Manager, so big

Steve Williamson: 42:51

picture, I'm going to ask the professor. This is a talk show.

Jayantha Obeysekera: 42:58

You know what? What I can what I can offer is, you know, these days, we are in this environment of change. You know, we we have taught engineers in schools to use the past as an indication of the future. We are in a new paradigm. So we really, and this is something I always talk. I give a talk a couple of weeks at the state level. What I call is climate change, rethinking the practice of engineering, right? Because we are, we are using this concept called stationarity, or we are in a non stationary world. In other words, things are changing. So the point is that any kind of new investment and plans needs to consider future condition. You need to plan for future condition. That's number one. We do understand future is uncertain. There are ways to deal with uncertainty and dynamic, adaptive pathway is one of those methods, I think so. I always say, think future conditions when you plan a project. So looking at a project that only serves you for 510 years is not looking at future conditions for 50 years. That's

Tony Winton: 44:22

good relationship advice too. Sorry. Okay, just trying to lighten it up, everybody. Okay,

Steve Williamson: 44:30

you're making me sweet, Mr. Manager, yeah, thank you, and I really appreciate it. I'm gonna add something more. I know we had discussion about what the true threats are. One we forgot in the wake of Helene and and Milton, it's warming seas, right? Because another part of our program is protecting our shoreline, right? And so we

Tony Winton: 44:48

haven't even talked about offshore structures and all that other stuff. So, yeah, so you know,

Steve Williamson: 44:52

I'm gonna go back over, and I think it's important. And Tony, you've probably heard this 5000 times, but I'm gonna say the to the village yet again, right? What are vulnerabilities? We are a low lying barrier island. You know that you mentioned before. We're very different than the mainland for many, many reasons. I won't go in, but we're very susceptible, and our shorelines are very susceptible to major storms. We've already talked about our aging stormwater system, I won't add to that. The other thing we haven't talked about is our exposed electrical system and our telecommunication systems, very evident when the professor mentioned about our ability to store water, we have no place to create retention ponds. Even some of the green water solutions that he mentioned are our swales. And we're talking there three, four, in some cases, maybe five feet wide, but usually pretty small. So we are limited in doing that, not just from a swell perspective, but where do we put the 100 pumps we need to do, injection well, injection well pumps. And lastly, as we have also mentioned, there's a lot of regulations out there that are incompatible to try to achieve what we're trying to achieve right now, and we're trying to find that balance between being environmentally sound, which the village is very much behind, but also being able to protect who we are and what we are, right? And so I think that's really important to understand. Those are our vulnerabilities. But this really isn't about how much water is on the street. It's not whether it's an inch. It's not whether it's two inches. This is about the quality of life and the viability of the community, right? We are seeing an increase in and the threat of the increase in our property damage. I mean, just look across to West Florida insurance costs. What have we seen over the last three years? I mean, four years, five years, six years, even insurability. You know, we have now condos, condos. We're not even talking to people on the ground who can't get insurance. Economic activity. What is that going to do with our ability to have a viable economy in the community and all this is going to decrease if we don't do something about it, to a decrease in our property values. It's going to happen. And when that happens, becomes a decrease in our tax tax base. When that happens. Nobody's going to want to invest and keep us gained, you know. And I hate to point this, this grim thing, and I'm not talking this is two, three years down the road this. This is the 50 year period that we're looking at. At some point we hit that tipping point to where, if the insurance companies aren't coming, if the mortgage companies aren't coming. If the buyers aren't coming, you've got nothing to do with your property, right? And that continues to be a downward spiral. We're trying to protect this village. We believe it truly is an island paradise, and we want to make sure that we keep people's investment in place so they continue to enjoy what we call the island paradise. We want to make sure they're safe. Wanna make sure there's property safe. We wanna make sure that their quality of life continues to be at the level they enjoy today.

Tony Winton: 47:49

And this vote, I guess I have to ask this. It seems like we keep having this vote over and over and over again, and because of the way our government is set up. It's not like this is a one and done shot that's going to happen this coming week, because the borrowing will require a super majority if you're tapping the GO bond. That's that's in the charter, right? The idea that that this is not that there aren't adjustments or future approvals or future debate in the future is also not correct, because, as I understand, every step of this project is going to require a number of additional votes and additional approvals and additional review by members of this council and Future Councils

Steve Williamson: 48:33

well and look, and just simply look at, you know, we've got the direction to move forward with zone one, and we intend to move out. But every engineer designed has its set milestones in place for review. It's called 30% design, it's called 60% design, it's called 90% design, it's called construction documents. And then you really let then the market will really tell you what it costs, right? And that's when you put it out for bid. So we're in between 30 and 60. So we got to look at it 6090, construction documents. We have four more times to look at zone one. So the idea to stop doing design in Zone One just doesn't make any sense. Let's go forward. Let's let's understand what it would cost, what understand what it means if it goes out and the community doesn't want to pay for it, maybe we go a different direction. But let's find out what it costs. Protecting our island is expensive. We have to come to that conclusion. I'm not going to tell them how much, what level expensive it is, but they under. Have to understand that it is expensive. They're going to choose how much they want to pay for it. You know, they under, they're the ones are going to pick, you know, the scale of expensiveness. But if they want to continue to live on this island, they're going to have to protect their island,

Jan Dillow: 49:43

and that's a good statement to say this year, especially since it's an election year, and we have three council members that are going to be coming up, and what they think and what they the way they vote is going to have an impact on all of us. All

Tony Winton: 49:55

right, I want to thank both of our guests for coming on antisocial we're going to take a break. Back first to the manager, Steve Williamson for being our guest and for jaantha obisiquera, the director of the FIU C level Solution Center. Thank you very much for being our guest. We'll be back right after this.

music: 50:22

America,

Tony Winton: 50:33

and we're back on antisocial.

Jan Dillow: 50:36

I'm Jan Dillo,

Tony Winton: 50:37

I'm Tony Winton. Our guests have left the studio here at WLRN. That

Jan Dillow: 50:41

was very, very informative. I'm really glad we had that one, right

Tony Winton: 50:44

well, and you know, I know people are very passionate about this issue, and I'm going to come back to this again. It's a very scary number for a tiny village of 15,000 people, it's completely reasonable to ask very hard questions to know where their tax dollars are going. It is going to be an expense and a lot of borrowing. Most of this project is going to be borrowed either through a State Revolving Fund at a very low interest rate, or for the resiliency bond that the voters approved by an overwhelming margin, and now that will be the full, almost the full amount, $100 million over time, to pay for all of these different projects, the utility, undergrounding the stormwater, and then there'll be taxes that pay for those, for that borrowing, yeah,

Jan Dillow: 51:28

yes, there will, yeah. But you know, hopefully the I mean, hopefully that will be paid for as property values rise, right? So

Tony Winton: 51:36

this is, this is a, clearly, a an issue in the election, as we talked about all of the candidates, we're going to continue covering net and the independent their candidate forums. We've written about that we have there was one last night we're going to be writing about that we had a reporter there. We're going to keep bringing this issue and other issues to our readers. And it brings me to the kicking off of our fundraising season. What we were in another meeting today, Janice,

Jan Dillow: 52:01

we were, yes, we were, you know, again, we want to let you know that, you know, reporting is not cheap. It takes a lot of money and time and energy and effort. You know, we've got great partnerships, like with WLRN, which is where we are able to do the podcast. But it does take money, because, you know, salaries aren't cheap, and all the equipment that we need and all of the apps that are necessary for doing this stuff. So we, we, we always appreciate your donations, but please remember us in your year end giving as we soon will be kicking off

Tony Winton: 52:41

october 23 you're going to get an email talking about what we call news match, right? And news match is a national program that we get, we get funded for from it's a project involves the Institute for nonprofit news the Miami foundation. Later on, we'll have give Miami Day. But news, match is going to start right away, and your dollars are matched up to a certain amount. And so this is $15,000 Yeah. So number one, if you want to boost it, if you want to be one of the matchers, that really helps, because you're encouraging other people to give it doubles the amount of money, and it makes people much more likely to give. If you have really care about local hyper local journalism, please reach out to us. We'll we'll give you the recognition. I will personally come and answer any news question you have. But we these is really important. It's our fundraising and news matches starting. Our first campaign is starting October 23 so it's right around the corner. And

Jan Dillow: 53:44

just to be clear, news, matches, as is, gives us matches for donations that we get up to $1,000 but if, if we have community sponsors that will give us additional matching dollars, particularly up to$20,000 we will be able to take advantage of a give Miami Day, I'm sorry, of an of a news match bonus, bonus, which would give us another $4,500 so it's huge, if we can get, you know, $20,000 worth of matching money from any of the community sponsors that would that would be huge for us so

Tony Winton: 54:26

and we are a tax a, 501, c3, organization. We can do help you with estate planning, we can do all that kind of stuff. But the future of your community, you heard this discussion today, going into the future, trying to keep the island paradise. The island paradise. Part of that is Community News, and part of that is having information that people need to make decisions about their communities. And that's what you're doing by supporting the key biscuit independent, as we expand into Liberty City, that project has already started. We are intended. On having strong hyper local news throughout Miami, Dade County. And your contribution means so much. We're very grateful for it, and we're letting you know we're going to be knocking on the door, uh, softly at first, and then probably a little bit louder.

Jan Dillow: 55:13

But you can preempt that by doing it now. Give us now we could stop

Tony Winton: 55:17

all of that, right? I don't know. I'm here at WLRN. I mean, again, the vibe from the fund or fundraising they do, but we do appreciate it, and that's coming your way. So

Jan Dillow: 55:27

thanks very much everybody for listening.

Tony Winton: 55:30

Safe travels, Happy Trails. Be safe everyone. We'll be back next week with a really going to be a somewhat contentious political race here that that will wrap up our coverage of the 2024 election, and then, of course, election day, we'll be giving you the results on november 5, locally and around the world. To our partners at Associated Press. I'm Tony Winton, I'm Jan Dillo. Be safe for everyone you