Sewage fine balloons to $2.1M after new spills
FORT LAUDERDALE – The state of Florida has hit the city of Fort Lauderdale with a $2.1 million penalty, the largest in its history, after scores of sewage spills that wreaked havoc on house-lined streets and rivers and canals.
Residents were forced to step in sludge outside their homes while city workers played an exhausting game of whack-a-mole trying to keep up with the leaks in a series of sewage crises that state officials Friday called unprecedented.
In February, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection slapped the city with a $1.8 million fine — the largest fine at the time.
On Friday, the agency amended that punishment to $2.1 million because of additional spills since.
But the order gives the city the option to put that toward more than $3.1 million worth of environmental enhancement projects and restoration. That could include things such as mangrove restoration, seawalls or water-quality projects — but the money cannot be spent on pipe repairs.
Now, the city must approve the order, and if it doesn’t agree to the terms, the state said it would take legal action.
Environmental officials say the 211.6 million gallons that leaked from December 2019 to February of this year is the largest sewage spill on record. Fort Lauderdale’s aging pipes leaked enough sewage in two months to fill 320 Olympic-sized swimming pools, killing fish and fouling the air in neighborhoods from Rio Vista to Coral Ridge.
Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the state’s top environmental regulator, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Noah Valenstein, to pursue every available penalty against the city “and to change the way local governments are addressing the issue of aging infrastructure.”
State officials rejected a common strategy of allowing the city to comply with penalties by spending the fines on its own sewer repairs. The reason for the rejection, Valenstein said, was the city’s history of siphoning money from the utility fund to pay for pensions, salaries and parks — a policy he said was wrong.
“Fort Lauderdale is an example where you had aging infrastructure not adequately addressed by the municipality,” Valenstein said. “When we don’t have a big enough stick, it allows folks sometimes to make the wrong decisions and not invest in infrastructure.”
Once the city pledged to stop using water-related money for things it wasn’t intended for, it was allowed “to keep the funds local,” he said Friday.
Fort Lauderdale officials say they have a plan to shore up the sewage system.
The city plans to spend $600 million over the next five years fixing and replacing the city’s underground network of aging water and sewer pipes. The total tally will come to at least $1.4 billion over the next 20 years, experts say.
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said Friday the new coronavirus delayed repair efforts, but as city offices start to reopen, he said the city will be able to “get back on track with plans to revive the waterways … to reverse the damage. We’re moving forward.”
He said the city will make “aggressive progress” in rebuilding the underground infrastructure.
Sewage leaks have been a persistent problem in Fort Lauderdale.
The state cracked down on Fort Lauderdale after a series of sewage spills in 2016. In an agreement approved in late 2017, the state laid out $117.5 million in required sewer system repairs and improvements through 2026.
Fort Lauderdale’s vintage sewer pipes broke six times in December and spewed 126.9 million gallons of sewage. Toxic sewage gushed into the Tarpon River, the Himmarshee Canal and streets in three neighborhoods: Rio Vista, Victoria Park and Coral Ridge.
Another 79.3 million gallons spilled into George English Lake over 10 days beginning Jan. 30. An additional 5.4 million gallons flooded streets near George English Park right across from the Galleria mall on Sunrise Boulevard, just blocks from the beach.
Valenstein said the city was fined for eight separate
“significant violations” that occurred between Dec. 10 and earlier this month.
Fort Lauderdale’s sewage crisis has special resonance in the governor’s office. DeSantis’ chief of staff, Shane Strum, is a longtime city resident who owns a home in northeast Fort Lauderdale, not far from the most recent rupture at George English Park.
Friday’s fines and penalties are $2,116,500. The city must still pay $5,000 in fines.
The rest can be applied toward its $3.1 million inkind project defined as “an environmental enhancement or an environmental restoration project and may not be a corrective action requirement. … The Department may also consider the donation of environmentally sensitive land as an in-kind project.”
Friday’s order also gives the city 60 days to complete an environmental analysis of George English Lake and the Tarpon River to figure out the damage done between December 2019 and February
2020. The city must submit a report that includes an estimate of how much sewage has settled to the bottom of the waterways, how much was removed, how much is left, and the water quality impacts.
The report must also include a restoration plan.
Valenstein said Friday the state “hopes this serves as a warning to other communities and how important the state feels about not taking utility” money and spending it elsewhere.
Families in Fort Lauderdale who couldn’t use the waterways and “who were scared to walk down their street for fear of untreated sewage, those families were logical wondering, ‘What about this money I paid into my utility service? And where did it go?’”
“Fort Lauderdale is an example where you had aging infrastructure not adequately addressed by the municipality. When we don’t have a big enough stick, it allows folks sometimes to make the wrong decisions and not invest in infrastructure.”
— Noah Valenstein, Department of Environmental Protection secretary