It’s a boating trip that was six years ago but Charlotte County boater Miles Weitzman will remember for all the wrong reasons. A stream of dead fish floated in the Gulf as far as he could see.
“It was horrible,” said Weitzman. “At least five miles--just dead fish.”
The 2018 red tide bloom was so bad that he recorded it on home video.
“I was more upset about it. Because you know, it's -- most of the contaminations coming up from upstream in the Peace, and the Myakka and the Caloosahatchee back up from the farmlands.”
Weitzman knows there’s not just one cause for red tide blooms. And he thinks homeowners need to be part of the solution.
“There's no question that something needed to be done with septics, you know, to mitigate the pollution from the septic systems.”
That’s exactly what’s happening in his Port Charlotte neighborhood. Weitzman is one of 1,300 property owners near Charlotte Harbor being transitioned from a septic tank to the county’s sewer system in what’s called in the Ackerman Wastewater Expansion project.
Brandon Moody, the Water Quality Manager for Charlotte County is helping to lead the effort to clean up the waterways. He’s concerned about large scale blooms.
“These sorts of blooms have been happening for a few years and lemon Bay, and just piecemeal in Charlotte Harbor. But they're happening at a rate that's definitely more intense than what we've seen in recent years.”
Septic tanks are being targeted because our human waste is one of the things polluting our waterways because the septic tanks aren’t effectively processing it.
Here’s the problem: When dirty water or waste goes into a septic tank, bacteria helps break it down and then what’s left--the sewage or effluent--gets spread across a nearby drain field. The rock and soil in the ground are supposed filter that effluent—taking out germs and other pollutants like nitrogen so that the bad stuff doesn’t end up in the ground water. But because Southwest Florida homes sit so low—so close to groundwater--that filtering process can’t always happen.
Moody says during wet season water rises up beyond levels permitted by state statute. “So there's, there's a minimum amount of space that has to exist between the drain field where a septic tank would discharge into the ground where that that effluent has to have room to percolate before it hits the groundwater. And quite often during the wet season, the groundwater gets so high, it goes into that zone that's supposed to be dry,” said Moody.
And sometimes old tanks can crack and leak, as well. Bottom line this means too much nitrogen is ending up in our waterways—and that waste bi-product— is something that helps to feed a bloom.
Dave Watson, the utilities director says the county’s new vacuum sewer system that he says is greatly reducing nitrogen levels.
While Watson and his county colleagues work to educate the public about the importance of making the switch, that doesn’t mean all county residents are eager to make the switch.
“Generally speaking, we have a vocal group of residents that like their septic systems, and, yes, it pretty much comes down to price,” said Watson.
Homeowners will have to pay $11,500 when the county switches them to the sewer system. That special assessment appears on the tax bill as $575 per year for 20 years.
And while Weitzman says he can afford it not everyone in his community can, especially seniors on fixed incomes. He says the agriculture industry should be helping to carry the financial burden.
“That's where the contamination is coming from. Do they have to pay any of the costs for the sewers? No, just the people that are going to are going to directly benefit from the installation. That's nonsense. Everybody in the county, anybody that uses those water, anybody that lives in this watershed is going to directly benefit and why do we have to pay for it,” said Weitzman. “It's stupid. So, you know, everybody should be paying part of the cost for this.”
And to make matters worse. The cost to transition homes to sewer is going up with everything else, the Ackerman project now has a $20 million shortfall.
County commissioners have been looking at different funding models for the least painful way to make up the difference, which could mean extending those planned monthly payments from 20 years to around 30.
For Weitzman, one of the most frustrating things is seeing what he sees as the slow progress of the project in his community.
“It's been three years and they haven't gotten hardly anything done,” said Weitzman
While the county is not only having to figure out the enormous cost of this conversion. It’s dealing with a community that was developed untraditionally when it comes to utilities. Much of the land in the county was plotted to sell as individual lots without putting sewer infrastructure in place. In addition to the enormous logistics of this transition, new development is just happening faster than the county can expand its sewer system.
“For about every one house that we convert to, to public sewer, we have three new houses going in on septic,” said Watson.
The Ackerman project is estimated to be completed by the end of 2027.
But getting the entire county caught up on the transition to sewer to try to improve local waters could take decades.
However, the county will be taking out a bond to cover the cost of the project.
It's not clear when the county will take action on what the final out-of-pocket cost to these homeowners will be.
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