Looky Here... River Clean Up Plan Comes to $303M

Lunch Money Surf

duckmanJR wrote: »

OK...try this...It's a power point presentation.

http://www.brevardcounty.us/docs/default-source/natural-resources-documents/save-our-lagoon-project-plan-presentation.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Perfecto, many thanks Joe

Lunch Money Surf

gatorhook wrote: »

Well the reseach I found is not as positive as you speak. But they keep throwing money at it... not on my dollar. By the way, your link went nowhere.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/green/blog/bal-pollution-down-in-chesapeake-bay-but-estuary-no-healthier-yet-20150123-story.htmlTV

We'll put gatorhook down for a NO vote...

Not surprising in a county where we can't even get folks to chip in half a cent for schools (but $30 million for baseball).

I have avoided any political argument for almost twenty years on this forum but here goes: if cleaning up the river takes money, but the government is incapable of doing it and taxes are out of the question, then where in the hell is the money and effort supposed to come from?

duckmanJR

Tom, We are going to be faced with repairing decades of neglect & abuse of the system....

And sadly, You cannot expect "johnny lunchpail" or some old tightwad Yankee to want to pay for the needed repairs......
As much as I hate to say it...Gov't will have to step in and do whats right...over the crying of the uneducated masses...

CFLBob

I swore off fertilizing my yard this year - I live in the Eau Gallie area with a stormwater sewer not 75' from my front door - its concrete touches my lawn. Probably ends up in the IRL thanks to some drainage system. I don't care if the neighbors think my yard isn't pretty enough. Last fall I put the boat in the IR at Ballard Park and fished from there to the Pineda. The water was so scummy, I had a "bath tub ring" on my boat that would only wash off with soap. That convinced me not to fertilize again.

Then, a month or so ago, I got a letter from the City of Melbourne threatening me with an $800 fine if someone else blew the clipped grass off their yard and it ended up going down that drain. They want me to be responsible for people farther up the block? That's going too far. I know city agents drive by at 4 or 5 in the morning to see if we're watering on a day we're not allowed to; do they come look in every storm drain to see if there are grass clippings in it?

I read that 78 page .pdf from the county, and it's hard to tell what's verified science (I mean "has been done a bunch of times" elsewhere) and what's based on tenuous research. I'm an engineer and I don't take anything as gospel just because the author has "Ph.D" behind their name. I want to see experimental results. Some of it makes intuitive sense, like getting rid of muck. I just don't know how they do that without disturbing a lot of muck and getting it into the water column.

Harmful muck? There's a spot near the Pineda I used to fish in the late '80s that was 35-40 feet deep. Today it's 15 feet deep. I don't know that's all the muck they're talking about, but it's all sediment.

Can we really fix the IRL without imposing controls on sources farther inland like Orange County? What about farther down the lagoon, like Indian River County?


Bob

Lunch Money Surf

CFLBob wrote: »

Can we really fix the IRL without imposing controls on sources farther inland like Orange County? What about farther down the lagoon, like Indian River County?


Bob

I don't think so... how would the clean Brevard County water that we have spent $300M on know to stay out of Indian River County?

The county approach doesn't make sense to me overall. Why don't we have an Indian River Water Management District?

duckmanJR

Lunch Money Surf wrote: »

I don't think so... how would the clean Brevard County water that we have spent $300M on know to stay out of Indian River County?

Hey Tom...Ease up on Indian River county...we're all very clean and green down here:rolleyes .... Not like you dirty Brevard people... :grin

If you don't watch yourself....We'll keep all that nice Sebastian inlet incoming tide water out of south Brevard...that'll show ya' :rotflmao

duckmanJR

CFLBob wrote: »

I swore off fertilizing my yard this year - I live in the Eau Gallie area with a stormwater sewer not 75' from my front door - its concrete touches my lawn. Probably ends up in the IRL thanks to some drainage system. I don't care if the neighbors think my yard isn't pretty enough. Last fall I put the boat in the IR at Ballard Park and fished from there to the Pineda. The water was so scummy, I had a "bath tub ring" on my boat that would only wash off with soap. That convinced me not to fertilize again.

Then, a month or so ago, I got a letter from the City of Melbourne threatening me with an $800 fine if someone else blew the clipped grass off their yard and it ended up going down that drain. They want me to be responsible for people farther up the block? That's going too far. I know city agents drive by at 4 or 5 in the morning to see if we're watering on a day we're not allowed to; do they come look in every storm drain to see if there are grass clippings in it?

I read that 78 page .pdf from the county, and it's hard to tell what's verified science (I mean "has been done a bunch of times" elsewhere) and what's based on tenuous research. I'm an engineer and I don't take anything as gospel just because the author has "Ph.D" behind their name. I want to see experimental results. Some of it makes intuitive sense, like getting rid of muck. I just don't know how they do that without disturbing a lot of muck and getting it into the water column.

Harmful muck? There's a spot near the Pineda I used to fish in the late '80s that was 35-40 feet deep. Today it's 15 feet deep. I don't know that's all the muck they're talking about, but it's all sediment.

Can we really fix the IRL without imposing controls on sources farther inland like Orange County? What about farther down the lagoon, like Indian River County?


Bob

You make some good points.
I would not worry much about Orange county...they get a lot of mileage by dumping their bad water down the Kississimee chain.
Now Volusia county to your North may be an issue...but I would say Duda and all that development in Viera will need to be addressed.
Indian river county does not exchange water with Brevard on any scale...Since Brevard only has the port (with locks) and Sebastian inlet...which is the dividing line with Brevard & Indian river county... Most movement for you is southward.....so really...Brevard is more an issue to IRC than vice versa.

As an engineer...you know that even simple problems...can have complex solutions.... This problem will need several solutions.

CFLBob

duckmanJR wrote: »

You make some good points.
I would not worry much about Orange county...they get a lot of mileage by dumping their bad water down the Kississimee chain.
Now Volusia county to your North may be an issue...but I would say Duda and all that development in Viera will need to be addressed.
Indian river county does not exchange water with Brevard on any scale...Since Brevard only has the port (with locks) and Sebastian inlet...which is the dividing line with Brevard & Indian river county... Most movement for you is southward.....so really...Brevard is more an issue to IRC than vice versa.

As an engineer...you know that even simple problems...can have complex solutions.... This problem will need several solutions.

What I'm most afraid of in this case is found in the quote that goes "For every complex problem there's an answer that's clear, simple and wrong." (Famous curmudgeon H.L. Mencken).

I think the solutions in that PDF seem reasonable. Getting rid of a lot of the muck has to be a good thing. I'm suspicious of their numbers for how bad it is; I think it's worse. Reducing the nutrient flow into the IRL has to be a good thing. Here on the forums a lot of us talk about the pesticides and herbicides that are buried in places like the Sebastian River muck, or in Viera. The talk in the the pdf is just about the muck as a source of nutrients from decay. They don't talk about pesticides at all. Can they ignore them? I like the ideas of oyster beds around the county, but if oysters were there before, what killed them off? Do the oysters need for the lagoon to be cleaned up first, or can they do some of the cleaning? Are there filter feeders that are better than oysters?

I don't think we can set the clock back 100 years and make the river pristine again, but if we could set the clock back 30 or 50 years it would be incredible.

To me the big question is whether anyone has fixed a lagoon like this before, or if this is just all theorizing. I'm all for computer modeling; I've spent years doing it. I've also seen the biggest, most expensive, best modeling programs be wrong. If we go to taxpayers and say "we need $300 million to fix the lagoon", and it doesn't work, it gets much, much harder to come back in 10 years and say, "we need $900 million (or whatever) to fix the lagoon".

Basically, it seems we just get one shot at this.

duckmanJR

CFLBob wrote: »

What I'm most afraid of in this case is found in the quote that goes "For every complex problem there's an answer that's clear, simple and wrong." (Famous curmudgeon H.L. Mencken).

Again, That is my reasoning behind the " make a new inlet at XXX " and my **** in the punch bowl analogy.
The answer is not add more punch!...It is *always* REMOVE THE **** FIRST!

duckmanJR

CFLBob wrote: »

getting rid of a lot of the muck has to be a good thing. I'm suspicious of their numbers for how bad it is; I think it's worse.

I agree...I think it is done as a strategy....If the REAL numbers were used...It may lead people to feel the issue is too big and it is a lost cause....
They want to portray it as being manageable and do-able.

duckmanJR

CFLBob wrote: »

To me the big question is whether anyone has fixed a lagoon like this before, or if this is just all theorizing. I'm all for computer modeling; I've spent years doing it. I've also seen the biggest, most expensive, best modeling programs be wrong. If we go to taxpayers and say "we need $300 million to fix the lagoon", and it doesn't work, it gets much, much harder to come back in 10 years and say, "we need $900 million (or whatever) to fix the lagoon".

Basically, it seems we just get one shot at this.

I agree, People will be very gun shy if the plan is not well thought out...and well executed...with visible and quantifyable results.
It will be very difficult to come back to the well for more.

Flec

A little off beat here....I went up to a little smallboat launch area at Mosquito Lagoon yesterday to check out the ramp. As I was looking around I noticed some tails breaking the surface. I went back to my car and grabbed a rod and did a little wading (no boat ). In the 30 yards I walked I saw more blue crabs around my barefeet than in a whole year down south here.And then something I had almost forgotten about,,fiddler crabs on the shore behind me!
I had not gone prepared to fish and my gold spoon was useless in the seagrass. Most of the tails were catfish, but there were some reds around. I glanced about 7 feet to my left at one point and 2 upperslot reds had cruised almost close enough to touch. They bolted on my 2nd little pitch by them.
Anyway, I sure miss the way the Indian River used to be. I am hopeful for its future.