Water water everywhere
To the editor:
Noah would be proud if he were a resident of Cape Coral. He would have only one problem. He wouldn’t be able to park his ark in the driveway. In a short time he would have plenty of water to float it. Our Public Works Department will have plenty of water for Noah when the Kismet plant comes on line.
It seems Cape Coral will be able to produce enough potable water to support 147,000 households. The average household uses 183 gallons of potable water a day in Cape Coral and consists of 2.5 residents. The Kismet Plant will add 12 million gallons a day to the current production of 15 million gallons a day. When we bring the Kismet Water Plant online we will have a total capacity of 27 million gallons of potable water a day in Cape Coral.
That’s enough potable water to support 367,500 residents. We only have around 160,000 residents. So what are we going to do with all that excess water?
Considering our population of around 160,000 bringing that much capacity on line would be hilarious if this was a television sitcom but this is not television. A dose of reality is, the residents are going to have to pay a great deal of money for this major blunder. You and I and everyone else who lives in Cape Coral will eventually have to pay for this stupidity.
How could our administration make such a mistake? Was this really a mistake? A child with fourth grade arithmetic skills could work the numbers and conclude that we were about to create a great deal of water that we don’t need. We have trained (supposedly competent) city engineers and a city manager who is said to be a competent seasoned professional. These are adults which supposedly have sophisticated math skills. We are always hearing about how professional our city manager is supposed to be. For some reason the engineers and the city manager don’t appear to be able to do the math that a 9-year-old child can do.
Five of our city council members just voted to extend the contract of the city manager. Shouldn’t someone be held accountable for this $110 million foul up? Why has someone not been fired? How major must a mistake be before someone is held accountable? Apparently $110 million is not enough.
Oh, well, Noah will have plenty of water to float his boat. All he has to do is call Public Works and have them turn on the spigot.
John Sullivan
Cape Coral Minutemen