Guest Commentary | Cape Coral and the road to perdition
In 1926 Hemingway wrote “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Since that time this phrase has come to be known as the Hemingway Law of Motion as it applies to many different things.
Here in the Cape, angry voters are revolting against our government and delivering historic “no confidence, no trust” election outcomes. To an outside observer it may seem like a sudden change, but a deeper look will reveal why Hemingway is a literary giant with his writing and thinking.
From a 40-year perspective, our problems in the Cape are always gradual, suddenly reach a flash point and then return to the gradual simmer setting. The issue of the day is usually money and that is followed by influence, either too much or too little.
Money issues are always about taxation or the utilities expansion program. Before those are discussed a look at our physical setting and our surroundings is in order. Most everybody in the Cape rolls off the interstate from someplace; they see established communities such as Sarasota and Naples. Many new residents are enamored with Naples in particular, a beautiful, wealthy landscaped city with beautiful homes and people; it looks much the same as Sarasota and Venice to the north. Then we have the Cape, the baby of the cities and eight times the size of Naples. It is mostly devoid of trees due to the massive dredge and fill earth moving project that resulted in elevated building lots from the fill material from the canals and this low elevation was transformed into a “waterfront wonderland.”
The Fort Myers folks referred to the brown denuded megaproject as the Sahara Desert. Wind blown dust was a real problem; another problem was created hundreds of feet below the surface with the fresh water bearing rock formations due to the excavation.
Gradually the Cape attracted residents along with that, orders of magnitude more non-resident property owners. Our own city manager attempts to mis-characterize the UEP as a water supply project. Nothing could be further from the truth. The city was forced to develop a plan for a central sewer system by the Florida Department of Health, not the water management district. The Health Department correctly pointed out how bad it is to draw drinking water from the back yard and hold septage in the front yard in sandy soil at a density of four homes per acre.
Suddenly Cape residents were faced with an unforeseen expense, an additional expense after paying for a water well and a septic tank. This early flash point was actually more boisterous than today- the mayor and a few council folks carried side arms to the protest meetings and most of the 40 cops we had then were at these meetings to maintain order and prevent bloodshed, Cape residents have always been “passionate.”
Gradually, that section of the sewer went in and it was not too long before things went south with sophomoric blunders. The first escalation of cost was due to miscalculations on the amount of bedrock that would be encountered. It is way more expensive to dig rock than sand and it is way more expensive to drill an adequate rock soundings than to just a few, so they saved money on the geotechnical drilling but ended up with a 100% rock excavation cost overrun.
Suddenly residents were in an uproar over the incompetence.
Gradually the contract was changed to Construction Manager at Risk, that also caused the project price to escalate as it was also an insurance policy and suddenly there is the latest uproar.
Gradually the good residents of the Cape became envious of our little rich green neighbor to the south Naples. We wanted to be green too and suddenly a good program was born, the reclaimed water concept for irrigation and a way to feed those thirsty Floratam Naples yards.
It was a perfect solution — we get rid of partially-treated effluent sewer and people get to try to look like Naples.
And the best part it was said to be free and unmetered.
Gradually it was determined that there was simply not enough sewer water being produced and the residents were using too much and suddenly it was metered and a fee added in order tamp down on the usage. By this time the Naples yard look was out of the bag, and it is monkey see monkey do in the name of “pride of ownership,” you either had a manicured yard or you had a low-rent yard.
Gradually the city had to admit that the numbers just don’t work, we need more poop water -aka effluent — so we build a pipeline and pay Fort Myers for their poop water. Suddenly we find that is still not enough to make the math work and we lease an abandoned rock quarry, which in Florida is a lake, in order to fill our fresh water canals in order to mix that water with sewer effluent which is a mix of Cape and Fort Myers poop water in order to pump that through an expensive distribution system in order to facilitate more green yards.
Gradually we observe the canal water changing color, suddenly we realize that nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich runoff is nutrifying the canal water creating toxic blue green algae.
Through the entire process city administration has tried numerous approaches to UEP design and cost. They ALL need to be looked at again. Through the entire tortured history of the UEP outside influences have, and do, hold undo sway in decision making. A city manager that says we are expert because we have done this for 20 years (itself an inaccurate statement) is no better reason to stop everything and take a fresh look at the entire project with the irrigation aspect to be on the chopping block. That is an 18% cost reduction right off the bat.
The relationship between our yard and water quality in our vast excavation system we call canals is something we can no longer ignore. The UEP is not a water supply project as this current city manager misrepresented, advocating approval of his ridiculous bloated contracts by the current totally rejected current council prior to a new council being seated. This should be his last act as city manager.
We will have a clean Cape government come November, at least they will appear to have a clean slate from undue influence from developers and real estate sales people. When decisions are based on what is good for real estate sales people or a developer, the ratepayer loses.
We have some very serious issues that will take a collective thought process to work through. Our intellectual rebirth as a city should start with North 3 and a very simple idea, what if we drop the third pipe, have existing ratepayers not condemn their septic tank, collect rainwater use it as a cistern for irrigation, promote minimal use of exotic non-native turf and promote native landscape? After that short discussion we can move on to a modern engineering review of what we do, why we do it and who we contract to do that for us. There is a much better way, we are going to need a rollover in the administration to complement the recent rollover in the council.
The “golden age” in which the margins have been calculated for our few North 3 contracts in hand contain highly elevated priced due to most of the material is made from a petro-chemicals, heavy equipment runs on diesel fuel, explosives contain ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel fuel, ANFO, and boy is all of that really expensive in the Golden Age. So the architect of the Golden Age tells us that diesel price will fall back to pre-war levels and the massive tariffs we have on our trading partners will make us so rich we won’t mind paying exorbitant prices and we will get $5 grand, too, and also maybe 90 bucks and some pills for cheap.
So if you believe all that that is even more reason to stop the city administration with their latest delusion, North 3, which they say is backed up with data. Whose data?
We are miles ahead of what is required on the septic front, the water issue was brought about by the collapse of the surficial aquifer not meeting the demand for potable and irrigation water.
We need the sewer and water. This administration needs to stop screwing everything up with Naples/Miami envy with demonstrated undo influence coupled with a lack of business acumen.
We have plenty of time for a complete sober review of where we are and how we got here. The delay will result in a lower price not a more expensive one which is the mantra of this failed Gunter/city manager fiasco administration.
David Scott is a geologist. He has been a resident of Cape Coral for more than 35 years and is the founding and past president of the Northwest Neighborhood Association.