Memo to City of St. Augustine, Florida, City Mayor JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR., VICE MAYOR DONALD CRICHLOW, Commissioners and City Managers:

Memo to City of St. Augustine, Florida, City Mayor JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR., VICE MAYOR DONALD CRICHLOW, Commissioners and City Managers:

Will you agree to install a webcam on the illegal dumping site so we can check your progress as you test and remove the 30 million pounds of contaminants?

San Francisco has webcams on illegal dumping sites (the ones where people, rather than governments, are the polluters).

The whole world is watching.

Your illegal dumping of 20,000 cubic yards of contaminants into the Old City Reservoir -- enough to cover a football field 11.2 feet deep or fill six Olympic-sized swimming pools to a depth of six feet -- is neither "de minimis," nor "de micromis," contrary to the fallacious arguments that you and lawyer WILLIAM PENCE from the law firm of AKERMAN, SENTERFITT made to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (at our expense).

Will you agree to pay the fines personally and to institute structural-functional reforms in our City government, so that our environment will be protected, not neglected?

Will you agree that the City needs to adopt proactive pro-environmental policies before it's too late?

Otherwise, I intend to request an open public hearing under oath before FDEP, as the person who made the initial report to the National Response Center (Report No. 788280) on February 17, 2006.

I expect to call every single one of you as witnesses. This is your chance to shine.

You've refused to answer questions since February 24, 2006 -- you can now answer them under oath at a hearing before FDEP on the proposed consent order, in which you would be required to pay $47,248 of our money for YOUR mistakes.


Will you support a St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore (SANHPS)?

By the way, will your next trip to Aviles, Spain; Berlin, Germany; New York City or New York City be at your own expense, not ours?

Are you going to apologize for your illegal dumping? Or continue to insult people for doing our job in a democracy and asking you questions?

Will you agree to protect whistleblowers?

Will you support a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore to protect what needs preserving?

I am appealing to what Lincoln would call "the better angels of our nature."

So far, all you've done is "play the angles" -- preposterous, bad faith, legal positioning ("de minimis" and "de micromis") delaying the FDEP fine until after the election was really clever.
Great pettifoggery, but poor public policy.

You let the contaminants sit for ten months.

Shame on you.

Commissioner ERROL JONES, you expressed concern about the "aquifer" in connection with the taxpayer-subsidized "brownfield" cleanup of the Ponce de Leon Golf Links, which speculator Chester Stokes seeks to turn into St. Augustine's version of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, a bowl into which he proposes to move wealthy homeowners.

Commissioner JONES, you mocked my "science experiment" and said "that's not coquina." You know not that you know not that you know not. You're often hotter than a two-dollar pistol.
So, speaking of "aquifers," what are you doing to expose the truth of the illegal dumping?

Will you support a webcam?

What about an open public investigation of environmental racism in St. Augustine, including our City's siting decisions?

The ball is in your court.

No more coverups.

No more pollution.

No more destruction of archaeological and historical treasures.