Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Environmental INJustice in the City of St. Augustine




What can you say about EPA, which has been sitting on an Environmental Justice (EJ) complaint against the City of St. Augustine since January 15, 2009? (the date we celebrated the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

EPA badly needs reforming.

Likewise, the government of our City of St. Augustine badly needs reforming. It routinely makes racially insensitive and environmentally devastating decisions, such as destroying a 3000-4000 year old Indian Village on Red House Bluff for strip malls and condos.

Our City of St. Augustine City Commission unwisely hired an Executive Director for the 450th anniversary without posting or advertising the job, eliminating a proper EEO search and hiring their friend, Dana Ste. Claire. While Dana Ste. Claire was a well-qualified applicant, he was the only applicant.

Our City's 2007 Form EEO-4 filing showed no woman, African-American, Hispanic or Asian making as much as $30,000/year, while there were at least twelve white men making more than $80,000.

Its latest obscenity was saying that members of the federal Commission commemorating St. Augustine's 450th anniversary should be "affluent" and "influential." That's not unlike a public confession to a conspiracy to violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).

What do you expect from insensitive city managers who allow Lincolnville and West Augustine roads to crumble, while spending large sums in all-white areas, including $25 million on a too-big parking garage, a White Elephant?

What do you expect from right-wingers who are against a St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway? See nasty quotes from City Commissioner MANCY SIKES-KLINE (below).

What do you expect from managers who kept secret their leaky sewage pipe (with hundreds of feet of pipe missing), dumping semi-treated sewage effluent in our saltwater marsh in Lincolnville and into the San Sebastian and Matanzas Rivers?

What do you expect from managers who let pipes corrode to where raw sewage flowed into Maria Sanchez Lake and the San Sebastian River?

What do you expect from unjust stewards who deposited 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir and fought for years against FDEP orders to remove it, saying they would never agree to put it in a Class I landfill (instead asking FDEP to let them move it from one Environmental Justice Community to another -- from West Augustine back to Lincolnville, where it was illegally dug up from an old landfill?

1. They know not that they know not that they know not.

2. It's time for them to go.

What do you reckon?

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