No discussion on FDEP fine for dumping 611,294 gallons of untreated raw sewage in San Sebastian River

Controversial St. Augustine City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS
Photo credit: J.D. Pleasant

As the St. Augustine Record wryly reports this morning, four City Commissioners voted last night without discussion to pay a $33,000 fine (or provide an in-kind project) as penalty for spilling 611,294 gallons of untreated raw sewage in San Sebastian River. As the Record reported, "the sewage spill wasn't discussed at all -- it was simply passed in the board's consent agenda."

Al Gore wrote in his book,Earth in the Balance, that Americans are like members of a dysfunctional family when it comes to discussing environmental problems. We don't do it well. City Commissioners took the easy route last night, with no one moving to a discussion item the $33,000 fine for dumping 611,294 gallons of untreated sewage.

Government pollution is disgusting and would have made our Founding Fathers sick at heart.

Government pollution must be prosecuted or the private sector won't take pollution laws seriously. Government pollution is wrong, whether 4.2 million pounds of mercury dumped into Oak Ridge, Tennessee creeks (and workers' lungs and brains) or 40,000 cubic yards dumped into our Old City Reservoir (a coquina pit lake that is "an open sore going straight down to the aquifer and groundwater," according to John Henry Hankinson, Jr., longtime EPA Regional Administrator) or the City's longtime dumping of semi-treated sewage effluent into our saltwater marsh, or the dumping of 611,294 gallons of untreated sewage into the San Sebastian River on May 30, 2009.

As I asked then-Rep. Gore in my July 11, 1983 testimony on the Oak Ridge mercury pollution: "Will this case be fixed? That depends on what happens next."

In the immortal words of Jack Lord in the TV series, "Hawai'i FIve-O," I say, "Book 'em, Dan-o."

Note to FBI and EPA: Please take the City Manager to jail, with no "get-out-of-jail free" card.

If this a democracy and not a dictatorship -- if the City Manager does not own them all -- then City Commissioners' task must now focus on prosecuting and firing City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a "WILL HARASS") for cause (starting with his numerous environmental and civil rights violations).

"What happens next" must include apology by the City of St. Augustine for past environmental racism and for the depredations of City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a "WILL HARASS"). We need a national search to hire the next City Manager. No more clones need apply.

For an an "in-kind project," I suggest creating an Office of Environment, Safety, Health and Archaeology, reporting directly to City Commission, without being bossed and bullied by any future City Manager.

I also suggest an "in-kind project" in which the City of St. Augustine stops pollution, stops energy waste and passes a resolution by Christmas that supports the St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway. See below.

So, what do you reckon about "what happens next?"