Tuesday, August 08, 2006

City's Response to FDEP Due Today: Will There Be Indictments of St. Augustine City Government Officials?

Our Ancient City's latest response to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection is due today.
St. Augustine city officials and outside counsel William Pence unsuccessfully tried to provide a defective sampling plan unadorned by water testing or other meaningful tests, while claiming that it was "de minimis" to dump 30 million pounds of materials on ten acres of land and refusing to clean up the Old City Reservoir as ordered.
The ancient Latin maxim is "de minimis non curat lex" -- the law does not worry about trifles.
Our City's bankrupt leadership trifles with DEP and SJRWMD, polluting our water and land, risking our groundwater and aquifer. St. Augustine city Manager WILIAM B. HARRISS and his minions continued their illegal dumping two days after criminal investigators arrived February 27, after three months of iolating SJRWMD orders not to dump (never answering SJRWMD's questions about a questionable permit application, dumping illegal instead). Our City is now guilty of wasting over six months on flummery and dupery, instead of cleaning up their mess as ordered.
Meanwhile, our City government continues trifling with open records requesters, requiring retired university professor Dr. Dwight Hines to go to court today seeking truck use and other computer and paper records that have been superciliously withheld by City officials (who provided over 100 pages of such records to FDEP in its investigation of illegal dumping).
A Grand Jury investigation is desired and required, as after Clay County's illegal dumping. There must be consequences for the environmental crimes in our community.
No more coverups. We have a right to Environmental Justice now.

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