Holes in Sewage Pipeline, Holes in Their Stories, Holes in the Bulwark of Freedom

Take a look at the photos of the "pipe" in today's St. Augustine Record (below).

You have to hand it to the City Hall in St. Augustine, Florida and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP, or as my friend David Thundershield Queen correctly calls it, "Don't Expect Protection").

Legendary for political corruption, St. Augustine denizens will say and do anything to the environment or the people.

The City of St. Augustine illegally dumped 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in our Old City Reservoir. (We reported 'em to the feds in February 2006.)

The City of St. Augustine and their f(r)iends in DEP then wanted to move 40,000 cubic yards of illegally dumped solid waste back to Linconlville. (We stopped 'em).

Now the City of St. Augustine waited years to replace a badly leaking pipe -- so leaky it can no longer be called a pipe. That pipe is destroying our City's salt water marshes.

How interesting that the City of St. Augustine opted out of the Guana Tolomato Matanzas Estuarine Research Reserve (GTM NERR) at the behest of developers circa 1998, leaving it the only NERR in the Nation to be split in two.

Now FDEP wants the City of St. Augustine to sign another consent decree, instead of going to a Grand Jury and to criminal court.

Environmental crimes have been committed. Will they be covered up again?

Meanwhile, there are holes in the stories of the Sheriff and those who would have us believe that Commissioner Tom Manuel is corrupt (rather than Commissioner JAMES BRYANT and former Commissioners BRUCE MAGUIRE and KAREN STERN). See 2006 article, below, showing former Sheriff NEAL PERRY fairly radiating animus against Manuel, and Manuel returning the favor by talking about MAGUIRE's conflicts of interest.

We've not yet heard the full story on this. Was the St. Augustine Record used and abused by Sheriff Shoar spreading the story?