Wildcard - Summer Solstice 2020

I am a big believer in participatory democracy. I always have been. Over the years, I’ve run into a lot of cynicism, which perpetually says that you can’t fight city hall. Politicians won’t listen to you anyway. Often that’s true. Except when you can and when they do. You just have to know how to approach it, and maybe get a little lucky.

In general, I am a crotchety old wizard. I live in my cave and like to be left alone. But when I emerge to engage the world, there’s often a well-timed spell involved. Usually nothing flashy but sometimes it inadvertently ends in pyrotechnics.

In previous essays, I’ve mentioned that one of the main reasons we bought this house was location. The property bordered on 400-600 undeveloped acres destined to become a county park. Just north of it was another large piece of property also optioned by the county that they were trying to figure out what to do with.

Everyone in the county wanted a piece of both of those tracts of land to use as recreational parks, a botanical garden, an art museum with studio space, sports fields, a wildlife preserve, locations for various county agencies, etc. The oddest request for space came from Pinellas County Utilities, the organization that supplies the county’s drinking water.

A short history lesson. This would have been in the late 90s. At the time Florida was involved in a water war with Georgia and Alabama, specifically over control and use of cross-border rivers. Because of an ongoing drought and increased development, as well as a diminishing aquifer, water was in short supply. Due to the shortage, that interstate infighting had spilled into internecine rivalries as counties around Tampa Bay struggled to secure water sources to quench the thirst of their growing populations. Our county, the most densely populated in the state, owned land in an adjoining county and proceeded to pump water out of the underlying aquifer, leading to a series of recriminations and lawsuits about who controlled what.

The overarching entity in charge of settling that conflict was Swiftmud (SW Florida Water Management District). Through their charter from the legislature, they have great power to mediate disputes. As a part of a tri-county settlement, our county agreed to several mandated actions so the state didn’t enter into a rob Peter to pay Paul scenario. That meant initiatives like conservation and constructing new reservoirs to capture rainwater as well as finding new sources of water if they existed.

The problem was, they really didn’t. The Florida Aquifer, one of the most productive in the world, was already strained to near capacity in trying to support the state’s agricultural base as well as major and expanding population centers such as Tampa/St. Pete, Orlando and Jacksonville. Over-pumping had already led to accusations of increased sinkhole development, a long-running issue in the state.

Without getting too mired in the technical details, there are several layers to the aquifer, each generally separated from the next by layers of partially isolating rock or ideally by isolating clay. Each layer rises and falls in an underground topography that often mimics but doesn’t completely follow the aboveground terrain. In some places, freshwater rises to the surface in the form of springs or rivers. In others, like beneath this county, it dives deep below, making water more expensive to extract.

To give you an idea, our well, which we use to water the lawn, taps a layer of non-potable fresh water near the surface (about 30 feet down) that gets replenished by rainwater and proximity to the ditch and the lake. It is considered a groundwater layer. Isolated below that is a brackish water layer, basically saltwater intrusion from the Gulf. Below that lies a freshwater layer that needs very little treatment because it is purified by the very slow percolation through the surrounding limestone. Beneath that is a second saline layer.

Each layer has a transmissivity, how fast you can draw water from without it running dry. Think of it like a water filter or a series of small pipes. You can only draw so much so fast no matter how hard you try. If you exceed that, you come up empty. Or sometimes you deplete the resource, weakening surrounding underground structures. Picture burying a balloon full of water beneath the sand at the beach. Then picture puncturing or draining it through a tube. If the balloon is close enough to the surface, the sand above can’t support its own weight. Like a poorly built dome, it collapses. You have just created a sinkhole.

In reality there is a lot more complexity to aquifers, water wars, and sinkholes but you get the idea. Sinkholes specifically only occur in very specific underground geologic terrain, not just anywhere. That fact becomes important in a minute.

So back to the county land where we started.

Because of the water wars, the county needed to show they were making a good faith effort to either conserve water or tap new water sources. On the conservation end, they began to design and implement a reclaimed water system that essentially cleaned water already available from the waste water treatment process and make it available for watering lawns, landscape and golf courses, the low-hanging fruit of county water consumption. The problem was that would take years to implement and even then, with the projected population growth rate, wouldn’t be enough.

That meant finding new sources of water within the county. The problem there was that the Florida Aquifer was pretty much already tapped to its maximum by our and the surrounding counties. Leaving aside that it would be expensive to drill deep enough to extract from it, it was the kind of zero-sum game scenario that Swiftmud didn’t really like. So, the county had to look elsewhere.

At the time, both Saudi Arabia and California, each short on water for different reasons, had developed and deployed innovative desalination plants. In both cases, their source water was an ocean or a saltwater gulf. One big problem with desalination plants is that even with the new technologies, creating drinking water from the ocean is a multistage process usually involving reverse osmosis. You may or may not recognize that term from a high school science class, but if you don’t it doesn’t matter. It’s just a process. But an expensive process.

Another problem with desalination has to do with the environmental impact of what to do with the super-salty waste water that is an inevitable byproduct. Typically, that has to be pipelined miles offshore into deep water where it won’t impact local fisheries. The outlets can’t be close to your intakes or you create a self-defeating feedback loop, which again makes for expensive engineering and infrastructure. With all that, at the time, you really had to have no other options before you went down the full desalination road.

Now because we live in Florida, which has seen a major population explosion in my lifetime and has long been short on water, there have been numerous groundwater surveys done over the course of decades. The gold standard are still the ones conducted and maintained by the federal government, specifically by the US Geological Survey. That name should ring a bell with many readers as where my wife worked for the vast majority of her career. But again, more on that in a minute.

Somewhere along the line, someone very clever looked at one of those surveys and noticed that briny layer we talked about wedged below the surface water layer of our well but above the freshwater Florida Aquifer. Brine is basically salty water, so not useful on its own, but not nearly as salty as the Gulf of Mexico where it seeped in from. Which means it wouldn’t cost as much to desalinate. And then this clever individual noticed that salt water layer deep below the freshwater of the Florida Aquifer, which also wasn’t clean or useful on its own. So, this clever individual, really a clever company, approached the county with a proposal.

They had developed an experimental technology that extracted freshwater from briny water at a fraction of the cost of extracting it from ocean water. How large a fraction I don’t remember but appealing enough for the county to consider. All they had to do was pump it out, which wouldn’t be too expensive because it wasn’t that deep, shallower in fact than the Florida Aquifer. But what to do with the waste water I mentioned? Well, why not just pump it back into the ground, into that already unusable layer below the Florida Aquifer? That would eliminate almost all the expensive logistical and environmental concerns.

The county really liked this idea. Mainly because they were under enormous pressure from Swiftmud, and by then the courts to find new water sources. Any perceived progress would do to buy them time for negotiations with the adjacent counties. Actual progress was somewhat less important.

But where to put such a project? I’ve mentioned this is a densely populated county. Land is just as scarce as water, and just as expensive to acquire without a developer’s deep pockets. But remember way back when you started reading that I mentioned the park land that had just opened up that everyone wanted a piece of? Sounds perfect right? The county already owned it. As it turns out, it wasn’t badly sited for what the company proposed. So, the county authorized some adjacent test wells and thought it was clear sailing. Done, done, and done. Problem solved as long as those wells panned out.

They did, at least according to the company operating them. So, they formally submitted their proposal. Because they had approached the county and not the other way around, there would be no competition. And because they knew the county was desperate, they crafted a sweetheart deal. The contract basically said they would construct and run the desal plant on land the county would lease to them for something like $1. The plant which would provide a minimum of 1 million gallons of drinking water a day, which the county would buy back from them at cost of extraction plus profit.

Now a million gallons sounds like a lot of water, but in a county with nearly a million people, it really isn’t all that much. But this company said, don’t worry. Based on the surveys, we can scale it up to extract at least ten times that amount without a problem. As it turns out, 10 million gallons a day was a magic number. It was nearly the exact good faith progress the courts and Swiftmud wanted the county to show. Once you threw in the reclaimed water system, that gave them a buffer. Almost sounded too good to be true.

As most of you know, with all contracts the devil is in the details. And as I remember it, this contract said that the company would build the plant on its own dime. But that the county was obligated to buy a million gallons of water a day, whether the plant could produce it or not. The technology, after all, was clearly labeled as experimental. Which meant that the company had never implemented it in the field at least at this scale. There was a clause in there about the county covering the cost of the plant if it backed out of the contract later. Basically, all the risk was on the county and all the reward went to the company.

None of that seemed to matter. The county commission had stars in their eyes and was ready to sign up for about anything. Just hand them the pen.

Now there’s a tricky thing about county government in Florida. It’s subject to the Sunshine Law which at the time was one of the strongest government transparency laws in the United States. Which meant any contract, any project, any money authorized and spent had to be part of the public record, with time for public comment.

When this item was first floated at a commission meeting, buried as it was in all the various business the county does, the public didn’t take much notice. But a reporter from the regionally recognized local paper did. The paper had covered the water wars and knew there was a story here, especially with the proposed use of park land, which everyone was already talking about. So, s/he did his/her job, talked to the right people, chased down the details, and published the story. The commission again didn’t seem to care because they thought they were solving a problem, despite the shakiness of the proposed contract.

The general public did not agree. The story quickly blew up. People started scrounging up pitchforks and torches as they ripped their bodices in preparation for storming the barricades. Within days we had received fliers from a NIMBY organization that had just formed to oppose the project. They flooded the commissioners with angry letters and phone calls the point where the commission was forced to delay voting on the proposal in the routinely scheduled general meeting.

But the commission hadn’t given up. Being career politicians, they had seen this kind of reaction before. They understood the fervor often quickly died down as the public shifted its focus to the next daily outrage. So, they went on a bit of a charm offensive, scheduling three separate public hearings to pitch the proposal where the company and their consulting team would present their plans and be available to answer questions. And like any commission meeting, public comment would be accepted in the form of time blocks for any citizen to speak. They slated three of these informational meetings over the course of a couple weeks, one in the north of the county, one in the south and one central maybe half a mile from where the proposed plant would be built. That one was assigned to a room in a cooperative extension that we’ve since learned is the largest conference room the county owns.

The north and south meetings went off without a hitch. A few dozen people showed up and generally expressed their lack of support but in no numbers that might blunt the effort. You could sense the commission felt like things were back on track. All they had to do was survive the final meeting, vote the project through and deflect a little fallout. No significant problem.

Especially since the NIMBY organization I mentioned wasn’t exactly helping the opposition’s cause. Full disclosure, I am no fan of NIMBY organizations because in general they are more interested in killing projects because of their homes’ resale value rather than because they are not in the best interest of the community. The name says it all. Not In My Back Yard. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a desal plant, a Walmart or a fire station. In general, they dislike change.

Then again, I was no fan of this experimental desal plant either. Mainly because it didn’t pass the smell test. I also didn’t think the proposed location was the proper use of park land. But in the end, I believe in democracy. If it passed muster and the county voted it in, I would have to deal with it. A couple big ifs.

Anyway, the first issue this newly fledged NIMBY organization focused on in its literature was sinkholes. They painted a grim and inaccurate picture of our houses being swallowed up when the plant over-pumped the aquifer, as everyone rightly expected they might. Now remember somewhere near the dawn of this essay that I mentioned sinkholes depend on the underlying geology? Yeah, this part of the county doesn’t have that structure. Karen knew that from glancing at a couple bedrock maps. Not really a problem.

Which she told a couple neighbors who were semi-organizers when we were talking to them one day. Initially they didn’t want to believe her, even though she said she was a geologist, because they thought she might support the project. We cleared that up pretty quickly, and I added that as an engineer, I was more concerned with the plant’s proximity to the water. The lake in the park the county proposed putting right beside is a 100-acre reservoir that drains through a series of creeks and canals both north and south before meandering its way to the Gulf. Any saltwater intrusion would be devastating to the surrounding ecosystem, never mind out subsurface wells.

While they remained skeptical about the likely lack of sinkholes, they added environmental impacts to their list of grievances. Their continued skepticism meant we couldn’t sign on to their movement directly as it struck us as not just NIMBY but anti-science. Even back then, neither of us was comfortable with the kind of science denial we heard, and that was before it was fully in vogue.

At the same time, we weren’t ready to completely shut them down either. While their facts might have been wrong, their instincts were right. The county seemed to be trying to pull one over on the public. And without a public outcry, it was unlikely to be stopped. They were mostly harmless, anyway, in that Douglas Adams kind of way. But without them, there would be no way to stop this project if stopping it was warranted. So, we were stuck with somewhat unreliable allies. But allies nonetheless.

Now the key words in the above paragraph are “if it was warranted.” From my point of view, if the science supported the project, I was willing to begrudgingly accept it because I recognized the problem. Or at least fight it only on the grounds of inappropriate siting alone. As I said, I am definitely not NIMBY and am not focused on winning at any cost.

But when I do enter the lists, it’s always with an eye on the prize. I figured these allies might have a part to play before this drama ended. So, we left them to it while we investigated other avenues, neither joining nor disclaiming them.

The first step was determining whether the project would actually be feasible. When I asked my resident staff geologist, she promptly answered, “Dammit, I’m a sedimentologist, not a hydrologist.” Well, do you know any hydrologists, I prodded innocently. Narrow eyes, a light bulb sparking. May-be. Let me look into it.

Karen did a search of relevant research in her office, which came up empty. Not surprising since they were a coastal research center. But there was a hydrology office located across the bay. She dug up a contact and wrote them, asking for information, as a private citizen not a federal geologist. I’m a little foggy on exactly what happened next, but I assume it involved trench coats and a dead-drop in a dark alley near the airport somewhere around midnight with an admonishment that, “Should you or any of your team be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions." Or words to that effect.

What Karen came up with was two official USGS research reports on the underlying hydrology of this area near our lake. Turns out, they had been studying it for at least a decade. As a private citizen, Karen neither asked for nor received any interpretation of the data, just the reports as written. But one thing a master’s degree teaches you is how to read an official government research study, even if it’s not in your particular field of specialty.

Both reports said pretty much the same thing. The underlying geology would only support pulling about a million gallons a day at most from the brine layer. Which translated to less than a million gallons of fresh water once it went through the desalination process. Anything more was unsustainable, though the specific impacts of attempting it went unaddressed. As did the level of isolation between the proposed wastewater injection layer and the freshwater Florida Aquifer should that be attempted.

And the commission had requested and received copies of both reports. They might even have been involved in commissioning the second one.

Being extra cautious to make sure that she wasn’t missing something, Karen approached a hydrologist colleague in her office to confirm what she thought she’d read. Yup, that is exactly what those reports were saying. And no, the underlying geology hadn’t magically transformed in the decade between the two reports, despite anyone’s wishful thinking.

When she told me what she’d found, I knew we had all the ammunition we needed. Locked and loaded, it was now just a matter of how to play it out. I knew exactly how to work it for maximum impact, but that required Karen playing an active role. While I could be the front man myself, and had absolutely no problem doing so, I knew she would be better for multiple reasons.

That prompted a second discussion on ethics and conflict of interest. Because they were USGS reports, and she was a USGS employee, she had to be very careful not to even hint that she was speaking in any official capacity. Which I absolutely knew wasn’t a problem as long as she didn’t mention who she worked for. I’d done my due diligence. Government employees maintain their right to free speech as long as they don’t overtly invoke their agency. The reports were in the public record, freely available to anyone who asked. Karen interpreted them based on her education, not her position with the agency. It’s a tricky balance but a pathway existed as long as she was careful.

To help convince her, I outlined my plan. Reluctantly, she agreed.

By now, we were just a few days away from the public meeting. Which worked out perfectly. With her onboard, I knew exactly how to set this up. First rule: Don’t talk about Project Mayhem. Second rule: Don’t. Talk. About. Project. Mayhem.

At this point, operational security meant strictly need to know basis only. Never trust especially sketchy allies with sensitive information if you want to maintain the element of surprise. If your enemy doesn’t have time to prepare, they can simply react. Use that.

So, when the public meeting rolled around, we stayed in our work clothes, shirt and tie for me, business casual for her, and drove to the meeting. We wanted to arrive a little early to make sure we could get Karen a time slot to speak.

When we pulled up, the county cooperative extension was already mobbed. Hundreds of people were streaming into the building. Two different individuals with clipboards tried to stop us and get us to sign a petition opposing the proposal. By then, I had my game face on. I simply waved them off and kept walking, my dress shoes hitting the concrete with a heavy heel. A third canvasser in support of the measure took one look, got my best “bring it” stare, and didn’t even try.

We got a lot of sidelong glances on our approach. No one was sure exactly who we were. Everyone suspected we were players by the way we were dressed and moving with a purpose, along with the papers Karen carried, but they had no idea on whose side. Exactly as I wanted it.

Inside, we found row upon row of chairs set out with aisles separating them. At the top of the center aisle was a microphone facing the table where the Commissioners would sit. To one side, near the entrance was a large table with a conceptual diagram of the proposed desal plant and where it would be situated. The consulting team hired by the company making the proposal hovered around in their suits, ready to answer questions. We only glanced at them on the way by.

Instead, we headed for the signup sheet for public comment. Karen entered her name. We sat toward the back near the center of the room where we could survey the crowd. Then we settled in and waited. I engaged the eyes that look right through you to ensure people kept their distance, seeing but not making eye contact or acknowledging anyone.

Eventually, the meeting was called to order. By then, every seat was filled with SRO in the back. Only three Commissioners had bothered to show up, the Chairperson and two others. Only one of them was interesting. He had been appointed by the governor to finish a vacated term. Not only was he the only Democrat on the commission in a decade, he was also the only, and perhaps first, person of color. All of which put him in a somewhat awkward position in this county at the time if he intended to stand for an elected term.

The desal plant was the one item on the agenda that night. The consulting firm for the company gave a brief introductory presentation of the proposal. A polished, professional presentation. Nothing new or earth-shattering. We didn’t pay much attention other than to note the overall contours of the plan remained unchanged.

Next, the Chairperson opened the floor for public comment. An official called the first name on the list. Each person had three minutes to speak. Karen had at least a dozen people ahead of her. By convention, the Commission did not address public comments, they typically just sat and listened. A few speakers in we could sense they were only there to make a good-faith showing, absorb any damage, and move on to a vote the next week. All they had to do was survive the meeting just like they had the other two.

Two of the commissioners sat stone-faced as citizen after citizen stood at the microphone to object to this proposal. The Democrat looked more sympathetic but only slightly. Most of the speakers were impassioned though not always eloquent, which is the way a democracy is supposed to work. Their facts were all over the board as we knew they would be. But we could see there were no new arguments. The Commissioners had heard it all before. Sometimes from the exact same speakers. A quiet boredom evolved behind their Easter Island expressions. They just wanted to get this over with. Even the crowd and speakers began to sense theirs was a futile rearguard action. When the clock ran out on the evening, it would be all over but the crying.

I was taking in the room again when Karen’s name was called. Specifically, I was watching the consulting team sitting up front, facing the commissioners. When Karen rose after the official called her name, I saw the only woman on the team snap her head around to look. Turned out, she recognized Karen from them both being members of the local Association of Women Geologists chapter. For an instant, this woman looked like she’d been poleaxed. Her expression quickly transformed back to neutral as she turned to face forward, staring at nothing in particular. That told me everything I needed to know. We had the initiative and had maintained the element of surprise.

The hall quieted as Karen strode up the aisle, papers in hand. All eyes traced her progress as she approached the microphone. After introducing herself by name and city of residence, she launched into her very brief geological review. As she did, the expression of two of the commissioners transformed from bored to apprehensive. The Democrat leaned in to listen more intently. Less than three minutes later, Karen concluded by holding up the pair of reports in her hand, slightly splayed so the Commissioners could see them both, as she pointedly asked her final question “Why are you even considering this proposal when you have two US Geological Survey reports that say it won’t work?”

There was a moment of stunned silence as Karen turned away from the microphone and headed back toward her seat. Less than a second later, the room erupted. A woman from the neighborhood, a member of the opposition, raised a hand in a high-five as Karen passed. She slapped it as she strode by.

The remaining speakers on the list spoke, but you could tell their remarks were pro forma. Everyone knew the argument had already been won.

The commissioners looked dismayed. Our ambush had been perfectly executed.

So perfectly, in fact, that the moment the Chairperson gaveled the meeting to a close, he and his comrade bolted from the room, not even pausing to shake a hand or acknowledge any constituents. Only the Democrat remained, and he sought Karen out. He only had one question for her.

“Are you a geologist?”

She smiled sweetly back at him and answered, “As a matter of fact, I am,” neglecting her affiliation. He nodded sagely before continuing to circulate through the room, obviously calculating how to exploit this newfound knowledge. We left right after, before anyone else could seek us out. Mission accomplished.

The following week, the Commission pulled the proposal from the next commission meeting’s agenda, awaiting further study. Karen was afraid that meant they’d try to bring it back. I shook my head. They were just saving face until no one else was looking. Sure enough, a few months later, they quietly strangled the proposal in its sleep with a formal vote and buried it in an unmarked drainage ditch behind the house.

By then, Karen had been transformed into a local folk hero, somewhat because of her high recognition factor. People we didn’t know and had never really met would wave and introduce themselves whenever we were in the park. They’d thank her for what she’d done. The neighbor couple we’d talked to early on smiled and reminisced every time they saw us walking literally for years after. No one would forget Karen’s fateful encounter with the Commission that night, charging like Uxbridge at Waterloo from behind the concealment of the crest to spike battery after battery of exposed French guns. By the time she rode back to the safety of her lines, unscathed in her case, the Grand Battery would fire no more.

So, what is the lesson in all this? Come now, if you’ve read the previous essays this year, you know there has to be one.

The first and simplest is the most obvious. You absolutely can fight city hall and win, but only if you know how to seize a moment and have all your facts in line and a little expertise with a little guts behind it. It helps immensely if your opposition is unprepared. Politicians often are.

But that’s not the one I wanted to focus on. The real lesson to me is more subtle. And that lesson concerns allies.

In recent years, I’ve heard a lot of talk about what it means to be an ally, whether regarding LGBT rights, women’s rights or civil rights, or even ordinary politics. Mostly from people who have little idea what they are talking about or what that word truly means.

An ally is not a subordinate, even though they fight beside you. They do not blindly follow your orders or slavishly defend your position. Those are people who have already enlisted in your army, who fight and die beneath your banner because they choose to for one reason or another. With them, you are all one unit, one organization. They are you in a sociological sense.

An ally is not.

An ally is someone whose goals and objectives overlap with your own. They fight for their own reasons, for their own causes, some of which you may or may not agree with or fully understand. Some are allies of convenience, others are more deep-rooted and dependable. But either way, they choose their own ground and make their own decisions, right or wrong. If your interests align, especially if you are outnumbered and outgunned, it is best to welcome them, even if you cast a wary eye toward a future where circumstances may change.

If all that sounds a bit Machiavellian, it absolutely is. It also happens to be the way the sausage gets made, to misquote Bismarck. For any of his faults, he was a man who fundamentally understood how politics and allies work.

Without the NIMBY crowd of opposition, we were unlikely to succeed. They did the hard work of crystallizing the opposition and getting people to turn out. Without an audience, without a pitchfork and torch wielding mob behind her, Karen’s facts would likely have fallen upon deaf ears. Just another bit of information to spin. Politicians are good at that and do it all the time. They usually only listen when you threaten them with votes.

In fact, this opposition’s efforts may have led to the slow transformation of the County Commission which had been dominated by a single political party for three decades at that time. In that, the Commission had become more than a bit arrogant in thinking they could do whatever they wanted without consequence. They eventually paid for that, one by one.

This opposition had the numbers and emotion on their side, two things we could never conjure up. We had facts, a strategy and a sense of timing. They knew where to strike, we knew how and when to direct the blow.

Each side didn’t want this project, each for different reasons. Our interests aligned. Which is why we neither joined them nor disparaged them early on. We needed them. Just as they needed us, though they didn’t know it until the end. We didn’t share an outlook and didn’t share tactics, or even information, just a common goal. When it was won, it was done and the alliance dissolved. But we both walked away happy.

And if our interests had aligned once more in the future, perhaps we could have worked together again.

So, as we talk about BLM, or LBGT, or renewed interest in ERA, please remember that while not everyone who stands beside you is black or gay or female, they still might be dying beside you for their own heartfelt reasons. Sure, you can attempt to educate and enlighten them if you are able, and likely should. But it’s better to honor them than disparage them, especially if you want them to continue to fight.

Or in Karen’s case, to pull the sword from the stone and unite the disparate tribes of Pinellas in an epic quest for good governance.

© 2020 Edward P. Morgan III