Welcome to the world yachting capital they say...

So, let me get this straight...... you and I can't spend the night on our boats in FLL waters without having some sort of pump out arrangement, we pay the truck to come and pump us out, the truck then brings it to the treatment plant and then it ends up in the canals. Got it.

Fort Lauderdale has sometime back identified the seriousness of the decay of their sewage system and has a program to try to rectify the issues, but obviously didn't start soon enough. A $200 million bond was approved over 2 years ago. $65 million of that are going to replace the sewer main. They anticipate spending $460 million over the next five years.

Over half the sewage in Fort Lauderdale is not waste but is water coming from above and leaking into the system. Fixing it all would require $1.4 billion.

There is a conflict between allowing building and more homes and businesses that add to the problem but also provide a larger tax base.

Most cities in the country face similar issues. Our infrastructure is old and crumbling and not just in Flint, Michigan. Much of our water is unfit to drink.

I do have answers I would recommend, but then that would turn the thread political so just going to stop at it being a serious problem and having nothing to do with glamour projects or local politically motivated moves.

I'm a huge sports fan and I do disagree with public financing of sports stadiums. I feel like Marlins stadium was a huge mistake.

Some things must be done to retain tourism, but baseball parks don't do that.

Glad you said not about FLL as we have no major league sports stadiums or teams.

Sunrise....not Fort Lauderdale...lol

I've owned property in FLL for years and they have been charging a special fee for sewer and water upgrades but the pols keep raiding the fund for vanity projects. As a civil engineer I am repulsed by these "leaders" and their actions.

I agree. Fort Lauderdale has been delaying this problem for a long time. They have 2 back up and during busy times sewer mains that they shut down YEARS ago because they were leaking over 40% and 70%, these were there for a reason and should have been fixed. NO, instead they just upped the pressure in the 1 good one to handle the additional flow/volume and not it's bursting everywhere 10 years later. They charge massive permitting and impact fees on all of these new condo's but the money never goes to fixing the infrastructure, or if it does it takes 5x as long and costs 5x as much. A friend of mine is building a small 100 unit/4 story hotel in Fort Lauderdale to replace an existing hotel he owned, he's paying $500,000 in impact fees and permits..……..I can only imagine what 1 of those 40 story condo's off of Las Olas is paying...…...

This is a hot topic in the Puget sound right now. The department of ecology is pushing to make the Puget sound a NDZ. As it is, there is already the 3 mile offshore rule so it really only impacts boats with water treatment systems. While everyone can agree dumping raw sewage in the sound is a bad idea, the Seattle sewage system is also tied together with the storm water system which every downspout drain on every house is tied into as well as street catch basins. During heavy storm events, the treatment facilities get over capacity so the engineers hit the bypass and dump millions of gallons of raw sewage into the sound. One of the storms was so bad recently it took out 50% of one of Seattle main treatment facilities so now they are bypassing straight into the sound with much more frequency. While we all are advocates for cleaner water and appreciating our infrastructure needs some dedicated tax dollars and attention, the boating community here feels it’s pretty hypocritical for the DOE to be focusing it’s attention and time on us instead of focusing on cleaning up its own mess.

https://komonews.com/amp/news/local...ses-several-puget-sound-area-beaches-to-close

I once heard it put very succinctly: A new bridge or sports stadium presents a great photo op of the ribbon cutting. Fixing a pipe or bridge doesn't.
One thing I see missing from this topic is Florida's limestone base and what the effect of this water and sewage flowing freely through it will have. Sinkholes. Till now they've been more prevalent in the central part of the state, but this could undermine buildings in a very populated area.

If you look at all the large cities across America they have one thing in common. Funds for essential services are diverted to politically popular programs for select groups, and they are always begging for other's to finance their mismanagement.

I agree with these comments. Ft. Lauderdale is not unique. Local politicians in this country say: “aren’t I great we did not raise sewer rates” and divert funds. As boater owners know, if you don’t keep up with maintenance it will cost a fortune when it does fail. It happens over decades. Engineers and sewer managers know what to do but are constantly are beaten down and frustrated by the politicians. Vote for those that raise rates responsibly not those that champion lower rates, they are charlatans. It is in the hands of the voter ultimately. But the federal clean water act will force all cities to fix polluting sewer systems.

The problem is Fort Lauderdale charges a fortune in permits and impact fees, but hasn't been maintaining the sewer system. The problem with it is both age and it being too small for the population density due to all being installed in the 1950's. So if the pipes are too small, how do you flow more water, UP THE PRESSURE which is now causing all of the leaks. There were also additional pipes that rotted out and Fort Lauderdale didn't fix them, they just condemned them so we have no back up pipes either. It really needs to be all torn out and replaced with larger pipes.

It has been a couple of decades since I visited the fair city of FTL, but I have a couple of comments - none apply to FTL in particular anyway.

The basic problem is the astronomical cost of infrastructure work. Everything is custom - nothing much is standard. The municipality wants to fix something, so they retain a consulting firm to produce plans and specifications to go out for bid. But wait - studies are required before work can commence on the plans and specs. Since both state and federal organizations are involved in the studies/permitting, months to years go by before the plans and specs are done - the consultant is (rightly) charging hours for all this work. The consultant, doing due diligence, asks the municipality for the documentation needed to integrate the proposed new work to the existing system - this documentation is ALWAYS deficient - more consultant hours required.

So now the plans and specs are finally on the street. The bidding construction firms are not dummies - they know that way more work will have to be done than the plans and specs indicate for them to finish the job (get paid). So every bid has some extra in it to allow for unforeseen circumstances, and these unforeseen circumstances always happen - history is truth. The project gets completed - later and more expensive. Nothing changes - the process repeats itself forever.

Here is an actual example of how one small aspect of the cost of regulatory standards was reduced. I won't politicize this discussion by taking either position. I used to work for a state Department of Transportation - we had a small in-house engineering group for transportation/electrical engineering. This was the time when highway changeable message signs were just getting popular. We would develop a request for proposals to provide a few of these overhead signs. At the time, there was a STATE standard for these signs, developed for the state by consultants, that the manufacturer of the signs (and the vendor) would have to comply with. Our review of these proposals often included face to face meetings with representatives of the manufacturers - and here is the point. These manufacturers would state to us that not only could they manufacture signs for us that met our state standards, they could meet the standards for all 50 states, AND ALL THESE STATE STANDARDS ARE DIFFERENT. We got our signs. Nobody knows how much more they cost because the manufacturers had to maintain a manufacturing process tailored for 50 different standards for the same end product- some differences were trivial, but many were not.

Years later, the Federal Highway Administration developed a standard for changeable message signs, and told the states that they had to use the federal standard or risk losing federal funds. Now, these signs are basically made to one standard no matter what state they are installed in. Are they less expensive - some say no, some say yes.

How well does the example apply to the regulatory burden imposed on municipalities when they are considering infrastructure work? How much would the cost of infrastructure work be reduced if there were more federal standards for this work than there already are? How much, if any, would the astronomical cost to meet America's great need for upgraded and new infrastructure be reduced if the states would actually cooperate with each other and the feds to develop common standards (actually reduce the regulatory burden) and common products (a few types of standard steel bridges built in shipyards, for example). Key word here is actually.

Finally, nothing I said changes the fact that in infrastructure repairs, everything is custom. In my town, sewer main leaks have been "fixed" for the last 40 years by uncovering the top, sides, and most of the bottom of the main and pouring concrete in the excavation around the pipe. When you go to change or upgrade after that, you discover that concrete that takes 2 hours to install takes a month to remove. Custom work.

I am not positive about the atmosphere for meaningful change. By the way Chesapeake46, it turns out that almost every waste water treatment plant in the US (even those that do not combine waste and storm water) is located on a tributary of some river or bay - not just on the Chesapeake Bay.

Thanks and happy Father's Day. May everyone stay healthy.