Venice Florida! dot com responds to Gondo's 'Liar, liar' article
We reported sewage spills, county sent out to test for herring, Gondo takes a bite and asks for white sauce
-- John Patten, 04/30/05 (expanded from a posting on the message board)
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

Got a comment? Make it here.

I'm not the only one who stated that sewage dumping at the airport happened. City Manager Marty Black concurred, and the Gondo published it in a story written by Andrews:

City Manager Marty Black no longer wonders whether sewage has been dumped at Venice Municipal Airport. Black wants to know for how long and how much was dumped, as well as who authorized the actions. Tuesday's announcement comes on the heels of a Web site's accusations city workers have dumped raw sewage on airport grounds for years. Black ordered the workers quoted in the online story to file a report with him, and that memo has caused the city manager to become even more concerned. "I'll be honest, I don't think their memorandum is forthright enough," Black said. "It raises even more questions. ... It's not a question of identifying if it happened. It's now how frequently and to what extent."
-- Venice Gondolier Sun, 01/12/05

Sewage spills were reported at airport, county sent out to test for herring, Gondo asks for white sauce
Returning to today's article, Andrews writes:

"After reviewing those results and comparing them to wastewater sludge results from the city of Venice wastewater plant over a four-quarter period in 2004, my conclusion is the soils and debris dumped at the airport do not contain wastewater sludge," wrote Rob Bolesta of the county health department in his report. County health officials took a series of six soil samples and conducted both in-house and private lab testing. Both sets came back negative, according to Bolesta. His report closes by stating no further health department investigating will be done.
-- Venice Gondolier Sun, 04/29/05

Newburn had admitted to dumping sewage at the airport, not sludge (the processed concentrated by-product of sewage treatment). Newburn stated the dumpings he had participated in took place in 2001 and 2002. Now, almost four years later, after numerous rains and a couple of hurricanes, testing is done for sludge.

What I wrote back in December about sludge:

While Newburn denied participating directly in any other illegal dumpings of sewage or sludge, he stated that sewage and sludge dumps had been made in a number of areas of airport land over the years, including between the runways and at or near the festival areas where the annual Italian Fest takes place and where the Chamber of Commerce's Sharks Tooth Fest used to occur. Newburn denied directly participating in any dumping other than the three illegal dumps that he ordered.
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 12/29/05

Newburn had tossed the word sludge into the mix, I didn't know what to make of it at the time as the allegations I had heard all dealt with raw wastewater being dumped at the airport. I left the word in as that's what Newburn had told me, but I never really dwelled on it or went back to it. The tale I had received and primarily focused on was that wastewater had been carted to the airport and dumped there.

My God, it's full of... dumpsters?
After I broke the story, the Gondo's photographer, Jeff Tavares, met me out at the airport for a staged photo shoot that the Gondo had requested. This would be on either January 10 or 11, as the story with Tavares' accompanying photos were published on Wednesday, January 12. I had been at the airport previously on November 18 with then-airport manager Robert Hernandez.

In between my two visits, about twenty huge (I mean mega-HUGE) industrial dumpsters had suddenly appeared on the site, directly across an access road from where Newburn's crew had dumped the raw sewage that Newburn had written of. Tavares asked me about them, I shrugged and said that they weren't there before. And they weren't. Not a single dumpster was in that field on November 18, yet here on January 10 or 11, there were twenty or so of them, all laid out in clean, even rows, looking surreal and incongruously out of place in an open green field as though they were staging for a Hipgnosis photo shoot or a Stanley Kubrick background. I'm pretty sure Tavares snapped a couple of pics of them, although those pics were never published.

Here's the single Tavares pic that the Gondo published to accompany their January 12 front page story. Tavares is facing almost due east as he is shooting this photo, I am in the photo facing almost due west. The dumpsters would be to my left and Tavares' right, directly south of us (and as fate would have it, out of the pic).

Robert Bolesta, of the Sarasota County Health Department, stated his soil samples were collected on January 25, fifteen days later.

In fairness, I have no idea why those dumpsters were brought out to the airport, but the whole thing has me scratching my head. Even if there is some legitimate reason for their existence, their placement is ... well... let's just say curious and leave it at that.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings, woah-wo-wo feelings
More from today's Gondo:

This is one of many accusations by Patten of improper conduct by the city utilities department. His online postings helped publicize complaints that led to the Environmental Protection Agency criminal investigation.
-- Venice Gondolier Sun, 04/29/05

An awkwardly worded sentence that makes it appear as though I started the EPA investigation. As I understand the history of this whole mess, the EPA investigation was started after several city employees approached the EPA with evidence of falsified documents. The EPA investigation was started secretly. I didn't find out or start writing about it until maybe six months at least into the investigation (exactly when the investigation actually started is still a bit of a mystery to me due to the secrecy involved in the investigation).

Just a couple of weeks ago, Patten accused the city of covering up illegal dumping of contaminated soil behind the city's drinking water plant during repair of a busted sewer pipe. He has filed a criminal complaint with Venice Police Department alleging city workers tampered with a crime scene by removing the soil and dumping it at the county landfill without testing it for contamination.
-- Venice Gondolier Sun, 04/29/05

I never said or wrote that the soil was definitely contaminated. I wrote that the soil came from a dig in which there was a broken sanitary sewer pipe, that there were chunks of sanitary sewer clay pipe in the dumped soil and that the soil was probably or possibly contaminated. I have further stated that common sense should have dictated that until and unless testing showed otherwise, the soil should have been treated as though it was contaminated. Further, I wrote that the behavior of all parties involved indicated that they believed that testing might have indicated that the soil was contaminated.

As it stands now, there's no way for anyone to say that it wasn't contaminated because after it was dumped behind the drinking water plant (a move even Black stated was "poor judgment"), it was never tested. Instead, we have gotten quotes based on 'feelings.'

Here's the conclusion of OMI's Gerald Boyce, based on his assessment of a sewage break that he did not witness firsthand: "I feel that there was no contamination by wastewater of the excavated material that was temporarily deposited at the Water Plant site."

I can't state that the soil was definitely contaminated because no confirmation tests were ever performed, For that same reason, Gerald Boyce (and others) cannot state factually that the soil was definitely not contaminated. If you take Boyce's words on a literal level, he doesn't even state that he believes the soil was uncontaminated, merely that he feels that the soil was hunky dory. Granted, that's splitting a semantic hair and is perhaps unfair, but when you have soil that came from a hole in the ground where there was a broken sanitary sewer pipe -- and that same pile of soil contains chunks of broken sanitary sewer pipe -- it's a fairly safe bet to state that the soil in question is either "possibly or probably contaminated," which is what I stated.

Hearsay or heresy?
The affidavit I filed did not outright accuse, nor did I state that a crime had factually occurred. A matter of semantics again, but a very important distinction nevertheless.

I stated that based upon what I had been told, from what I had learned and from the photographic evidence that I had received, I believed that a crime had occurred and that I believed that evidence had been tampered with by removing the evidence before investigating further. Which is true -- that's what I believe at this point in time.

I further requested a formal investigation to see if my beliefs would be born out, which is, I think, a prudent thing to do given the surrounding controversy. If the investigation turns up nothing as Black has stated has already happened, fine. If my current beliefs are not born out by the investigation, then the new facts will probably change my beliefs. Utils will have a cloud removed that they created by acting hastily and rather stupidly, so they should welcome an investigation.

However, and this is important: It is legally a far cry from stating that something factually happened and stating a belief that something happened.

Black dismissed the affidavit as nothing more than hearsay, which is technically not true. This isn't sworn verbal testimony in an open court. It is, in the police biz, known as third-party information, which is quite commonly used to start investigations or to point the way to second- and first-party information. It's merely an instrument that allows investigators to ask some questions and dig a little deeper.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.