The Ooops Chronicles
Part 1 -- Ooops, I did it again
Less than 24 hours after the city votes to plead guilty to criminal charges levied by the EPA, utils department head Chris Sharek and OMI's Tim Newton pull a Britney Spears job on city and city workers
-- John Patten, 04/17/05, revised 04/20/05
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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According to sources, at approximately 2:30 PM on Wednesday, April 13, the soil was dumped behind the city's drinking water plant, just minutes less than 24 hours after Vice-Mayor Moore had voiced his promise to the citizens of Venice that "this type of behavior will not occur again."

Bear in mind that this "clean" fill dirt had been adajacent to a sanitary sewer break. While the sanitary sewer wasn't reported as leaking sewage at the time of the dig, nobody knows how long the sewage pipe had been broken (and that is assuming that reports that the sanitary sewer wasn't spilling at the time of the dig are accurate). Moreover, the dumped "clean" fill dirt contained chunks of asphalt with green spray paint and pieces of clay pipe, pipe that only comes from sanitary sewer pipe. Green spray paint on asphalt is a marker for a sanitary sewer line.

According to witnesses (all of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity), that's when things started getting ugly between drinking water employees (aka distribution) and Tim Newton. While Newton was giving assurances that the wet soil was not contaminated, Distribution Supervisor Bill Green was apparently dubious. Green reportedly told Newton that he wanted to do fecal coliform tests on the soil if it was to be left there. Newton reportedly said he didn't want that and joked that he would have dumped it at the airport but that too many people were paying attention. Green reportedly continued to push for the fecal tests and Newton stated that he'd rather just cart the soil elsewhere.

Utils Division head Chris Sharek then arrived on the scene. Sharek and Newton reportedly had some loud words with each other, which then was reportedly followed by louder words between Sharek and Green.

In the end, the soil was loaded back onto the dump truck along with about four inches of soil that had been underneath the pile and the dump truck was driven away from the drinking water plant. The soil was reportedly taken to the Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant, where it was dumped into the plant's drying bed, the appropriate place for dumping contaminated or possibly contaminated soil.

"I was expecting your call"
Reached by phone on the afternoon of Saturday, April 16, Sharek stated he didn't want to take the time to talk about the incident except to say that the soil was definitely not contaminated. Sharek acknowledged that there was clay sewage pipe mixed in with the soil and that the presence of the pipe could give the appearance of contaminated soil. When asked if any tests were done on the soil, Sharek stated in an irritated tone "No, but I knew you'd be calling me about this, I was expecting your call."

Sharek didn't have an answer when asked how he could be so certain that the soil was uncontaminated. He did voice irritation about the call, stating that the call was an intrusion on his personal time with his family.

The city has yet to issue a press release about the dual sewer breaks. By the first publication of this story, City Manager Marty Black had not yet returned a phone call asking for a statement on the incident.

It appears at this time that the Sarasota County Health Department was not notified. County regulations call for what is informally called 'the teaspoon rule,' i.e., if even a teaspoonful of sewage is spilled, the county health department is supposed to be notified. In this particular case nobody is acknowledging that a sanitary sewage spill ever took place as such, only that soil that was adjacent to a sanitary sewer break was spilled. Additionally, nobody can say how long the sanitary sewer pipe had been broken and, despite Sharek's blanket statement to the contrary, nobody can really say for sure that the soil was uncontaminated.

"When you have soil next to a sanitary sewer break and the soil has broken sewer pipe in it and you don't know how long that pipe has been broken, common sense should tell you to treat it as contaminated. Standard procedure would be to treat it as contaminated unless tests come back to tell you that it's not," one knowledgeable source within the city's utilities department stated.

Another employee noted the impossibility of making a blanket statement that the soil was uncontaminated and argued that there was little to no chance that the soil wasn't contaminated: "Any time you have infiltration, you have exfiltration. If water is getting into a broken pipe, it's also coming out." Others noted the irony of the incident happening on the day after city council voted to plead guilty to EPA criminal charges.

All of the employees that spoke with Venice Florida! dot com echoed similar sentiments on the matter with one notable exception: Chris Sharek.

The smoking gun for one employee was Newton's behavior. "If there was no risk of contamination, why did Newton not want the soil tested? As soon as testing was mentioned, Newton was looking for a way out. Two [city] guys ended up working overtime to remove the soil because Sharek and Newton didn't want the soil tested."

According to employees, if the soil was uncontaminated, as Sharek insists, the simplest and cheapest way to handle the situation would have been to test it, document it, and then leave it behind the drinking water plant where it would be used at some future time as fill dirt.

Reality is stranger than perception
As stated earlier, no press release was issued by the city on the matter, a rather unique situation as all sewer spills are supposed to be publicly reported according to policy directives initiated by Black last year. In fact, it appears that Black wasn't notified of the spill until Thursday afternoon.

In a pair of e-mails that were sent on Thursday, the official spin on the matter from Sharek and Newton became obvious -- that the soil was clearly uncontaminated but that others would deliberately misconstrue the matter to make the situation look bad:

On 12 April 2005, infiltration was discovered at 616 Gulf St. The rate of infiltration was so dramatic that it was suspected at first of being the result of a broken or leaking water main. The distribution group was contacted and the quick investigation determined that ground water was the actual source of the inflow into the sanitary sewer.

It was decided to excavate the area around the infiltration on the morning of 13 April to coincide with the low tide. The area was excavated and the true source of the inflow into the sanitary sewer was the storm drain which crossed perpendicular to the sanitary sewer main. Once the pipe was located, the Vactor was used to complete the excavation and control the ground water level until the repair to the sanitary sewer was complete and the inflow from the storm drain eliminated. By using the Vactor to complete the excavation, the soil that had been previously removed was prevented from being contaminated.

Please note the attached photo revealing the source of the inflow.
-- e-mail from Tim Newton of OMI, dated April 14, 2005 (included in Sharek's follow-up e-mail, below)

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I think we all agree that we will no further store any spoil or material from a wastewater repair at the water plant. Although the soil was not contaminated, it did contain pieces of clay pipe and other construction debris that may have appeared to be from contaminated soil.

Unfortunately, appearance or perception is reality around here for the city's utilities department.

Thanks for the update Timothy.
-- e-mail from Chris Sharek, dated April 14, 2005

 

Perception versus Officially Accepted Reality
Bill Green perceived clay sewage pipe in a pile of dirt that he was told was in a hole with a broken active sanitary sewer line in it. For Green, the reality derived from this set of facts was that the soil in question just might be -- might be -- contaminated.

Sharek perceived the same pile of dirt with the same set of facts. For Sharek, no testing data existed to indicate that the soil in question was contaminated. Sharek knew that this set of facts could lead to only one reality -- that the soil in question was not contaminated.

Since Sharek is higher up on the food chain than Green, Sharek's reality is the Officially Accepted Reality.

The credibility factor
To say that Sharek's credibility is shaky would be an understatement. In July of last year, Sharek almost performed an asbestos pipe dig after being warned by Venice Florida! dot com that the dig would be illegal, as the city wasn't using the proper safety equipment and that Sharek wasn't following mandated safety and training procedures. Sharek was quoted at the time as stating that, while he had promised the city manager that everything would be done legally, he was going to go ahead with the dig despite the illegalities: "Well, that's the way we're doing it and if we're wrong, oh well, we'll just pay the fine... We've been doing it wrong for so long, a few more times isn't going to hurt anything."

More recently, at last Tuesday's council meeting, Sharek appeared before council to explain and pitch the department's backflow prevention program. After giving a lengthy expository explanation of where the program was headed, Sharek was questioned by Councilman John Simmonds. Simmonds commented that Sharek and the department didn't seem to know what they were doing with the program.

And then the strangest thing happened. Sharek told Simmonds that the councilman was right.

Whether this was a sudden epiphany on Sharek's part about his own state of cluelessness about backflow prevention or it was just an act of passive resistance will probably remain a mystery, but the result of that statement nearly caused a riot** in the rows of seats directly behind the Utilities Director.

Sharek continued, oblivious to lynch mobs forming behind him. He announced that the backflow program would be put on hold while the department went back to re-research compliance issues with state and county laws. This reversal contradicted a series of press accounts on the program, a program that was forcing property owners in the city to invest a minimum of $300 in a garishly ugly set of pipes that stick out of the ground, usually near the edge of property lines.

The result of Sharek's improbable reversal was that council and city employees were left in shock and awe and utter disbelief at this extremely sudden new policy shift that Sharek appeared to have invented on the spot, while citizens lined up to use their allotted five minutes each before council to voice their opinions on the confusion and incompetence within the city's utilities department.

* OMI is the private company that the city has contracted to manage the city's utilities department.

** Your definition of a riot may differ. In Venice, a riot usually involves shaking a fist in the air while loudly proclaiming your disgruntlement in a manner that might escalate to staredowns, shouting and name calling. Such behavior has been known to trigger law enforcement into swooping in and and making arrests in the interest of public safety.

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.