MIAMI — Wagner Creek snakes through Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood and the city’s Health District.
Miami River Commission Chairman Horacio Stuart Aguirre said excessive bacteria contamination in the creek has come from historic industrial pollution, storm water pollution, and also human waste from some of the city’s homeless, who use the creek as a public restroom.
“This is the way it is right now before any treatment, and you can’t see six inches into the water,” he said. “If you were standing a foot and half into this water, you wouldn’t see your toes, that is how thick it is. The amount of poop that is in this water is unbelievable.”
The creek drains out to the Miami River and eventually into Biscayne Bay.
That’s why the creek’s reputation as “the most polluted waterway in the state of Florida” according to Aguirre, is of grave concern.
“So we either stop the infection here now, or deal with a body-wide infection two years from now,” he said.
To combat the issue, officials are using a solar-powered machine that oxygenates the water with ionized air, which Aguirre says you can think of like a water-cleaning vacuum.
“It is sort of like the little devices we have in our homes,” Aguirre said. “(It’s) a yellow manifold that is about as long as you are tall with six heads on each side, and that is what is distributing the oxygenated air into the water.”
Developed by Miami-based Fast Cleaning Solutions, it also uses various filters to kill bacteria.
“They gave it to us for one year as a pilot program,” Aguirre said.
So far, he says the results have been remarkable.
“If you look at the shoreline, the water is crystal clear,” Aguirre said. “This is the way it is supposed to be, this is the way the good lord made it.”
He said there was an 82% reduction in e-coli bacteria.
“We have clean water, happy aquatic life, and happy residents now enjoying their balconies without the small of sewage pollution,” he said.
That is why officials are presenting the results to city commissioners in hope of securing funds for several more.
“We don’t need to go to billion dollar solutions, this is cost effective and it works,” Aguirre said.
STARTED AS A PILOT PROGRAM
The vendor Fast Cleaning Solutions, LLC designed the device, came up with the idea, they patented it, they built the device and they gave it to us for one year [for free] as a pilot program.
THE PROPOSAL
The Miami River Commission is proposing to deploy 7 Bacterial Water Cleaning Machines (BCMW) developed by Fast Cleaning Solutions LLC in Wagner Creek, plus two additional BCMW devices and two water quality testing devices which they say would cost $360,000 for one year. The funding the commissioner spokesperson said could come for the city’s storm water utility fee which aims to eliminate pollution from the storm water system.
NEXT STEPS
Aguirre plans to meet with the city manager and the two commissioners whose districts are impacted by Wagner Creek. The creek runs 15 blocks through District 5, represented by Chairwoman Christine King, and District 1, represented by Miguel Gabela. Their hope is to agree on a plan and funding budget ahead of the upcoming budget hearing on Sept. 30.
WHAT ABOUT THE CITY’S WATER DECONTAMINATION VESSEL?
The Miami River Commission Chairman said the city’s contracted scavenger water decontamination vessel is doing a great job along the Miami River and Biscayne Bay, but is too large to navigate under Wagner Creek’s low fixed bridges, which is why they were on the hunt for another solution.
WHY IT MATTERS
Aguirre said it matters, “Because this small piece of canal is about 15 blocks long and drains all the way into the Miami River, and so if this contamination spreads into the Miami River, it will become a process out of control and then we will really have an expenditure and health issue to deal with.”
He added, “Not only are the ducks, and the fish, and the turtles eating this stuff, but it carries a horrendous odor down into the Miami River and contaminates the rest of the river. All the other tributaries are very, very clean except for this one. We clean this one and then we can really say mission accomplished and we give something back to children of the next generation that they will have a very clean Miami.”
WHERE DOES THE POLLUTION COME FROM?
“Well the good news is that it does not come from the Miami River, nor the shipping industry, nor the recreational boating industry. It is actually man made. Some of it from decades and decades ago was industrial pollution, but in the last 20-25 years, it is fecal matter, human poop, that is what it is,” Aguirre said. “On any given day we can walk these banks and see people with their underwear off relieving themselves on the Wagner. The amount of poop that is in this water is unbelievable.”
He added that the county has conducted a number of smoke and dye tests to explore if the bacteria contamination is coming from a sewage pipe leak, but have found that,“it is not a septic tank break somewhere and not a sewage line break.”
From a policy perspective, he added that, “we need to do something about the homeless in a humane way. We have enough agencies spending a lot of money on the homeless, so we ought to have a solution. We need to do something along the lines of what Judge Steven Leifman suggests, understanding that a great component of homelessness is mental illness. We need to address that and do what they are doing in Europe which is public bathrooms.”
DOES IT HELP MITIGATE AGAINST FISH KILLS?
“Absolutely,” said Aguirre. “You will notice here on top of the rocks you don’t see any algae. A lot of reasons for fish kills, algae is one. It is killing the bacteria and the germs which is why you have clean water and no pollution, no sludgy film on the water.”
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