Good Morning Florida Keys

We have yet another cheery report on BP’s incompetence and impotence nearly buried (page 8a) in today’s Key West Citizen (keysnews.com). On page 5a is an equally cheery report of what hurricanes might do with the oil spill this year. On the front page, well, it’s as if life as people in the Keys have known it does not face extinction.

As for what perhaps is really going on at BP’s Deepwater Horizons blowout oil well, here’s a reply from the fellow whose invective comments centerpieced yesterday’s “Homeland Security – Oil” post. I met “Solar Richard” in Key West last year, when he came through the Keys trying to interest our local governments in solar energy farms. Maybe they will be more interested in his ideas if he comes to the Keys again. Maybe.

Thanks, somebody has to wake people up to the game Big Oil is playing. The leak(s) are in three different points on the riser, one just above the BOP where they are going to cut the pipe clean, two where the broken pipe lays on the sea floor and finally three where the camera is set up. Number three is leaking the least oil/gas. Your Governor is going to have his hands full of oil on both sides of Florida. Your microbes are going to need some Gas-X after this feeding.
Renewably Yours,
                 __o 
                `\ <, _
   …… ( • ) /  ( • )……  SolaRichard, Seattle/Tacoma’s Solar Abecedarian
                     1-253-572-9220
                                 
The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with
which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first
appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and madmen. -Aldous
Huxley, novelist (1894-1963) Except You & Me…..SR
 
I told some friends when BP’s oil spill hit the news that there could be no good outcome. BP represents something much bigger and far more horrible than most Americans are even able to conceive, much less accept. Take this email from a staunch Republican friend, who spends the cooler half of the year in the Keys.
 
I am willing to cut BP a lot more slack than you are.  I also don’t believe everything I read.  Maybe your marine biologist doesn’t like corporate America and that could influence his thinking. The problem will eventually be fixed and BP will pay a bundle.  Beyond that, I only hope we don’t do with oil drilling what 3 mile island and Jane Fonda did for nuclear.
 
Even after all that has happened since BP’s well exploded, even after all that’s been reported about it, I bet half of America still is willing to cut BP more slack, just as they are still backing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which always were about oil. Iraq, for its oil and refineries; Afghanistan for the pipeline that could be built through it to the Asian oil fields below Russia.
 
Solar Richard said in his email included in yesterday’s “Homeland Security – Oil” post that we should have listened to Jimmy Carter about seeking new ways to produce energy. I wrote back to him,  in early January 2004 (after I had sniffed out Vietnam war protestor Senator John Kerry as trying to out-hawk George W. Bush in that bizarre greater of evils presidential race), I was told in my sleep, ”God wants Jimmy Carter to be the next president.”
 
I told a number of people about that dream and not a one of them seemed swayed. Carter could have run again, as he had only served one term. Carter was involved in the Navy nuclear submarine program and knew a bit more about nuclear power than anyone I have known except perhaps a nuclear submarine commander I knew in high school before he went to Annapolis.
 
I keep laughing my ass off at the look on my Republican friend’s face when I told him maybe four months ago that Republicans are going to have to deal with Sarah Palin in the next presidential race. Drill, Baby, Drill is going to really screw up the Republican Party. The elephants can’t have it both ways. Palin is their party’s dream come true.
 
She is so far right of George W. Bush that she is out trying to convert wolves to Jesus, so she won’t have to kill them with her sniper rifle. She makes the National Rifle Association blush when she talks about the right to bear arms and Homeland Security. Hell, she scares Osama bin Laden out of his wits. Every night he dreams Sarah Palin is stalking him down and putting a bullet between his eyes.

You can’t wage war without oil, lots of oil. You can’t have massive numbers of disabled veterans without oil, lots of oil. You can’t have massive numbers of cases of battle shock (post traumatic stress) without oil, lots of oil. 
 
Back to the oil spill, I watched a heart-wrenching news report in a Louisiana costal/fishing village last night. I saw grown men crying. One said, “Without fishing, we are dead.” I wept with them. I’m tearing up as I write this.
 
If BP pays for all of the emotional and physical damage it has done to Americans and this planet in this oil spill alone, BP will not have any money left to pay for the letter notifying its stockholders that it went out of business. No way in hell are American courts and politicians, Republican or Democrat, going to let BP be gutted like that, because Exxon or Chevron, or some other Big Oil Brother will go next to the gas chamber.

Are Americans going to give up their cars and trucks? Are they are going to go back to riding horses and burning candles at night? Are they going to put the U.S. Military on oil rationing?
 
Do Americans really think God wants human beings to use fossil fuel and nuclear power? If so, they should be deported back to the Klingon planet. If they don’t know what that means, they really ought to watch more Star Trek replays.
 
All is not well this Memorial Day. Americans who believe all is well, or who believe BP has told even 1/10 of the truth in this holocaust, ought to be banned from ever voting again.

As for our armed forces, no American military non-com or officer should ever again go to war over oil. An order from the President, the Commander-in-Chief, to go to war over oil should be respectfully disobeyed. Such patriots should be held in the highest esteem by all Americans.

Sloan Bashinsky

On a personal Memorial Day note, yesterday brought yet another challenge from Birmingham, Alabama, my hometown, to the coroner and police’s determination that my brother, Major, killed himself and tried to make it look like someone else did it. I told the writer I would publish it, if my Board of Directors agreed with her challenge. My Board of Directors, Jesus, Michael, Melchizedek, Magdalene, the Holy Spirit, the Father, do not agree with her challenge. Nor, therefore, do I.

Nearly buried in the back (page 8a) of  today’s Citizen (keysnews.com), perhaps not entirely unexpected, is news BP’s top kill effort failed and what already is the worst oil disaster in American history is going to get a lot worse.
 
David Harris’ letter to the editor on page 4a is especially disturbing. Harris leads off by saying he has a background in marine life and maintaining water quality in public aquariums. He then says:
 
“BP is not injecting the dispersant chemicals into the well at 5,000 feet to get rid of the oil, it is making sure that the oil does not float on the surface, where it would face a fine of $15,000 per barrel that is skimmed . . . The dispersant chemicals, a light kerosene, ethanol, and some form of acid, along with other proprietary chemicals, are all toxic by themselves. This cocktail, called Corexit, is meant to be used on the surface. Wave action and the warmer surface waters would allow the oil to be attacked by bacteria. This is how it was meant to be used . . . By injecting the dispersant at 5,000 feet below the surface, the lack of  high oxygen content and the cold, 5 degree Celsius water inhibits the growth of bacteria. The chemicals bond with the oil and form globules. These do not float. They cannot be skimmed and BP does not get fined for the oil on the surface. It is in their best interest to keep the oil off the surface. Money is the name of the game — as always. Our government has some pretty smart scientists. I don’t understand why they haven’t stopped BP from injecting the dispersant chemicals. This is such a travesty.”
 
Along similar lines is this response to my first post about using microbes to gobble the oil spill, which I called the “Texas solution” because the process was tried and proven by the State of Texas, and incorporated as its central response to oil spills and required as the central response for all oil companies in Texas. I asked why wasn’t the Texas solution being used on the BP oil spill?
 
There is no Texas solution you pinhead. Big oil lies all the time. Because you saw it on youtube it must be true? Get a grip on your little piece of land cause I calculate six times the Exxon Valdez spill is on it’s way to you via the Loop Current. The Gulf Stream is acting like a big Vacuum sucking the water from the Gulf of Mexico as it has done for millennia.
This raw oil is in five layers depending on the density of the oil from the dispersants used and applied both underwater at the leak site and from C-130 aircraft on the surface. BP OIL bought 1/3 of the World’s supply of that dispersant in one week. If you can’t see the oil, it must not be there right? Bullshit. BP was doing it’s very best to hide as much of the surface oil as possible from the NASA engineers watching from space. I’m told there is an underwater pool 2 1/2 miles by 10 miles long. How many gallons is that? The largest oil spill in history was 541 million gallons set in motion by those folks playing at War in the other Gulf.
If we had the solar energy economy Jimmy Carter started we could let oil be use for plastic electric cars, planes, trains. Solar is the next energy of planet Earth.              __o 
                `\ <, _
   …… ( • ) /  ( • )……  SolaRichard, Seattle/Tacoma’s Solar Abecedarian
                     1-253-572-9220
                                 
The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with
which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first
appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and madmen. -Aldous
Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
 
So I go back to my first post on the oil spill. I go back to my writing angels blew up BP’s Deepwater Horizon’s well in a desperate attempt to get “EVERYONE’S FUCKING ATTENTION.” The angels did it because President Obama had gotten into bed with Big Oil. Nobody I know believed it back then. Probably nobody believes it now. Alas, look at the facts. Look at this oil rig being targeted, instead of another oil rig. Look as how truly difficult it will be to stop this oil gusher out of the sea bed, if it can be stopped. Look at the facts. Connect the dots. Then demand an end to all offshore oil drilling in American waters, including offshore wells now in production.
 
Also demand an end to the use of dispersants underwater. Demand the oil be allowed to surface, where it can be treated with microbes. And demand your state, county and city officials hire companies with microbe technology NOW, so they can gear up to meet the oil when it approaches your area.

This is so much more important than Wisteria Island. So much more important. Even so, the Citizen’s  front-page ”Group pitches Wisteria pump-out idea” article offers a terrific solution to the sewerage pollution caused by liveaboard boats near Wisteria Island and in other mooring areas around Key West. 
 
I wrote in yesterday’s “Eye of the Beholder” post that Bill Barry is on the Key West Citizen Editorial Board. That was not correct. At his request, Barry had attended an Editorial Board meeting to try to persuade the Board to back the development of Wisteria Island by the Bernsteins and Walshes. The meeting that led to the Editorial where the Board wondered if the developers wanted Wisteria to stay trashed up, to make it easier for them to sell their development to the county and city officials. Some years ago, Barry was the Publisher of the Citizen.
 
Sloan Bashinsky

After reading this morning’s Key West Citizen’s various articles about the oil spill and of a federal lawsuit filed against British Petroleum in federal court by a Stock Island charter boat owner whose business has fallen by about half due to the oil spill causing bookings to be cancelled, I wondered why there was no mention of the United States Government being named as a co-defendent with BP. We now know the U.S. Government did not do its job and regulate BP, but let it regulate itself. I read in yesterday’s Citizen where President Obama said he is taking personal responsibility for the oil spill and its clean up. There you have it: an admission of responsibility by the U.S. Government’s CEO. Sue, baby, sue. Alas, BP and its confederates, including the US Government, can be sued to hell freezes over and that will not mitigate the oil spill one iota. Thanks to other people who elucidated my ignorance, I was able to publish the microbe solultion. But not even that will stop future ocean oil rig spills. What will do that is banning offshore oil drilling, incuding drilling now being done. President Obama and Congress have to do that, and we the people have to let President Obama and Congress know we expect nothing less. Otherwise, we the people are just as guilty as they are.
 
Meanwhile, from a Key West retired naval officer about yesterday’s “Wisteria, Eye of the Beholder” post:
 
Always enjoy reading your blogs, Sloan. But I think I might go along with the Bernsteins’ not allowing just anyone come and clean up my property. There is always the risk of an injury and the owners being sued. If there is HAZMAT out there as is alleged, you definitely need a licensed person and one who will dispose of it correctly. But I do applaud the community spirit to at least ask to help.
 
Hi, Jim. Roger Bernstein said nothing about HAZMAT yesterday or last night. He let Theo Glorie and his group clean up Wisteria a few years ago. Other groups have been allowed to clean the island up over the years. Being there and seeing and hearing and feelings is very different from reading about it, especially reading about it in Key West Citizen. Sloan 

Sloan-

HAZMAT can be as simple as discarded batteries, oily rags, 55 gal drums of “mysterious” liquid (or plastic 1 gal jugs). I haven’t been there but I’d be surprised if this stuff wasn’t there. You just can’t throw that stuff in a dumpster.

I’ve been following the grass roots movement on this development issue. I think the live aboard people see a huge threat to their livelihood by allowing development. I thought that voice was the catalyst for the resistance.

Oh, as far as your friend Todd German’s comment goes: “beauty is in the eye of the beholder!”

Jim

 
Hi again, Jim.
 
The voice of the resistance I have been hearing until yesterday was from people who live in houses, condos and apartments in Key West. For the first time, yesterday, I heard three people who live on boats (two, a couple on the same boat) identify themselves as such when they spoke at the city meeting. Last Stand is not liveaboard and it came out strongly against this development. Nearly 70 of the electorate in the KW election came out against the previous incarnation of this development. Probably 95 percent of that resistance lived on land.
 
Of course the liveaboard people who moor near Wisteria Island see a huge threat to their livelihood, more accurately, to their way of life, if the island is developed. I went out there with Todd German today and walked a lot of the island, interior and exterior. There are a lot more boats moored on the west side than on the Key West side of Wisteria. There were day charters out there too, in the midst of the liveaboard boats, full of tourists snorkeling and swimming and frolicking in the allegedly shit-filled water. Evidence from both sides in the meetings has been that only two boats out there are having their boats pumped out. Two such boaters were at both meetings yesterday. 
 
Someone in the resistance suggested today, and also after the city meeting yesterday, that the liveaboards out there start coming in and pumping out their sewerage regularly at city docks, or hire a company with collection boats to come to their boats and pump them out regularly. The reasoning, if this happens it takes away the developers’ main argument for the Wisteria development. I don’t imagine too many liveaboards will start doing that, though. I imagine most of them will simply move somewhere else they can moore free and live as the have being living.
 
Meaning, getting all of those liveaboard boats out of the Wisteria vicinity won’t really change anything, which Last Stand sees as a major flaw in the developer’s argument that it will be able to solve the problem by opening and operating a mooring field and marina at Wisteria. The developer uses that as bait to get the 75 building permits. Neither Roger Bernstein or any of his people have admitted most of the boats at Wisteria will leave and keep on doing what they are doing around Wisteria.
 
There is about as much debris along the waterfront and in the interior as I had expected to see. It never should have been put there, there’s way too much of it, but it’s hardly the dump the developers have portrayed in the meetings. The island itself is teeming with animal and plant life, and while there are lots of invasive plants, particularly Australian pines and Brazilian Peppers, and lower height plants, there also is a lot of native plant life there.
 
It looked to me that all plants out there were put there by Mother Nature. It may be a spoil island, because it is man-made. It may be a disturbed island, because it is man-made. But it was Mother Nature who populated it with animal and plant life forms.
 
I told Todd the dead Australian pines lend charm and will fall down and rot into the dirt. I said the island interior reminds me of places I once hunted and fished in Alabama, inland. I said I thought the place is nice and could be a lot nicer if it is cultivated well. Not in the farming sense, but in the horticultural sense, I meant cultivating.
 
I said if I owned the island and had the Bernsteins’ money, I would clean it up and turn it into a nature park for campers and day visitors. I would hire day laborers to go out their with garbage bags and garbage cans and put them to work picking up all the human debris.
 
All of the debris, including a few car batteries, cans, plastic jugs, and all sorts of other trash or stuff that really isn’t trash, could be carried by hand, or by wheelbarrow, to a waiting barge. The boats on the beaches or just in the water probably would need a barge with a crane to hoist them. Same for a few boats out there that are completely under water. I see no way to avoid some spillage of what might be in the holds of the boats or in the engines. Even if a professional company did it, there would be some spillage. Haul all of it to Waste Management or the County dumps. Or even to the mainland, if necessary.
 
After we pulled away from Wisteria in Todd’s skiff, we did a 360 loop around Sunset Key. I was raised wealth. I was raised in posh. I was raised in old money and in pretentious. I didn’t see one plant on Sunset Key that wasn’t brought in from somewhere else. I told Todd, as we were idling away from Sunset Key, that whoever the architect was that designed all of those houses out there should have been keel-hauled. The whole place looks artificial, like cosmetic plastic surgery.
 
Someone said at Heather’s meeting last night that the artificial beach on Sunset keeps washing away, the sand clouds the water and covers the bottom far to the other side of Wisteria, and they keep brining in more sand to replenish the beach. The current is strong near the beach, this could well be happening. Roger Bernstein didn’t deny it, when this was said at a meeting. He has been quick to jump in when he heard something he felt he might be able to persuade to his point of view.
 
A Florida Fish & Wildlife Lieutenant was brought to Heather’s meeting last night by Bernstein, to tell us all how nasty the island and nearby water is. He said sometimes he boarded vessels to check to see if they had contained sewerage systems. When I asked him how many cititations F & W had issued around Wisteria Island, he blanched, said he would not speak for the entire department. So I asked him how many citations he had issued. He said maybe 50 or 75.
 
I later wished I had asked him now many check backs he had done, how many follow up citations he had issued, and how many voilators he had put in jail and towed their boats in for appropriation by the state. He was not expecting to be challenged about  why come he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing out there: keeping the water free of boats polluting the bay, and getting rid of derelict vessels.
 
Until the lieutenant spoke last night, Roger Bernstein and his people and county staff had been adamant in the meetings that F & W and the Coast Guard had no jurisdiction at Wisteria; it is state-owned bay bottom and only the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) currently has jurisdiction out there. Alas, DEP has no enforcement people in the Keys, so there currently is nothing that can be done at Wisteria about illegal liveaboards. All the more reason to give the Bernsteins and Walshes permission to have their marina and mooring field, so they will regulate the bay bottom in their property boundary, is what has been sung at the meetings.
 
The F & W Lieutenant shot that claim full of holes, when he told of his experiences out there and of the Coast Guard boarding boats, too. A liveaboard couple out there told me after the city meeting that F & W had boarded their boat and inspected it, and F & W and the Coast Guard had boarded other boats out there.
 
The more I see Roger Bernstein and his people in these sort of deceptions, the more I wonder that else he’s not telling the truth about, even as his mantra has become, ”We are doing eveything we can to be transparent.” You don’t want to know how many times I have heard him say that. Too many times not to think it’s smokescreen.
 
I told Todd on the boat today that, if the City of Key West does come on board with this deal, they should charge Wisteria Island/the Bernsteins/Walshes/future owners three times whatever Sunset Key is paying for city-provided support services, in perpetuity. Hell, if the City is going to let the Bernsteins and Walshes turn Wisteria into another Sunset Key, then at least this time the City ought to make a bundle off it in the old capitalistic spirit. For sure, the Bernsteins and Walshes are aiming to make a bundle off of Wisteria if they get to develop it.
 
Maybe more later. . .

Sloan

From a Key West member of the resistance, who does not live on a boat, about yesterday’s post:

Sloan

Great job! I am passing it along to my Commissioners and othes. May I put on www.savewisteriaisland.com? 

When I was remarking on the clear bias of the Citizen, it was suggested to me that Bill Barry owned the Citizen before ? John Clark?  You remember: Berstein’s Point Man?

I feel we should know—would explain the obvious bias, right?   Do not know what we would do—but maybe something!

N 

Hi, N.

You can put whatever I write about Wisteria Island on the website.

I don’t know the Citizen’s history in ownership, but it caught Roger Bernstein and his hit man, er, point man, by surprise (the shorthairs) when I dragged the Citizen’s Editorial Board and that peachy lovely Editorial into it at Heather’s meeting. Hit Man quickly said he is on the Editorial Board and had left that meeting early. Insinuating, if he had stayed at the meeting, the Editorial would not have wondered out loud if the Bernsteins wanted the Island junked up because, as I had only just told Bernstein at the meeting, a lot of Key West people besides the Key West Citizen Editorial Board are wondering the same thing the Editorial Board was wondering: Does Bernstein want the island junked up, to persuade Mornoe County and Key West City to go along with his application to develop the island?
 
I thought it was funny as hell, after Hit Man said he was on the Editorial Board and had crapped out of the meeting. Like, maybe, it was a divine intervention to get his prejudiced butt out of there, so something real could happen. I doubt we will be so fortunate again with the Citizen. I mean, look at what Mandy Miles could have written but did not. Even so, Bernstein and Hit Man gave away a lot last night, when Hit Man suggested he had enough sway over the Citizen Editorial Board to turn it to Bernstein’s wishes, or at least to mitigate and eliminate something that would paint Bernstein differently from the way Bernstein wanted to be painted. The Bernsteins and the Walshes and their entourages have not yet grasped that a band of very big legal beagle angels not happy with “Wisteria Island Development Co., Inc.” are working this case through me. I’m just carrying the winged ones’ brief cases.
 
I went out to Wisteria today with Todd German in his Boston Whaler. He had already gotten permission from Roger Bernstein before last night’s meeting to go out there. Todd suggested the trip. I needed to go out there, not having ever been there before. I can’t help but wonder if Todd was trying to smozzle Bernstein last night when he said he was a banker and he thought Sunset Key was a lot prettier than Wisteria Island. I wonder if Bernstein is a client of Todd’s bank – Centennial Bank. I wonder if Todd is the bank’s contact person with Bernstein. I don’t know why I did not ask Todd all of those questions today. In any event, I know Todd would like for the Bernsteins to bank at Centennial, if they are not already banking there. The webs this life weaves.
 
I may post more on Wisteria tommorrow, and perhaps this email exchange will be part of it.

Sloan

Sunset Key and Wisteria Island

I attended the Key West City Development Review Committee meeting at Old City Hall yesterday afternoon, and the county meeting hosted by County Commissioner Heather Carruthers last night at the Harvey Government Center. That brought to four the number of meetings on the Wisteria Island development application I had attended in three days’ time. That brought to four the number of times I had heard the developers make their sales pitch and county staff make their position statement. Except for some fine-tuning, it looks to me like the developers and county staff are pretty close to being on the same page. Meaning, what I saw and heard during the four meetings is pretty close to what will be passed on to the County Commission for it to decide at its June 29 meeting whether or not to transmit to the Department of Community Affairs, for it to do its review and farming out to other agencies for their input.

Seems pretty straight-forward. But it’s not straight-forward, because the way this application is framed, the way county staff have explained the County’s position, this entire deal hinges entirely on the City of Key West coming on board with sewerage treatment, police, fire and rescue services. Therefore, imagine my delight when one of Key West City Commissioners told me yesterday about the Wisteria application, “Over my dead body.” Imagine my delight when I asked City Commissioner Teri Johnston yesterday, if the City Commission didn’t have to sign off on the City providing sewerage treatment to the Wisteria development, and Teri said, “Yes.” I imagine my delight to to watch the Development Review Committee turn county staff and the developers upside down and inside out with questions and concerns county staff and the developers apparently had never begun to dream might be raised. Imagine my delight to see members of the Development Review Committee, one here, one there, throughout the three-hour meeting, frown, shake their heads, as county staff and the developers made their presentations.

None of which you will glean from reading Mandy Miles’s article that begins on the front page of Today’s Key West Citizen (keysnews.com). Nor will you glean from Mandy’s article that a young man I knew mostly in passing, as a palm frond weaver on Duval Street and as an assistant at Lighthouse Ministry for street and runaway children on Southard Street, told Roger Bernstein, whose family has owned Wisteria Island for 43 years, that he would be happy to go onto Wisteria and clean up all of the debris and trash there. Nor will you glean from Mandy’s article that Bernstein, after the meeting had ended, told the young man that he would not go along with that.

Nor will you glean from Mandy’s article, after Bernstein said at the county meeting last night that he himself would not go onto Wisteria Island to try to get it cleaned up, because of the kind of people who hung out there, I said he had told a young man at the city meeting he had could not go out there and clean it up, and I was wondering if, as had been suggested by the Key West Citizen Editorial Board in an Editorial, the Bernsteins didn’t want the island cleaned up because that would make it harder for them to sell their development to the County and the City?

Bernstein stared daggers at me, then he got up and said he didn’t want to give the young man permission because he felt he was being set up. The young man then spoke. He lives in a boat out there near Wisteria Island. He said he and people he could round up could clean the island up pretty quick. In the midst of this, Commissioner Carruthers flew to Bernsteins’ defense, whereupon I told her she needed to not take sides but to let what was being said speak for itself. None of which was in Mandy Miles’ article. I wonder why? Surely it didn’t have anything to do with my having reminded everyone there of what the Citizen Editorial Board had published about maybe the Bernsteins didn’t want Wisteria cleaned up, because maybe that would hinder their argument that they should be allowed to develop it so they could clean it up.

Back to the earlier City meeting. I was the last speaker to sign up for citizen comments. I told the Development Review Committee that I had attended county meetings the two preceding days. I said it was my impression at both meetings that county staff and the developers viewed Key West coming on board as a done deal. I said county staff had said Sunset Key is what Wisteria will look like after it is developed under the current application. I said the developers are asking the City to give them whatever they need to turn Wisteria Island into another Sunset Key. I said, “If that’s not an annexation of Sunset Key by the City, then what in the hell is it?!”

I said, which the committee members all knew, the voters of Key West had passed a referendum in 2007, requiring voter approval for any property annexation by the City. I said it was that referendum that had caused the then City Commission to back off approving the Bernsteins’ application to have Wisteria Island annexed into the city, so it could be turned into another Sunset Key. I said, speaking to them as a lawyer, the voters of Key West, under the referendum, would get to vote on this, if the City Commission approved it.

All seven members of the Development Review Committee looked intently at me throughout my remarks. I saw heads nodding. I saw city staff turned around in their seats, looking at me throughout my remarks, taking it all in. I saw the citizen audience taking it all in.

I felt rage in the meeting hall. Rage that county staff and the developers had waltzed themselves into Old City Hall as if they were leading the charge, when, as I said during my three minutes, this entire deal, as now framed, hinges on Key West’s approval and county staff and the developers should have gotten Key West on board before anything else was done. For if Key West doesn’t come on board, this deal isn’t going to happen.

Nods, nods, nods, from the dais. None of which nodding you will find in Mandy Miles’ article in Key West Citizen.

Back to Heather Carruthers’ ensuing meeting at the Harvey Government Center, which also lasted three hours. Christine Russell said (this Mandy Miles reported) that this is a backdoor attempt by the developers to do what they had not been able to do in 2007. This is putting the cart before the horse; the City of Key West should have been where this all began, Christine said.

Heather replied, if the City didn’t come on board, the County could still transmit their approval of the developers’ application to the Department of Community Affairs for its consideration and input. I nearly fell out of my chair in disbelief. What county commissioner would approve and transmit this application to DCA, without the City of Key West not having already given the deal its blessing? The entire deal, as now framed, depends entirely on the City providing sewerage treatment, police, fire and rescue, and perhaps other amenities.

After the meeting ended, I spoke with Heather about this. She was adamant that the the developer had paid an application fee and the County had a timetable to follow. They had to make the transmittal according to that timetable, because they could make only two transmittals a year, and the next tansmittal date was the last one for this year. I said they could put this off six months. I said they should never have gone even this far, without having the City of Key West’s blessing.

When I said the Key West City Commission and Mayor had to approve it for Key West, Heather said maybe not. Maybe their vote was not necessary for the City to approve it. I nearly fainted. I told her just a few hours before, her good friend City Commissioner Teri Johnston had told me the City Commission indeed had to approve the City’s involvement for the City to come on board. Heather said she talked with Teri a lot. I said she should talk with Teri about this. I said I wished she had never said any of this, because I would have to write about it.

I was in shock. Could the City of Key West annex Higgs Beach, which lies inside the city limits but is owned by the County, if the County Commission did not approve the annexation? How would the County Commission feel and respond to the Key West City Commission trying to annex Higgs Beach without first seeking the County Commission’s blessing” The point being, what I told the Key West Development Review Committee apparently is true. The Wisteria developers and county staff, and at least one county commissioner, see this as a done deal, no matter what Key West does. If I had not lived in Key West and the lower Keys for ten years, I would not believe such a thing was possible. But since I do live here, I know it indeed is possible.

Maybe we need a little comic relief.

Joke #1, which Mandy Miles reported in her article. My friend Todd German, beside whom I sat in Heather’s meeting, told the audience he was a banker and he thought Sunset Key was a lot prettier than Wisteria Island. I nearly passed out laughing. Sunset Key is as pretentious and fla-key as any island in the Keys could be made to be. On its worst day ever, Wisteria Island is 1,000 times prettier than Sunset Key.

Joke #2. Roger Bernstein repeatedly said at governments meetings that he and his people are being as transparent as possible. Not once have they said at any meeting that Jim Hendrick is advising them behind the scenes. Nor, as Mike Mongo told Roger Bernstein in Heather’s meeting last night, is there any identification on the webwsite that bashes Wisteria Island, of who is responsible for the website: the Bernsteins and the Walshes. Someone else in the audience said there also are no names in the ads being run in Key West Citizen for that website, identifying who is repsonsible for the ads and the websits: the Bernsteins and the Walshes.

Joke #3. When county staff in Heather’s meeting said the future Wisteria Island ferry to and from the mainland will be free for patrons of Wisteria Island, I looked at Roger Bernstein and asked if that was true, and he stared daggers at me and said nothing. When I asked county staff to ask Bernstein if the ferry would be free to patrons, county staff said it had been represented to them by the developer that the ferry would be free. County staff did not identify who had made the representation. I thought to myself, no way in hell is that ferry going to be free to people want to go out there and look around, maybe have a drink at the bar.

Joke #4. Sunset Key was supposed to povide a public beach and restrooms, as part of their development agreement with the City of Key West when it annexed that island. Sunset Key charges $40 a head for people to set foot on that beach, which is why many kayakers and boaters hang out around Wisteria Island, which costs them nothing. The owners of Sunset Key, the Walshes, are partners with the Bernsteins in the Wisteria development application. If you don’t think Wisteria Island will be run like Sunset Key, you are brain dead.

Joke #5. A citizen asked at Heather’s meeting: What if the developer gets approval for phase 1, the marina, mooring field, docks and upland support facilites; and what if the developer gets approval for building 75 residences; and what, if after all of that is done, the marina and mooring field and dock and upland facilites, including the bar and restuarant, don’t work out and are shut down? What happens to the 75 residences? Do they get to stay on the island, although their very construction and existence was entirley contingent upon phase 1 being built and approved by the County and DCA? There is no way I can retell county staff’s convuluted answer, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the question and left me wondering if county staff did not understand the question, or did not want to answer it.

If you live in Key West and don’t want Wisteria Island developed, do everything you can to talk your city commissioners and mayor to decline this blatant attempt to end-run what happened in 2007. Heather was right. Key West’s city commissioners and mayor do not have the final say so in the City going along with this deal. You, the voters of Key West, have the final say so. But why use a lawsuit to make the point? If you live in Key West, lobby city staff and your commissioners and mayor to just say no to this backdoor attempt to get what the Bernsteins were unable to get through the front door in 2007.

I mean, you are independent Key West, isn’t it? Are you going to let the County Commission and DCA tell you that you have to let the folks who brought you Sunset Key turn Wisteria Island into Sunset Key Deux? Well, are you?

Sloan Bashinsky

This post follows up the recent “Mircobes That Gobble Oil Spills” post and ends with a proposal from an expert who lives in Marathon, Florida Keys and has invented and used his own microbe forumla on oil spills locally.

From an Alabama lawyer amigo, who once represented an oil & gas company:

Microbal use has been mentioned in passing in news stories a few times and whenever I saw it I wondered why it wasn’t being used.

I suppose the “shut-off” device you refer to as being absent from the BP well is the acoustic shut-off device. I read about its “nonuse” by BP in US waters early on . It cost $500K to install(peanuts compare to cost already in dealing with the disaster). BP is required to use it in other nonUS areas like the North Sea, but when Bush/Cheney were in charge , along with Big Oil, the MMO allowed BP to forgo the installation of the device.

I don’t know if you remember, but I was the “court” lawyer for a small oil and gas firm here between ‘89 and 97. I know something about the drilling process , bringing the well online , etc. One of the things I have pondered during BP’s numerous failed attempts to “plug the leak” is whether from the getgo they were using stopgap , halfassed measures in order to salvage the well and now their greed is causing a whole lot of suffering and will cost them a whole lot more. Another thing I have considered is whether the military has underwater explosive munitions which could blowup the well head and seal it. Again, that would make the wellbore unusable. BP’s greed got the better of them because even if they had had to plug the wellbore in a way to make it unusable, the oil reservoir would still be there and they could drill another well. Expensive yes, but now far less expensive than what has happened.

On another disgusting point, the liability , other than the clean up costs, under current federal law is limited to 75 million. Democrats in Congress in a move to close the proverbial barn door too late recently tried to raise that to 10 billion . The Republicans voted against the mesasure,effectively blocking it. Even in the face of this catastrophic incident, Big Oil money still controls the political whores.

Dialogue with a Keys man:

Thanks Sloan. This is interesting. It makes me wonder why they are not using all available technology to deal with this disaster. The effect of this disaster impact on our economy and on tourism and on the environment is so great that I think we should use any safe means necessary to deal with this! Best, John

Hi, John. I agree. There’s a fellow living in Marathon who says he has a proprietary microbe product he can get made and furnish to contractors/people with the means to disperse it over water, mangroves, etc. At my request, he send me a narrative on this technology, in which he describes how it could be used at the Deepwater Horizon site, and in our Keys open waters, and in our inland waters (mangroves, etc.). The closer an oil spill gets to land, that is, into the mangroves, the harder it is to get at. Best response, he said, is at the spill. This stuff works on the surface. Oil floats to the surface, unless it is interdicted with dispersants and so forth, which apparently is what BP is doing, which is causing a lot of what remains after the dispersants break it up to stay down deep. The dispersants may be trapping raw oil down deep, too, causing large underwater floating, and drifting, oil reservoirs. I am getting scary reports of lakes of oil floating around under the surface. Hard to discern reality from emotional terror and terror with a factual basis. I might post this fellow’s narrative soon, along with how to contact him. He has used his product on smallish oil spills locally and seems like a good Keys resource at the very least. I do not feel Monroe County should be waiting on BP, or on EPA or any US Government agency to help us. Hell, our national government is part of the problem, and still it looks like it is letting BP run the show, as I see foxes entering hen houses in my mind’s eye. Sloan

Sloan, I think we need to do a lot more and it seems like much of what BP has tried has failed, and possibly even made the problem worse. It surprises me that despite record profits, they haven’t put any time or research into how to deal with these situations. Incredible. Best, John

Dialogue with the Marathon man who has the microbe technology. Our State Attorney Dennis Ward told me about this man and how to get in touch with him.

Jim, I received this reply to my microbe post from a retired Lucent Technologies scientist in the New York City area. He and I have been in dialogue pretty often since 2002, as I recall. I’ve never met him in person, but he is one very smart fellow, conversant in many areas, and fluent in several Romance languages, perhaps due to his Dominican Republic birth and early upbringing. I’d like to see your response to what he wrote. Thanks, Sloan

BTW, the oil munching microbes are not effective at 5000 ft under the ocean, they are OK for clearing marshes and tanker spills that are limited and undispersed; this is not the case here and in fact the opposite has taken place… BP has been using dispersant chemicals right at the source of the leak(under the ocean) to keep the oil from rising to the surface as a coherent glob (just to mitigate the visual impact).

The devil is in the details…. reading between the lines of this article:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/88/8820sci3.html

I get the impression that it is effective along the shoreline and in the marshes, but not being considered for open water. Also, the article talks about how the oil has become partially emulsified by the time it has risen 5000 feet through the sea water, making it less available to oil-eating microbes.

Jim’s reply:

Correctly noted. I explain that in my proposal. At 5000 ft the water temp is near freezing and that, along with the tremendous pressures at that depth, creates a difficult environment for microbes to grow and breed. Chemical dispersants have no such handicap. It is my opinion that dispersants should have no part in this cleanup effort. Treating the spill with enzymes that break down the oil for the microbes to have an easier time eating the oil is the best way to go forward. The microbe blends we would use in this case would contain enzymes in the mix. JIm

Jim’s proposal:

Bioremediation For Oil Spills

Bioremediation allows natural processes to clean up harmful chemical compounds in the environment. Microscopic “bugs” or microbes that live in soil and groundwater like to eat certain elements (carbon typically), such as those found in gasoline and oil spills. When microbes completely digest these chemical compounds they change them into water and harmless gases such as carbon dioxide.

In response to a recent request regarding the use of microbes to mitigate, defend against, and expedite the clean up of oil spill damage to coastal communities I submit the following 3 scenarios:

Mitigation: Introduction of microbes at the source of the oil spill can mitigate up to 95% of the downstream effects of the leaked product. By introducing microbes to their food (raw oil) at the spill site we give the microbes the maximum time to eat oil. A few crew type vessels can be outfitted with small bioreactors to “brew” microbes on site. Microbes can be pumped via a fire hose type setup onto the ascending oil plume. A well fed microbe population typically doubles in count every 20 minutes. The washing machine effect of the wave action coupled with the sprayed microbes ensures the microbes attach themselves to the oil slick at the earliest point possible. (As microbes do not do well in very cold water it would be wasteful to introduce them at the actual source of the leak which is 5000 ft below the surface.) As the slick spreads it is actually decreasing in oil volume and density as the microbes eat the carbon atoms out of the hydrocarbon chain leaving only water and Oxygen as by-product. This process is inexpensive to put into place and gives substantial bang for the buck.

Defending shore communities: This method requires a combination of both bioremediation capabilities as well as mechanical means in order to be most effective. As an example, I will use the town of Marathon, Florida. Differing coastal geography and community requirements will dictate the exact methods of defense, with larger more spread out areas being more difficult to defend, while smaller inland harbors and bays less so. The preferred method is to “rope” off the area using oil booms and then “infect” the oil booms with microbes. In Marathon a series of pilings can be driven in the shallow waters of Florida Bay and oil booms stretched between them. As the oil comes into contact with the barrier a concentrated slick will form on the outside of the boom. Small boats can be used to patrol the boom line and when they find concentrated areas of oil, microbes can be introduced using simple spray pumps. For a community like Marathon that is approximately 7 miles long we might figure for 100 pilings equally spaced at 500-700 ft intervals. “Gates” can be maintained at intervals so as not to unduly restrict access to the valuable fishing resource. Migration of fishes would not be restricted in that the booms are less than 5 ft deep. Though more costly than direct mitigation methods, this method virtually guarantees that no oil winds up on valuable shoreline assets. In fact, the mechanical aspect of the process is the major expense. Defense of a community like Marathon could be put into place quickly. The ultimate cost would depend primarily on how long the barriers and patrols had to be maintained. When the emergency subsided the poles could be removed leaving little evidence that they were ever there.

Clean up of oil already washing up onshore and into grass or mangrove islands is the most difficult and expensive of the options. Typically this requires substantial mechanical intervention and is not without lasting negative habitat and environmental impacts. Introduction of microbes at this point is both labor and microbe intensive and for this reason the resultant cost is higher. That said, it is still only a fraction of the cost of other methods in practice today and decidedly more effective. We propose to institute the use of foam sprayers into affected areas to distribute the microbes to the oil. Unfortunately this has to be done by hand but using sprayers we can alleviate the need to trample on every bit of habitat in order to clean it free of oil. Large mangrove island type habitats can be cleaned from offshore with this method, with no need to invade the interior of the island. As microbes are naturally occurring, multiple applications, if required, do no damage to the environment.

British Petroleum would be wise to heed the call of the microbe. A billion dollar cleanup could be done more effectively, with less lasting habitat effects and at a tiny fraction of the cost of the methods they seem to be employing at this time. Clean and Green Products, along with local marine contracting partners, is prepared to implement any or all of these proposed solutions. Clean and Green Products is a Florida Keys based business that distributes proprietary blends of microbes designed to perform specific bioremediation tasks. In this case we can supply microbe blends that are both effective and cost efficient in alleviating the effects of the Gulf Horizon Oil spill disaster now facing the coastal communities bordering the Gulf of Mexico.

Jim Rhyne

305 393-1999

“In 2007 the citizens of Key West made it very clear (by an overwhelming vote of 68.9%) that they did NOT want the City of Key West to annex Wisteria Island (take the island into the city limits) for the sole purpose of allowing the Bernstein and Walsh (think Westin and Sunset Key) families to develop the island with 168 units compared to the TWO (2) units permitted under the current Monroe County land use regulations.”  

Opening statement at www.savewisteriaisland.com 
 
Now they are back, this time with a somewhat smaller but still substantial development proposal, which, as was explained by county staff at yesterday’s Monroe  County Development Review Committee meeting in Marathon, will make Wisteria Island look like Sunset Key.
 
The development application currently on the table depends entirely on the City of Key West entering into a three-way agreement with the Bernstein and Walsh families’ and Monroe County, for the City to provide sewerage collection and treatment for the development. Under the current development application, raw sewerage will be collected on Wisteria and sent through as yet unconstructed underwater piping to Sunset Key, where it then will be collected and sent on to Key West though existing underwater piping, for transfer with Sunset Key’s raw sewerage to Key West’s sewerage treatment plant on Fleming Key.
 
While the Bernsteins and Walshes were still haggling with the County over various side bar issues, it seemed at the DRC meeting yesterday that they are going to get most of what the want from the County, if they get Key West to take care of  the raw sewerage coming off of  Wisteria Island. What the Bernsteins and Walshes want is two things. First, a marina with a mooring field and an upland support facility, which DRC staff said the Bernsteins and Walshes are entitled to by right. Second, permission to build 75 residences on the rest of the island, which DCR staff said the Bernsteins are not entitled to by right, but need county approval and a Comprehensive Plan change to allow it.
 
I sensed before yesterday’s meeting that the Bernsteins and Washes thought they were entitled by right to everything they want to do on Wisteria Island.  I sensed they thought Monroe County has to give them everything they want; they are legally entitled to it. After listening to the Bernstein brothers and their representatives, and representatives of the Walshes yesterday, I became convinced their position is they indeed think the County has to give them everything they want, and if they don’t get it, they will litigate and argue it is a taking and the county has to pay them what the island is worth with 75 residential building permits on it.
 
Right now, Wistera Island is appraised by the County Tax Assessor at $150, 000, and has been so appraised for about 20 years. The Bernsteins had paid taxes at that valuation for all of those years, before recently taking the Walshesin as investors for the island’s development. The Bernsteins did not pay taxes at a valuation they now say the property is worth, based on their having a legal right already to build 75 residences on the island. In fact, they paid less taxes per year for 20 years than I have paid each of the last three years, and will pay this year, on my one acre of land on Little Torch Key. Yet the Bernsteins said yesterday, that’s okay; they are entitled to build 75 residences for profit on an island they have said to all the world, by paying the taxes, is only worth $150,000. And County staff seemed to agree with them.
 
Just for discussion sake, let’s say $40, 000,000 is what Wisteria Island is worth with 75 residential building permits. That is what the Bernsteinsand Walshes will file suit for, plus accrued interest dating , perhaps, back to when the Bernsteins acquired the property 43 years ago, plus attorney fees. Actually, they might say the island is worth even more than $40,000,000, and sue for that. My brain isn’t smart enough to calculate what the accrued interest might be, but it would be HUGE. More than any calculation scenario of the present value of the property argued by the Bernsteins and Walshes’s.
 
This is the .44 magnum, the elephant gun the Bernsteins and Walshes hold pressed directly against the County’s head, and this is why the County seems so cooperative. This .44 magnum was not designed by the Bernsteins, or by the Walshes. It was not designed by anyone in the DRC meeting yesterday. Nobody in that meeting was smart enough, or knowledgeable enough about the law, to design that cannon. The elephant slug was designed by Jim Hendrick, a former county attorney who learned the ropes of this law domain representing the county.
 
The Bernsteins and Washes, and their representatives, and even county staff at yesterday’s DRC meeting, didn’t see any problem with getting Key West to go along with this deal. County staff said Key West doing this for Wisteria Island will not legally be an annexation. County staff said this, with a county attorney sitting adjacent. County staff did not seem to understand a judge might rule Key West giving the Walshes and Bernsteins what they want is annexation no matter what the City or county staff call it. A judge might rule Key West cannot provide sewerage treatment to Wisteria Island, without a Key West voter referendum approving it.
 
Or maybe this never goes before a judge. Maybe a majority on the Key West City Commission (six commissioners and mayor decline to come on board with the Walshes and Bernsteins and the County. The Bernsteins and Walshes have no .44 magnum pressed against the City’s head. The Bernsteins and the Walshes have no leverage over the City, other than friendship and back room dealings, and, well, perhaps suggestions of nice things happening to city officials who vote in favor of the City providing sewerage collection and treatment for Wisteria Island. I’m delusional? Hardly, such things are known to happen in Key West.

However lets say, for the sake of this discussion, that at least four of the votes on the Key West City Commission are against the City providing sewerage to Wisteria Island. Oh me, oh my! May Day! May Day! The County is left all by its lonesome out on a long, skinny, mangrove limb, hanging over shark-invested, er, infested waters. Why? Because the County has already agreed the Bernsteins and Washes are entitled to 75 building permits, if the City comes through with the sewerage treatment. Now this County is up what in Alabama is known as Shit Creek without a paddle.  Not even a canoe do you have on Shit Creek.

You don’t see it yet? Well, here’s how it is on Shit Creek, with no canoe and no paddle. That’s right, swimming up to your eyeballs in shit, until you are too tired to tread water any longer, and then, blug, blug, blug.
 
Now that the Bernsteins and Walshes do not have Key West on board, now that the Bernsteins and Walshes do not have sewerage treatment for Wisteria Island, the County, by law, has to provide sewerage for Wisteria Island. The Bernsteins and Walshes say they gladly will pay for the County providing it, but if the County doesn’t provide it, which it cannot because it has no sewerage treatment facility close to Wisteria Island, then that’s a taking, and you have already read through that cheerful scenario somewhere up above.
 
Well,  maybe the County thinks it can escape that tar baby by letting the Bernsteins and Walshes put on site sewerage collection and treatment for each of the 75 residences and the upland marina support structures.  Or maybe the County can let the Bernsteins collect and store the sewerage in a holding tank, and have someone come by once a week or so and pump out the holding tank onto a holding tank on a barge, to transport it somewhere else for treatment. This scenario was proposed yesterday by county staff as an alternative, if Key West doesn’t come through. Maybe the County can get all the state and federal agencies, who look after the environment, to go along withthat plan, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, if I were the County. I rather imagine the chances of that shitty plan getting approved by state and federal authorities are about zero.
 
However, that’s not the end of the County’s problem. There is the wee matter of all of the county staff hours that were expended at the behest of the Bernsteins and Walshes. Staff hours paid for by county residents in their taxes. Staff hours that could have  been avoided by staff telling the Bernsteinsand Walshes to rope and hog-tie the City of Key West into this deal, and then come to the County to talk about the rest of it. Yes, indeed, the cart got put way, way before the horse. Instead of buying a $150,000 island, the County in this not far-fetched scenario is being told to buy a $40,000, 000 island. And, yes, the County in this predicament because it let Jim Hendrick put the County in it. There is no way county staff did not know all along who was steering the Bernsteins and Walshes. There is no way county staff did not know, because there was only one person who could have been doing it.

Jim’s legal and persuasive skill is so great that the beagles can be heard howling for the fox all the way up in Alamama where I pretended to be a legal beagle. Pretended. Compared to the fox guiding the Bernsteins and Walshes through the county’s hen house, I’m a mere brown rabbit. Thankfully, the fox is coming to me in dreams and waking revelations and showing me what he’s up to. But for his “Christmans presents” — think Christmas Tree Island, the other name for Wisteria Island – I’d be so out-classed and out-foxed that my jockey strap would be permanently hanging from the yardarm, twisting in the breeze. I’d be as mesmerized and confused as county staff.
 
Of course, Jim and his and my Board of Directors, that’s right Jim’s and my Board of Directors (see postcript) did not feed me all of these lines just for the county and city governments to read. Jim and his and my Board of Directors also want citizens of Key West and the citizens of Monroe County to read these lines, so they can see a little better in the murky water shit creek really is.
 
Citizens of Key West, the Bernsteins and Walshes are asking your city commissioners and mayor to pretend this deal really isn’t an annexation, but will simply be a cozy arrangement between the City and the Bernsteins/Walshes and the County, which basically gives the Bernsteins and Walshes what you decided in the 2007 election you didn’t want your city commissioners and mayor to give the Bernsteins.
 
I ran for Mayor of your city in 2007 and in 2009. I heard every one of your now sitting commissoners and your current mayor say they would always honor the will of their constituents. Out of their own mouths I heard them all say this many times. It’s time for you to remind them of their campaign promises.
 
Tell your city commissioners and mayor this flim-flam scheme doesn’t sit well with you. Tell them to honor the spirit of the law that gives you the right to approve annexations. Tell them to delcine to be involved in this shenanigan. Tell them Key West has more than enough troubles already, and doesn’t need any more.
 
Tell your commissoners and mayor there already are too many houses in Key West; there already are too many cars and trucks, and far too much traffic on your city streets, and far too few parking places. Tell them not to destroy your quality of life further  by adding another Sunset Key and all its traffic and vehicles to your city.

Tell your commissoners and mayor there is no public benefit in this deal, it’s all for the Bernstein’s Benefit. Tell your commissoners and mayor the boat people living off of Wisteria Island today will simply move a little farther away. They will not stop living the way they live, if Wisteria Island is developed. They will create another illegal harbor. Nothing will change, except the Bernsteins and Walshes will get richer, and Key West’s quality of life will get poorer.

Tell your commissioners and mayor how you never got to use the “public” 900 foot beach at Sunset Key, because they wanted an arm and a leg for you to be on it. $40, per person, per day, to go out there an sit on that artificial beach. A fee proudly and strenously defended by a Sunset Key representative at yesterday’s DRC meeting. He made it out like anyone wanting to be there for any less was ripping Sunset Key off. I swear to God, the son of a bitch did just that. What in the hell do you think the Bernsteins and Walshes will charge you to spend a day at Wisteria Island?
 
To e-mail your mayor and city commissioners., follow this link:  http://www.keywestcity.com/ commission/  
  
After letting your city commissioners and mayor know how you feel, tell your county commissioners how you feel about  the County putting the cart before the horse and assuming your elected city officials would roll over and play dead. Tell your county commissioners they have a lot of other things to be worrying about, including the BP oil attack on Florida and all Gulf of Mexico states; but the oil attack doesn’t override your county commissoners’ sworn duty to look out after you, the people of Monroe County.

Tell your county commissoners to instruct county staff to stop all further work on this deal, until they know what Key West is going to do. You do not want county staff to agree to anything the Bernsteins and Walshes have argued. Let them argue it in court, if they wish, but do not give it to them before they go to court and don’t have to do anything but show the judge the County gave them  75 building permits on Wisteria Island, conditional on Key West furnishing sewerage treatment.
 
To e-mail your county commissioners, follow this link:
 
http://www.monroecounty-fl. gov/Pages/MonroeCoFL_BOCC/ index 
 
Sloan Bashinsky, very worn out ex-lawyer . . . very worn out . . .

Postscript: Two days ago, feeling totally over-loaded with Wisteria Island facts and theories, I threw up my hands. Two days ago, looking back over my many attempts to reach Jim Hendrick, I threw up my hands and told Archangel Michael I had done all I could and Jim was now in Michael’s hands. Shortly after that Jim and his and my Board of Directors started tutoring me, helping me see what is going on with Wisteria Island. Yes, Jim’s and my Board of Directors,  which Jim accepted as his own when he used a Catholic priest as his only character witness at his resentencing hearing in Federal Court last fall. A resentencing hearing I attended, after writing the judge a letter asking him to leave Jim on probation. A letter crafted by the Board of Directors: Jesus, Michael, Melchizedek, Magdalene, the Holy Spirit, the Father, and the federal judge for whom I clerked after graduating from law school.

Here is a very different view of Wisteria Island than Jim and the Bernsteins and Walshes are presenting to the County and in the press. It came to me via Facebook yesterday. I don’t agree with the author(s) that Wisteria is an unspoiled Island. It is hardly that. It has been abused by squatters and boaters. It hosts many invasive trees.  But it also is thriving with native vegetation and wildlife. If managed well, Wisteria easily could be Mother Nature’s last stand at Key West.

It’s now known our Great White Father in Washington, that is, the United States Government, and its various agencies/departments that are supposed to look out for us and the environment, has been letting Big Oil look out for us instead.
 
It’s now known the British Petroleum (BP) department of Big Oil did not use the most modern or safest drilling equipment or practices on its Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the Louisiana coast. It’s now known the reason BP did not use the most modern or safest drilling equipment is because that equipment’s safety device, once engaged, plugs a well instantly and permanently. Meaning, no more oil can be obtained from that rig. Meaning, no more money can be made from that rig.
 
It’s now generally believed BP and our Great White Father in Washington have consistently and purposefully understated the amount of oil gushing out of the seabed where BP’s Deepwater Horizon well blew up and was not sealed immediately, because it it not have the safety device that would seal it immediately, because that safety device would terminate that oil rig’s oil recovery forever.
 
BP and our Great White Father in Washington still have not plugged the seabed gusher, and their efforts to mitigate the oil already on the loose are pretty much not doing a very good job, to doing an awful job, all of their rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.
 
What is only just now becoming known to slow-minded people such as myself is there has been for some time now a microbe technology that is hugely successful in cleaning up oil spills on land and on water, including saltwater. BP and our Great White Father in Washington know about these microbe oil gobblers, which work a hell of a lot better and cost a hell of a lot less than the methods BP is now using. As far as is known, these oil gobbing microbes cause no collateral damage and themselves die off and become fish food after they have no more oil to gobble.
 
Down  below is a youtube link presentation of this microbe oil gobbling technology, which State Attorney Dennis Ward forwarded to a lot of people yesterday after he received it from someone else. The microbe oil gobblers were tested by the State of Texas for oil spills. Texas then decreed oil gobbling microbes would be the first and central defense response to all oil spills in Texas, and all oil companies in Texas would make these oil gobbling microbes their first and central defense response to oil spills.
 
As you watch the video, ask yourself why the State of Texas hasn’t been screaming to high heaven for it to be allowed to intervene and put its oil gobbling microbes to work gobbling up this devastating oil spill Big Oil and our Great White Father in Washington have unleashed on us. Also wonder why BP and our Great White Father in Washington did not already adopt and use “the Texas solution” on this terrorist oil attack. Also wonder why Big Oil and our Great White Father Washington did not already require all oil drilling companies to incorporate the “Texas solution” as their central defense response to oil spills.
 
Tell your elected city and county officials about the “Texas solution.” Maybe if they scream loud enough to Tallahassee and Washington, somebody with sense and say-so will do something with it.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCzhmGHQ_1c

Danny Coll

This below was posted to yesterday’s Coconut Telegraph of bigpinekey.com, in response to my recent “Danny Coll Shell Game – District 2″ post:
 
Sloan,
 
Please hurry up and put your money where your mouth is. Put your name on the ballot and stop “threatening”, or maybe you are waiting for the board of directors to guide you. Everyone is tired of hearing what you are going to do. Thank you so much for the voting lessons. You really honestly think the voters of Monroe County don’t know and understand the rules and regulations on voting on their county.
 
What is amazing to me is how you can proclaim to live/listen by the board of directors, but all that spews out of your mouth and somehow finds there way to words is, HATRED. 

If anyone votes for you SHAME on them. We find you to make a mockery of the very foundation that this country was founded on. For someone who really has nothing, wants nothing and is nothing you sure do have a lot of opinions.
 
I mean really why don’t you just go back to Birmingham where you belong and suck off of that system rather than Monroe County. You are the last person Monroe County needs to take care of, because you really are not nice to anyone. Most everyone here finds you to be poison. Grow up,
 
Danny Coll
 
Well, gosh awash, Danny. Looks like I must have hit the bulls-eye, judging by your reaction.
 
You say most everyone here finds me to be poison. You know most everyone here? Here in the Keys? Here on Big Pine Key and close by? Here in the Coconut Telegraph? Where’s here, Danny? And you know most people wherever here is, and they have told you I’m poison?
 
Not thirty minutes before I awoke the other morning, my Board of Directors (BOD) told me in a dream that I see what other people don’t see and to do something about it. So I crawled out of bed, beat up again because of bad shit going on in spirit. Right off, I trudge out into my driveway and get that day’s Key West Citizen and open it and read your letter to the editor. Right off, I know my BOD wants me to write about your letter to the editor and make you transparent. So that’s how what I wrote, which set you off, came to pass.
 
You ask if I really honestly think the voters of Monroe County don’t know and understand the rules and regulations on voting in their county? I know for a fact many voters don’t know and understand the rules and regulations on voting in the Keys. I know from talking to voters that they don’t know and understand. You certainly didn’t think voters knew and understood the rules and regulations on voting in the Keys, because you explained in your letter to the editor (thus to the voters) the rules and regulations of voting in Keys primaries. I added in my rejoinder post that voting in the Keys is county-wide for all local offices. I added that because many times I have spoken with Keys voters who did not know they could vote in a county commission race lying outside their county commissioners district. For example, if they lived in District 4 in Marathon, they did not know they could vote in the District 2 (your, incumbent George Neugent’s and my) county commission race.
 
As for what everyone around here you say thinks of me, why don’t you ask George Neugent what he thinks of what you wrote about me? After you talk with George, ask the other four county commissioners, Heather Carruthers, Kim Wigington, Mario Di Gennaro and Sylvia Murphy, our current Mayor, what they think of what you wrote about me? Then ask County Attorney Suzanne Hutton and Chief Assistant County Attorney Bob Shillinger. Then ask County Adminsitrator Roman Gastesi. Then ask Monroe County Sheriff Bob Peryam. Then ask State Attorney Dennis Ward. Then ask Key West Mayor Craig Cates. Then ask the Key West city commissioners, Clayton Lopez, Barry Gibson, Jimmy Weekley, Mark Rossi, Billy Wardlow and Teri Johnston. Then ask Key West City Manager Jim Scholl. Then ask Key West City Attorney Shawn Smith. Show all of them what you wrote about me, and see what they say about it.
 
Maybe you also should ask Father Stephen Braddock, who heads up Florida Keys Outreach Coalition based in Key West, and has served on the Southern Homeless Assistant League (SHAL) Board. Steve met me in 2001, when I was homeless and speaking at Key West City Commission meetings as a former lawyer now minister trying to get the city commission and its police to treat homeless people like they were human beings. Steve and then Planning Board member Bill Verge later paid my filing fee to run for Mayor of Key West in 2003, my first sashay into running for office. Five runs for office I now have made in the Keys, not counting this year’s District 2 race. I have never liked it. I never will like it. I do it because my BOD has made it very clear that I will like not running for office a lot less.
 
Or maybe you should bypass all of those references above. Maybe you should just show your letter to Jesus. Maybe he will tell you to sell all that you have and make alms to the poor with it, and then follow him. Maybe he will tell you to be homeless like he was, and to have nothing, want nothing, and be nothing, and have lots of opinions. Maybe he will tell you about HATRED. Maybe he will tell you he guided Thomas Jefferson’s hand when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Maybe he will tell you he guided Congress’ hand when it passed the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech and freedom of, and from, religion to all Americans. Maybe he will tell you the pen is more powerful than the sword, thus the sword defends the pen. Maybe he will tell you it was he who guided my hand when I wrote the post you protested way too much about.
 
Back on this planet, I have not filed to run against you and George Nugent yet, because my Board of Directors has not told me to file yet. It looks like they want me to wait until the last moment to file, which I’ve never done before. Maybe they want me to play with your and other people’s heads over cross-over voting, and then I file at the last moment and close the Republican primary to registered Republicans. My BOD are not going to let you square off just against George Neugent; you are going to have to take him head-on in a closed Republican primary. The winner there, in the ensuing general election, will face me and any Democrat and/or other non-affiliated candidate who files by the deadline. If there end up being three or more candidates in the general election, the candidate getting the most votes wins, even if that candidate receives less than fifty percent of the votes. I received a little over 7,000 votes in the 2006 District 2 general election. George Neugent received about 15,000 votes. We were the only candidates in that race. I know George well enough to tell Republicans in the audiences at candidate forums to vote for him in this year’s Republican primary.
 
As for my going back to Birmingham, that’s for my BOD to decide. If you don’t like them holding me in the Keys, if you don’t like them having me beat up on you and other people down here, then file your appeal with them. Here are some of their names: Jesus, Michael, Melchizedek, Magdalene, the Holy Spirit, the Father.
 
In closing, here are two recent emails from recipients of my hate mail. The first came in from my personal lawyer, in response to the “Danny Coll Shell Game – District 2″ post, which got you so riled up.
 
Sloan:
 
As usual very good points made! You really should be on the BOCC!!! I will be voting for you as always when I can.
 
Hey, when you are in Key West let’s get together some time to catch up.
 
Sam
 
This second email came from one of the jaguars at Harpoon Harry’s in Key West. I have told many visitors to Key West that they really should have breakfast at Harpoon Harry’s, to get a real taste of Key West and the wide range of people who live there.
 
Read your blog,Bench/bar…Got to say I felt really good about your writing. I am happy you want to stick around…I also believe you could do alot for Key West and the Keys..I also like Dennis Ward. He comes in to Harpoon Harrys and I always try to give him a smile and maybe a few words to let him know that I agree alot and feel for him even more. His plate is overflowing…I believe he is a good man. I think we all would benefit from your involvement. Take care….Love, Debbie  Stop by when you come to town..would love to see you. Sloan, tell Capt Conch I send my love.
 
I worked very hard in 2008 to help get Dennis Ward elected, and I’m glad I did. He has turned our County Commission upside down, going to commission meetings and making public statements there and to the press about our commissioners needing to lead the charge in county employees not taking favors and gifts, in enforcing the Sunshine law, and in lobbyists having to disclose who they are and represent. Fortunately for us, Dennis has a staunch ally on the County Commission, Kim Wigington, who has relentlessly tried to bring a higher standard of ethics to the Commission, which indeed should lead the charge in ethics and transparency in our county government.
 
Debbie’s friend, Capt Conch, better known as Deer Ed on the Coconut Telegraph, started posting my hate emails gratis to a “Sloan” archive page on bigpinekey.com back in 2006, without my even knowing it was happening until he finally told me. Deer Ed finally told me I needed my own website. Deer Ed set up goodmorningkeywest.com for me, then goodmorningfloridakeys.com, for all of which I paid him. Deer Ed links teasers from my daily hate mail from the Coconut Telegraph to my websites, for which I pay him. Deer Ed many times has told me to keep writing, I’m needed around here. Many times he has gotten onto me when I talked of folding up shop and going somewhere else to live. Deer Ed published your comments, Danny, and he publishes a lot of people’s comments, because he believes in free speech, which you apparently do not. Otherwise, you would not tell me to stop writing and to leave the Keys.

If you can’t stand the heat, Danny, get out of the kitchen. 

Sloan

Here is a must web link for people interested in preserving Wisteria Island. It contains lots of information, a petition opposing, and a schedule for upcoming government meetings on the current development scheme to de facto bring the island it into the city of Key West. The more people who attend these meetings, the louder the message will be sent to our elected officials. 
 
 www.savewisteriaisland.com 
 
I suppose what bugs me most is the developers (the Bernsteins and the Walshes) are trying to persuade the Key West City Commission and Mayor to de facto annex Wisteria island into the city, despite the fact that, by law, the city can only acquire or annex real estate approved by registered Key West voters in a referendum. Make no mistake, this is what the developers are trying to talk the City Commission and Mayor into doing. If you live in Key West and this blatant scheme doesn’t cause you to want to get out your tar and feather supplies, then you are part of the problem we need to tar and feather.

So as not to be accused of twisting what I read in the developers’ Comp Plan Amendment application, here is the lead paragraph:
 
Wisteria is a blighted, disturbed, man-made, spoil island created in the late 1800′s as a dumping ground for abandoned vessels and dredging material. Notwithstanding the owners’ attempts to the contrary, the property has continued to serve primarily as an illegal  maritime dumping ground. The property is also regularly used for the related upland activities associated with the surrounding illegally moored vessels, including dumping, bottom cleaning, bottom painting, fiberglass repairs and fabrication, dog walking, camping, etc. Squatters have long inhabited the property contributing to an extensive history of criminal activity.
  
After reading that I wondered how the Island still stays afloat with all of that debris sitting on top of it? I wondered why it didn’t already sink to the bottom of the sea and all of that debris and waste with it? I also wondered if the developers got mixed up and confused the criminal activity that occurs ongoing on Duval Street and throughout Key West with what they say goes on on Wisteria Island?
 
Fortunately, we don’t have to rely completely on what the developers put into their application for a Comp Plan Amendment. Here’s an email I received yesterday from an eye witness.

Sloan – Don’t believe all you read or see in a movie.  Especially a developer’s movie.  I was recently on the island.  There is a campsite with three tents – one is for garbage and could be cleaned up pretty fast by a few energetic people.  Other than that, there is some junk here or there, mostly sunburned and old.  The boats that beached should have been cleaned up by the owners, or by the state at the request of the owners.  Most of the island is natural – i.e. in a natural state as controlled by mother nature, without manmade shelters.  There are trails here and there, new low growth finally coming in after the Wilma saltwater overwash, dead trees yes, but they provide a home for bugs, which attract birds to feed, finally fall to the ground (naturally) and provide mulch and home for other organisms.  The high part of the island is quite lush in places – and like the central mangrove zones, unaffected by Wilma.  There is a “meeting area” with benches around a fire pit, that is fairly orderly.  It might make a nice meeting place for  county or city officials for their first look.  Probably only Rossi has been out there in the recent past.  It is not a “pretty” island, but is is a place where 95% of the time any bird or animal can rest, find food, and not be chased by a dog or child or fool. 
 
Putting a fueling station, a bunch of boats with copper bottom paint, houses, people, constant activity on the shoreline, etc. will be a disaster to the little, unspectacular pieces of life – both flora and fauna – that are part of the chain.  Just as the carrying capacity study told us, we can’t keep expanding into “wild” areas without doing away with the life that exists there now.  It is a tiny piece of the overall puzzle, and there is absolutely no overriding reason for humans to take that piece out of circulation at this time.

I can’t help but wonder, if the developers fudged a little about how junked up Wisteria Island is in their application to amend the Comp Plan, what else did they fudge on?
 
I also can’t help but wonder why US Fish & Wildlife, the US Coast Guard, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Monroe County Sheriff Office, and Monroe County Code Enforcement have not already straightend out what the developers claim is wrong with Wisteria Island and the water around it? If those government agencies, duh-wee, will just do their jobs, won’t that would pretty much wipe out the basis for the developers’ appplication?
 
The fact is, under the existing Comp Plan, Monroe County is supposed to take care of Wisteria Island. Monroe County is supposed to protect it. Monroe County is supposed to oppose development on it. The fact is, giving the developers what they want and claiming that solves the problem will allow Monroe County to conveniently dodge the fact that it is the cause of the problem, because it didn’t do its job.
 
What’s the difference between the County not protecting Wisteria Island, and the County not enforcing its own building code, and now we have 7,000-plus illegal downstairs enclosures FEMA is making the County get rid of and destroy the economic, social, psychological and spiritual fabric of our community?
 
What’s the difference between the County not protecting Wisteria Island, and the US Government not enforcing its own laws and regulations on BP, and now we have the worst oil disaster in history just a few hundred miles away?
 
When the Bernsteins purchased Wisteria Island over 40 years ago, they also purchased legal responsibility to keep the Island clean. If, as the Bernsteins and Walshes claim in their application to amend the Comp Plan, they were unable to get the various government agencies to do their part, then it was their legal responsibility to hire people to do it.
 
I know this is the law because I have been cited by County Code Enforcement for things other people brought onto my property when I was not living there. So I know for a fact Code Enforcement could have cited the Bernsteins before they teamed up with the Walshes, and could have kept citing them and taking them to judicial enforcement, if Code Enforcement had wanted to do that. 

Duh-wee, we don’t need any more buck-passing disguised as development. Duh-wee, we need responsible government.
 
Let the Bernsteins and the Walshes clean up their own property on their own dimes.
 
Ignore the Bernsteins and Walshes’ implied cliam that this is a taking and they are entitled to just compensation if they don’t get their development application approved.
 
Let the Bernsteins and the Walshes have the two houses on Wisteria Island they are entitled to have under the Comp Plan.
 
Do not let the Bernsteins and the Walshes talk the City of Key West into de facto annexing Wisteria Island, in violation of its own City Code that requires voter approval of city acquisition or annexation of real estate.
 
Sloan Bashinsky

wisteria

Mandy Miles’s “Wisteria is not just an island” piece on the front page of today’s Key West Citizen (keysnews.com) describes the lighthouse tender Wisteria that sank off the island in a 1919 hurricane and the good snorkeling the old wreck still provides and the desire by some people to preserve it.
 
Me, I’m interested in preserving the entire island. From all I’ve read and heard over the years, the island and the nearby waters have become a dumping ground. I learned yesterday that it’s worse than that. I learned yesterday that there is toxic waste out there, left over from Navy dumping. Toxic waste similar to what still lies in the ground at Truman Waterfront, which the Navy deeded to the City some years ago now.

Toxic waste similar to what still lies in the ground under Truman Annex, the posh gated community next to Truman Waterfront, which developer Pritam Singh acquired from the Navy some years ago. Toxic waste similar to what still lies under the ground on Sunset Key, which once was called Fuel Tank Key (or was it Tank Fuel Key?), because that’s where the Navy kept its fuel storage tanks. My understanding is Pritam Singh also aquired Fuel Tank Key from the Navy, and later he sold it to the Walshes, who developed it into Sunset Key. Now the Walshes have joined forces with the Bernsteins, who have owned Wisteria Island for over 40 years, to develop Wisteria Island along the lines of Sunset Key.
 
Me, personally, I think Sunset Key is so pretentious and faky that Key West, which took Sunset Key into its city limits, should be ashamed to have had anything to do with it. Key West will not be able to take Wisteria Island into the city limits, because a voter referendum already decided that. Key West cannot acquire or annex any real estate without voter approval in a referendum. However, that does not stop the city from contracting with the developers of Wisteria Island to provide it with police, fire and rescue services, and sewerage treatment and disposal. A de facto annexation end run around the will of the voters.
 
All of which shenanigan has to be brought off in league with Monroe County, in whose boundaries Wisteria Island lies. Under current county code, two homes can be built on Wisteria Island. The developers wish to build 70 homes out there, one-half to be transient rentals, the other half to be residences. The developers also want to build a commercial area out there, and a commercial dock and mooring field. They graciously have offered not to develop more than 70 percent of the island after they are given what they want by Monroe County, which will require a change to the County’s Comprehensive Plan.
 
I have read most of what the Wisteria development group has fed to the County for it to swallow hook, line and sinker. Whoever wrote it, I don’t mean whoever typed it, but whoever wrote it, is one very, very smart and clever person, and very, very versed in the law. This proposal was not written by a lay person. It was not written by a real estate broker or developer. It was written by a lawyer (takes on to know one).
 
There is only one lawyer known to me who could have written it. This lawyer told me himself several times he was helping the Bernsteins develop Wisteria Island. This lawyer also represents Pritam Singh. This lawyer boasted to me how Pritam is such a terrific salesman. Pritam is such a good salesman, this lawyer told me in his own home, with several people listening over dinner, that he is able to get city and county governments to look only at what they want to look at, so they will not look at what Pritam doesn’t want them to look at. I said that’s how Lucifer operates. Yes, in front of those people I said that’s how Lucifer operates, so what our government officials need to see, they do not see.
 
Ths conversation occurred in front of this lawyer’s wife, and one of his and her best friends, and Todd German. This lawyer then, and now, is disbarred. This lawyer then, and now, is on federal probation. This lawyer then, and now, is not supposed to be practicing law. The Bernsteins and Walshes know this. As do the Key West city commissioners and mayor, and the Monroe County commissioners know this. As do Key West city staff and Monroe County staff. If I were put to make a wager on it, I would bet the conch farm everybody in the city and county government dealing with the Wisteria development proposal knows who is legally guiding the Wisteria developers.
 
However, I wonder if Jim Hendrick’s U.S. Probation Officer knows Jim is practicing law without a license. I wonder if the United States District Judge, who allowed Jim to remain on probation, knows Jim is practicing law without a license. I wonder if the Florida Bar Association knows Jim is practicing law without a license. I wonder if they know, in my presence about four months ago, in Jim’s office, when a lawyer from the mainland asked Jim if he might ever try to get his law license reinstated, Jim said he didn’t think he would because he was doing everything he did when he practiced law except go to court.
 
To the Monroe County Commission and county staff, to the Key West City Commission and city staff, you need to wake up. You need to know the Wisteria proposal is designed to cause you to see only what the developers want you to see. You need to know the Wisteria proposal is designed to cause you not to see what the developers don’t want you to see, WHICH IS WHAT YOU NEED TO SEE. You need to know you are dealing with people who are not what they appear to be. If you want to know what you are dealing with, ask the Walshes where are the public beach and facilities on Sunset Key that they were supposed to provide for the public to enjoy? Ask them why the public has to pay a stiff fee for daily use out there? Ask them who is really advising them in the Wisteria development?
 
You really need to get to the bottom of that because it is not unlikely a lawsuit will be filed to stop you from giving the Wisteria developers what they want. After that lawsuit is filed, depositions will be taken. In those depositions records will be subpoenaed. It will be learned who the Wisteria developer is paying to advise them. That person will then be deposed. County and city employees will be deposed. All of those people will be subpoenaed witnesses at their own trial in federal court, where the lawsuit will be filed because Wisteria Island lies in a federal sanctuary. The same federal court where Jim Hendrick was tried and convicted of obstruction of justice/witness tampering. Do you wish to be reading all about that in Key West Citizen, the Keynoter and the Miami Herald? If so, be my guest.
 
Sloan Bashinsky