After a sewage pipe burst in the street in front of her North Miami home, resident Gwen West told NBC6 reporter Willard Shepard, “We have a government that don’t care about its constituents. It’s a horrible place to live.”
Ya think?
This problem has been plaguing the West family since last September when Hurricane Irma spilled 56,500 gallons of raw sewage into the streets of her neighborhood, and into her home. The problem, however, had been an ongoing one more than a decade before the storm raged through South Florida.
Ms. West saw the first manhole pop and spread sewage in front of her home in 2006, after which she and her son started experiencing health problems. A month after Irma on October 6, 2017, the manhole blew up yet again.
Six months later, Gwen West and her son are still living in an RV in front of her home, which FEMA declared as uninhabitable due to the damage and contamination.
Although North Miami’s “city engineer initially traced the source to a power failure at Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department Pump Station 346 at 13760 NE 5th Ave.,” the county claims that “that the station did not lose power before, during, or after Hurricane Irma.”
According to a November, 2017 Biscayne Times article, Miami-Dade County “emphasizes that the station received a big upgrade in July 2012 and is one of about 190 sewer pump stations of more than 1000 countywide with a permanent backup generator. The county traces the more likely source to City of North Miami sewer feeder pipes that route to the pump station.”
In a statement to the Biscayne Times, county officials wrote, “When there is a combination of high ground water and surface water levels, infiltration of these waters into the sewer pipes then surcharges the pump station’s capacity, which is not meant to handle these higher-than-normal volumes. However, we have no data that there were any overflows from this sanitary pump station.”
The City of North Miami, on the other hand, is attempting to pass the buck.
Biscayne Times reporter Mark Sell continued, “With aging lines in North Miami and adjacent municipalities, north Biscayne Bay swimming advisories resulting from sewer pipe ruptures have become bimonthly or quarterly affairs. On October 6, the manhole in front of West’s house blew open yet again.”
Gwen West isn’t the only North Miami resident living in sewage hell. Resident Laura Hill told VotersOpinion that she and her family couldn’t get into their home after Irma for twelve days due the the sewage back up, and that was only after a decontamination treatment.
In an earlier Biscayne Times article, Sewage, Sewage Eveyrwhere, Ms. Hill exclaimed, “[W]e couldn’t get to our house. There was the smell of raw sewage. It was a fast river of shit for three and a half days. We walked in the house. It was 85, 90 degrees. It smelled, and we saw the bathtubs and toilets backed up. The whole pool was full of sewage. I’m so glad we didn’t stay here. Imagine if we were barricaded in our house with two young boys and raw sewage flowing out of the bathtub.”
Laura Hill has been complaining to the City of North Miami about the sewage problems since 2013 to no avail. No one seems to care.
Despite the County’s insistence that the sewage problem is within the City of North Miami, city officials are denying all responsibility.
As a result, Gwen West has hired an attorney, Andrew Kassier, to protect her interests while she deals with this mess. We imagine it’s only a matter of time before other residents do the same.
In the meantime, the North Miami Mayor and Council voted to hold a special election on May 1, 2018 for a referendum on a ONE HUNDRED TWENTY MILLION DOLLAR General Obligation Bond, only $2 million of which is slated for “drainage improvements.”
Whatever that means.
Rather than concerning themselves with raw sewage backing up and contaminating the homes of residents, North Miami city officials want you to co-sign a bond to construct a new City Hall to the tune of TWENTY NINE MILLION DOLLARS!
Oh, and they also want you to shell out your tax dollars for the following projects:
Public Facility Improvements:
- Sunkist Grove Community Center $5,490,000
- Keystone Park Community Center $2,600,000
- Griffing Community Center $5,000,000
- Gwen Margolis Community Center $2,000,000
- MOCA Expansion $15,000,000
- Sole Mia $5,000,000
- Ben Franklin New Park $520,000
- Northwest Regional Sports Complex (Pepper Park) $10,890,000
- Stadium Upgrades $1,500,000
Infrastructure & Sustainability:
- City-Wide Streets & Sidewalk Improvements $13,250,000
- Arch Creek Basin (North & South Improvements) $3,700,000
- Keystone Point Sewall Installation $650,000
- Retrofit City Owned Seawalls $6,000,000
- Install Living shoreline $400,000
- Elevation of Utility Outfall Infrastructure $1,000,000
- Acquiring repetitive loss properties $2,000.00
- Keystone and Sans Souci Guard Gates $2,000,000
Technology Improvements:
- Police Technical Equipment $2,000,000
Affordable Housing:
- Affordable Housing $10,000,000
Replacing the outdated water and sewer system:
- Not one damn dime!
Seems legit!
North Miami residents deserve better.
Stephanie
THE BOND IS A SHAM! THE BOND DOES NOT COVER WHAT IS NEEDED! THE BOND, WITHOUT SPECIFICS, COVERS WANTS, NOT NEEDS! MAKE SURE TO VOTE! SPECIAL ELECTION IS MAY 1!
VOTE NO! VOTE NO! NOTE NO! VOTE NO! NOTE NO! NOTE NO!
VOTE NO ON EVERY PART OF THE BOND!!!!!!!
Why is Sole Mia getting 5 Million Dollars? Are you kidding me?
I know, right? That one is a real head-scratcher.
$2,000,000 for two guard gates???? What in hell are they going to be made of; solid platinum???? That is one of the most ridiculous proposed expenditures I have ever seen!!!!! Pure bureaucratic bullshit at work and, I think I smell the rank odor of a few lobbyists at work.
When in God’s name will the voters ever get educated enough to where they can smell the effluvia???
Ridiculous isn’t it? The amount of pull that Keystone has on this government is absurd. North Miami residents are going to pay for other North Miami residents’ guard gates which will keep off North Miami residents, some who have paid for said guard gate.
I bought my home in North Miami in the fall of 2011. My husband and I had a two year old and had been looking for homes for a couple years. We found a fixer upper in what seemed like a decent neighborhood and purchased it. We were fine with putting the sweat equity in to make it what we wanted. The ramifications of recession had left the area neglected, the streets and medians broken, many homes in foreclosure. At that time there were some residents who took on the task of getting the neighborhood back into shape, and throughout the years after that until the present, many more stepped up. The residents, along with our Councilman Bien Aime, we have managed to make the neighborhood much more attractive, our streets repaved, medians repaired, our neighborhood more beautiful. We have addressed so many issues as a team.
The one issue that has never been taken on is the sewage. I started complaining about the sewage in 2013. The smell permeates what is an otherwise beautiful neighborhood. It originates from the manholes on NE 131 from about NE 4th Avenue down to Griffing/NE 131. Aleem Ghany, our old City manager and former Public Works director told me quite frankly, “Laura, two thirds of North Miami’s sewage flows through pipes that accumulate in front of your house.” So, it smells like raw sewage, because it is raw sewage.
It is my belief that these pipes are too small for the volume of waste. The County lift station provides the pressure to push all that sewage over the natural geographic hills out of our low laying area into the treatment plant. When the County lift station fails, the pressure builds and it explodes into sewage spills.
Even when the lift station doesn’t fail, the amount of sewage going through, I believe, is too vast for the system. So, the sewage is close to street level, hence the smell.
I also believe the City knows this is a precarious situation. And that they have known that for a long time. Certainly, the dozens and dozens of emails regarding sewage problems that I alone have sent, not to mention many other neighbors, should have tipped them off that there is a bubbling mess of liability coming their way.
So many of hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent with CRA, HUD and North Miami funds to lift up this neighborhood. We are the third highest tax income source for the City. One would think they would like to protect their investment by making sure that the sewage situation is taken care of. But yet, my emails largely go unanswered. The solution for North Miami is to dump deodorizer into the drains. That doesn’t work for even a small amount of time, as the river of shit flows on by, taking the deodorizer with it within hours.
North Miami wants a bond that will increase our taxes significantly. But they seem either unwilling or incapable of handling the really dire issues regarding infrastructure.
If they receive the $120M and spend it on things like a new City Hall and MoCa expansion, in 10-15 years our pipes and sewage lines are going to expire. They will need, WE WILL REQUIRE a major bond to finance these things. But like is the case when you used your credit card to charge up superficial things only to have a major disaster and you no longer have credit, we will be in a real bind.
North Miami, lets save our borrowing for the rainy, sewage soaked days ahead. These days are coming. Lets leave our credit line open for the big ticket items we will need to incur instead of wasting it on this pork project, unaccountable bond they are trying to pass right now. No councilperson wants their names in bright lights on new pipes underground where nobody can see them.
Lets save our money for the rainy days ahead and say NO to the bond on May 1st.
100% behind you on this issue Laura.