The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council is calling for state and federal agencies to address concerns that treated wastewater from shallow injection wells on Stock Island is reaching delicate nearshore waters.
At its quarterly meeting on Sept. 15 in Marathon, the council unanimously approved a resolution asking the sanctuary, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Florida Department of Environmental Protection and other “relevant regulatory agencies” to “expeditiously pursue corrective action” to stop wastewater from privately-owned shallow injection wells operated by KW Resort Utilities Corp. from reaching surface waters.
But before approving the resolution, council members spent more than 30 minutes debating the strength of evidence presented by the grassroots environmental advocacy group Friends of the Lower Keys (FOLKs), ultimately changing the document’s language to avoid stating definitively that the utility’s wastewater is reaching the sanctuary.
The issue came to the council through its Adaptive Management Working Group, set up to tackle individual issues within the sanctuary on a case-by-case basis.
“The FOLKs group in Key West has data that shows that (effluent) is leaching up into the waters of the sanctuary,” working group co-chair Jerry Lorenz told the council as he introduced the resolution. “If indeed these wells are leaching into sanctuary waters, and there are pictures of it, that needs to be addressed and perhaps made into a deeper injection.”
FOLKs has pushed the issue as KWRU applied to renew its DEP permit to continue operating its Stock Island wastewater treatment facility and shallow injection wells, which operate similar to other wells in the Keys to pump treated wastewater to a depth of around 60 to 120 feet.
The environmental group says samples collected from visible seabed upwellings within 300 feet of the wells, created as the treated water leaches through the porous ground, contained high concentrations of sucralose, an artificial sweetener commonly used as an indicator of human wastewater. The concentration decreased with distance from the upwelling, FOLKs said.
Advisory council members, while generally supportive of the resolution, raised concerns about some of FOLKs’ conclusions.
Council chair and Florida Keys Aquarium Encounters owner Ben Daughtry said his review of FOLKs’ material appeared to show a strong concentration of sucralose near the suspected upwellings . But he questioned the group’s use of videos reportedly showing manatees “drinking” contaminated water, characterizing them as more of an emotional tug than solid science.
Daughtry noted that FOLKs’ own report showed salinity of roughly 31 parts per thousand where water emerged from a crack in the seabed – a difference of only four parts per thousand from the surrounding seawater, and not sustainable as a source of drinking water for the mammals.
“I felt terrible looking at the videos, saying, ‘Oh my gosh, they shouldn’t be drinking that,’ but I don’t think they are,” Daughtry said. “So I think that’s a little misleading.
“I know them, I have them (at Aquarium Encounters) … they’re not drinking 31 parts per thousand.”
Still, Daughtry agreed the broader water-quality concern remained. “We’re still likely putting pharmaceuticals in the water, sucralose in the water, things that are not natural in the water” of the sanctuary, he said.
DEP aquatic preserve manager and sanctuary liaison Nick Parr also recommended removing the word “scientific” from the resolution’s description of FOLKs’ study, noting the group had yet to produce a peer-reviewed study on the exact issue at hand.
Daughtry similarly objected to language definitively stating wastewater “is emerging” in sanctuary waters, saying the council could not conclusively make that determination.
The council ultimately adopted softer language stating that FOLKs “has produced evidence that wastewater from KW Resort Utilities Corp.’s shallow disposal wells appears to be emerging in surface waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary off Stock Island.”
The resolution does not prescribe a specific solution, instead asking regulatory agencies to determine what corrective action is warranted. Council members repeatedly discussed deep-well injection as one potential answer, pointing to similar disputes elsewhere in the Keys.
Former Marathon city manager George Garrett described the city’s years-long investigation and litigation surrounding its own shallow injection wells. Marathon eventually agreed to construct a costly but necessary deep injection well in 2023, following a prolonged legal battle with FOLKs that compared Marathon’s discharges to a landmark clean water case in Maui, Hawaii. An earlier case was settled after FOLKs successfully sued the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority to install a deep well at its Cudjoe Regional plant in 2014.
In its settlement, Marathon agreed to install the deep injection well by the end of 2028. The new well will pump all of the city’s treated wastewater to a depth of 3,000 feet, and is currently slated to cost more than $70 million.
“The test is whether the effluent entering into one of those injection wells is the functional equivalent of a direct discharge to nearshore waters,” Garrett said. “I led the charge to challenge (that conclusion), (but) I’m very happy that we’re going in the direction we are, because I think there’s things coming between PFAS and pharmaceuticals and other things that we’re going to have to remove in the future.”
“I think we need to go back to state law and modify state law to simplify that in recognition of Maui,” Garrett said, suggesting lawmakers could ultimately require deep wells rather than forcing utilities and regulators through lengthy and costly testing and litigation.
