County utilities director discusses islands’ aging septic systems at latest GPICA meeting
MCA President Scott provides update on group’s holiday plans
Lee County Utilities Director Pam Keyes discussed the island’s aging septic systems at the Greater Pine Island Civic Association meeting last Tuesday, Sept. 9. She began by telling members the last chance she’d had to speak with members was before Hurricane Ian.
“Since then, of course, there have been a lot of recovery efforts and a lot of your community coming together to deal with those issues, so this is probably a timely topic to get back to,” Keyes said.
This meeting’s discussion, she said, would be about how the organization came to work with the state and looked at aged septic systems. There are many within the state, that need to be replaced, she said. The state began looking at this issue around the same time as the natural resource organizations, who were able to combine water quality issues with aged septic systems, she said.
“The state came in. Their studies showed that really the conventional septic systems didn’t treat all of the nutrients. There’s advanced septic systems where there’s a narration chamber and there’s more treatment and that improves removal of nutrients. The next step is our central wastewater treatment plants and then, of course, you get the most removal of nutrients when we go to advanced systems,” Keyes said.
The state’s goal, she said, is to encourage people to go to advanced systems or to connect to central systems. The task of going with a central system is more complicated than it may seem, although it may be a good option for many areas.
“We’ve got about 800 connections to the wastewater plant. The plant is about 400,000 gallons per day–that’s a very small plant. We have a project going on right now–so that we can provide advanced treatment and we should have that project completed in Aug. of ’26,” Keyes said.
Pine Island is very important because it’s got a very sensitive environment and it’s kept steady and in consideration, she said, because it’s known how important environmental quality is to islanders. A study was done in 2022, she explained, in order to figure out what it would take to put everyone on a central system.
“What we would have to do is upgrade our transmission lines. We’d have to do a collection system, which means, lift stations–upgrade lift stations–and we would have to add capacity to our plant for more than double,” Keyes said.
There are cost estimates for this, but she said they are old estimates at this point. In order to get the whole island converted, she said, would be very costly. Potential project areas have been observed already, she said, because there has been interest on Pine Island.
“When we looked at the numbers–just for Pine Island–you’re in the third tier–which is the lower tier, lower priority–I think we included about 200 connections. That’s what we could do without doing improvements to the plant. So, about 200 connections. At that time, our estimate was about $11 mil. So, that gives you kind of a scale of what these types of projects cost,” Keyes said.
After heading to legislators for funding, she said, they were presented with $1.1 million for a design for 90 connections. There has been a contract drawn up for the design services, which should end up going out to bid to better understand construction costs within roughly 12 months, she said.
“It’s difficult right now to estimate construction costs. It’s very market driven, especially in this area–there’s a lot of recovery work going on–there’s a lot of work with all the utilities, but once we put it out to bid, then we’ll be able to report to you–what do those real costs look like?” Keyes said.
She reported that the utility company went back to legislators with an estimate of approximately $4 mil and they were able to obtain the funds. For the project of about 90 connections, there is approximately $6 mil, she said.
There will be reported updates to Pine Island, she said.
Matlacha Civic Association President Carol Scott gave a community update to members regarding a plan for Christmas on the island.
“The Matlacha Civic Association is prepping for holiday time. We’re going to, of course, have our tree lighting–George Williamson has a lot at the corner of Island Avenue and Pine Island Road and we have our tree lighting there every year. Gonzales always gives us a palm tree to decorate, that’s the big event. This year, our plan is, we would like to have a little forest of trees, because we’ve learned the tall Christmas trees–we always seem to get a really bad storm in December and they snap, so we’re looking to do little 6 foot trees, but a lot of them,” Scott said.
The next MCA meeting is on Sept. 29. Scott asked folks to please bring fishing ornaments to help decorate trees.
To watch this meeting in its entirety, visit the Greater Pine Island Civic Association Facebook page.
The next GPICA meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 7, at the First Baptist Church of Pine Island, 5363 Avenue D, Bokeelia.