Some Gulfport residents want the city to sue St. Petersburg. Others want Gulfport to stand up for itself some other way, they told Gulfport councilwoman Yolanda Roman. Although everyone had different solutions, the group meeting with her, Gulfport Public Works Director Don Sopak and Gulfport City Manager Jim O'Reilly Friday morning had one message: They're mad as hell, and they don't want Gulfport to take it anymore.
Several residents asked city staff to bring suit agains the city of St. Petersburg (such a lawsuit would have to be council-initiated rather than staff-initiated, O'Reilly told them); others feel Gulfport should have warned residents sooner; some said they didn't want warning, they wanted St. Petersburg to never contaminate Gulfport waters and estuaries again. One person, James Scott, suggested the city use its power to get St. Petersburg to agree to never pump sewage into Gulfport again.
Mostly, though, Gulfportians say they're tired of St. Petersburg treating its neighbor like it doesn't matter.
"A lot of us are feeling that we're the old dog that the farmer just kicks," Marina-area resident Rose-Marie Seawall said.
Some residents turned their anger on Gulfport, at which point the O'Reilly showed a rare spurt of indignancy .
"The city of St. Petersburg, not Gulfport, put 15.6 million gallons of effluent water into Clam Bayou," O'Reilly said. "We're here as your representatives. I'm basically at wit's end, [just] as you are. I don't have the authority to fix their system."
It's a shitty deal, no matter how you look at it. For three days this week, St. Petersburg pumped an estimated 15.6 million gallons of raw sewage into Clam Bayou, the last tidal estuary on Boca Ciega Bay. This decision came about because of heavy rains and an overloaded sewer system, according to St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman's office, which also released a statement claiming the sewage would get treated prior to going into Clam Bayou. The sewage received no treatment before entering Clam Bayou's northeast settlement pond – intended, according to engineers at the Southwest Florida Water Management District – for stormwater, not poopy water.
Sucks to be Gulfport. If they'd done this themselves, they could fix it. The city manager could go to council and ask for the money to fix the sewers. But Gulfport didn't do this; St. Petersburg did. And, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (irony implied), St. Petersburg's actions were totally within the law.
St. Petersburg started pumping sewage into Clam Bayou Tuesday morning and stopped Thursday afternoon.
Since Tuesday, Gulfport's Public Works Department has tested Clam Bayou's north pier and Gulfport Beach daily. Public Works Director Don Sopak said test results for Clam Bayou and Boca Ciega Bay showed fecal coliform levels so high they skewed the test. Fecal coliform of less than 199 per 100 milliliter of saltwater indicate good water quality; historically, Boca Ciega Bay tests at under 20. The test tops (or bottoms) out at 600. The results have all hit 600, at which part, Sopak says, the test fails to reliably measure fecal coliform levels.
Part of the issue lies in ownership: St. Petersburg, Gulfport, the state, and private homeowners all share ownership of Clam Bayou. St. Petersburg pumped the sewage into its side of the bayou. The bayou flows from St. Petersburg, through a state aquatic preserve to Gulfport, and into Boca Ciega Bay.
St. Petersburg, Sopak says, told him they would sample their side of Clam Bayou. Sopak and O'Reilly told residents they had requested the results from St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg shared its results with Gulfport Friday afternoon and city staff posted those results online. They assured residents they would post the results of Gulfport's daily samples online as well.
Those results showed the Gulfport side of Clam Bayou, including behind private homes and near the kayak launch by the Gulfport Municipal Marina, as having "too many colonies ... present for accurate counting."