Originally published in the News-Press by Charlie Whitehead on August 1, 2025
It took an audit conducted in May to discover that the trigger had been missed. When it revealed the oversight, city utilities asked the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to invalidate the results, offering the letter from the lab as evidence.
DEP wasn’t buying it.
“The justifications provided are insufficient,” their June 10 response said.
DEP Assistant District Director David Fiess wrote that the city’s explanation does not indicate there was no problem with the water. He said there are not substantial grounds to indicate the tests were wrong.
His letter also refuses to invalidate four positive tests from March 2024 and two more from April.
Repeated requests to DEP for more information have gone unanswered.
The city has released a summary that showed 14 positive tests during 2024 and three so far in 2025. None of the follow-up tests were positive. None triggered a public notice.
Calusa Waterkeeper calls excuses ‘flimsy’
The Calusa Waterkeeper is an outspoken critic of city utilities.
The organization does its own sampling of local water bodies, often with different results than the city sampling.
“I have to say that city officials often criticized us for not using a certified lab for our sampling but eagerly discounts certified lab data if the results embarrass them,” emailed Waterkeeper secretary Jason Pim.
“The city seems content to operate on assumptions that are convenient to them and then offer up flimsy excuses when they get caught out of compliance.”
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