Episode 17: Helping Homeowners Connect to Sewer Systems in Priority Communities

City and county governments know that getting people off of septic systems and onto sewer systems will help keep the lagoon cleaner. 

But, cost is often the main roadblock. Today we’ll tell you about how one city is partnering with its community groups to get working families connected. 

Next, on One Lagoon – One Voice.

Hi, I am Duane De Freese, executive director of the IRL Council and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. Welcome to our One Lagoon, One Voice Podcast.

Each week, myself or one of my staff members will host leaders in the community, scientists along the lagoon, people who know a lot about the system to talk about some of the problems.

And most importantly, some of the solutions to solve the Indian River Lagoon’s health and make sure it’s great for future generations. So let’s get the show started and let’s talk a little lagoon.

Welcome everybody to today’s podcast on One Lagoon, One Voice. Today we’re going to talk to a few people in Vero Beach, Florida, who have partnered together to get a really unique, really innovative program [that’s] going to help working families convert their homes from septic systems to sewer systems.

So my guests today are Judy Orcutt from the Clean Water Coalition of Indian River County, and Matt Mitts, Director of Public Works for the city of Vero Beach. Welcome both of you.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

Great.

Yeah.

Judy, why don’t you start, give us a little bit about who you are and the work of the Clean Water Coalition — who you represent.

Okay, so I’m a Florida girl. I grew up in Winter Park, Florida, back when the lakes were clear and Disney hadn’t come there yet. I moved to Vero Beach in 1980 and was fortunate to see the lagoon when it was also clear and had a sandy bottom. So I’ve had a long history in Florida [and] watching things change.

So when my children graduated from high school, it was time for me to get to work to do something about the lagoon. I started working with a bunch of nonprofits in the area. And by 2016, we decided we needed to start an overarching nonprofit called the Clean Water Coalition to try and bring all the environmental groups together just to focus on the water, the lagoon and our fresh waters.

In 2016, I started on the Indian River Lagoon Management team, and I’ve learned a whole lot working on the NEP Management Board. So thanks for having me – great to be here.

Absolutely. Thank you for coming on. And Matt, tell us about yourself and the work that you do in the city.

Yeah, hi, Kathy. Thanks for having us, [we] appreciate everything the Lagoon Council does – it’s a great organization.

I can say I’ve been with the city of Vero Beach for about 15 years and [I’m] now the Public Works Director. And I can say my experiences kind of mirror what Judy mentioned. I was born and raised here and saw the lagoon one way when I was a child. Growing up, starting my career about 15 years ago, the Lagoon had a focus.

There’s always been a focus since at least the ’70s on some of the environmental issues. But just over time it’s risen and the quality’s become worse in the water. I think there’s more public desire now to restore the lagoon. So I’m excited to do what I can working for the city to help manifest that and all the opportunities that are on the horizon at the local level, at the city [and] all the way up to the state and federal agencies. It’s nice to see everybody come together.

Alright, Matt, before we get on rolling on the septic to sewer program, tell us a little bit about the whole variety of programs that Vero Beach has been working on to reduce pollution. I know you’ve got a stormwater plan and a utility. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, [at] the city of Vero Beach, we’re trying to be comprehensive in our approach. Rob Bolden at the city of Vero Beach has really led the way here historically with the water and sewer department – he’s the director of water and sewer.

We’ve done things like [create] a deep injection well [that] we installed in a 2010-ish timeframe that got rid of all our discharges from the sewer plant to the lagoon. From there we have the STEP program — which we’ll talk more in depth about — and a variety of other projects such as pulling water from the Indian River Farms main relief canal to supplement irrigation water.

So we’re using stormwater that normally would be pollution loading through the lagoon and turning it into a resource. And then on the stormwater side — where I deal with more public works in the city — we just completed a stormwater management plan that includes a list of water quality projects.

Historically, we are focused on quantity, just trying to prevent homes from flooding. The focus has now shifted to what can we do to improve water quality. That’s a more challenging issue because the city has developed — there’s not a lot of land available.

So we looked at the entire city of where we could put projects, and we are implementing a stormwater utility to hopefully continue and pay for these things and get grants from state and federal agencies to leverage our funding we get locally.

And so Judy, the coalition has been really supportive of all of the work that the city’s doing with stormwater, right. [Do] you have any thoughts you want to add to that?

I’m not the city representative, so to speak. Our board kind of shares some of this responsibility. So I work closer with the county and we have a couple of people who are working really close with the city. But in general, we have advocates that are at every city council meeting [discussing] what the city’s doing with stormwater.

And we’re really excited that now there’s a group of projects that we can kind of point to for individuals who don’t really understand what we’re talking about. Then you can point to a project, and when it actually comes online, you can say, “See what this project has done.”

I think that’s so important because storm water is just like septic to sewer, you know, out of sight, out of mind. People don’t understand that storm water is the transport system of all the pollution. So we are very supportive. We’re so glad they have this plan and we are very supportive of the stormwater utility. We think it’s long past time for us to have this funding available.

Yeah, that’s great. And you know, we’ve been doing that in our program, too. Every project is progress. And a lot of these programs are really invisible. People just count them as they drive by as another construction project. They don’t really know what it’s doing. And sometimes we’re not really great at telling them what these projects are doing.

Right.

And so it’s been a challenge to get that perception that, “Eh, nobody’s doing anything to kind of combat that.”

Right.

There’s a lot going on and the projects are making a lot of progress. So, yeah, I appreciate you saying that.

Alright, turning to the wastewater side of things, Matt, I want to hear about the STEP program that the city has instituted and the things that the city’s doing in terms of wastewater and planning for getting everybody off septic and onto sewer. Then we’re going to roll into how the coalition is helping you do that with working families and people in our priority communities.

Alright. Well, to summarize what the city’s done thus far with septic to sewer, as I mentioned, the city had — as most municipalities did — a centralized sewer system. It was pretty conventional. You use gravity to carry sewage from homes to a system. And then there’s pump stations scattered throughout the city to pump that effluent and that sewage to a central sewer plant.

The city’s sewer plant is currently on the Indian River Lagoon at 17th Street in Indian River Boulevard. And the city has been looking to relocate that to our airport property further upland for some time. And that project is underway. As I mentioned, all the municipalities had a permanent right to discharge that effluent once treated to a certain level to the lagoon. The city stopped that with a deep injection well in the 2010 timeframe.

In addition to that, the city also had — mostly on the Barrier Island and then also locations — fewer locations on the mainland where (for whatever historical reason) the central sewer was not installed. So these homes would have a well for their water supply or possibly just potable water that was sent to the homes, but not sewer service.

So to go back and install a gravity sewer is very expensive. It [costs] $40,000 to $60,000 [per] home now. It’s heavy construction. It’s very complicated. It tears up the road for a long time. So you know, Rob found a really good idea — that I think some other communities implemented — called a STEP, S-T-E-P, whichI believe stands for Septic Tank Effluent Pump Program. Let me double check that.

So the STEP program is basically taking out the traditional septic tank and drain field on the property that pollutes. And all those nutrients get carried off in the groundwater to the lagoon. We take that piece out and we install a relatively small inch and a half or two and a half inch pressurized pipe that’s been run throughout the entire city to serve these properties without sanitary sewer. And it runs along the road in front of their properties. It was relatively easy to install with directional boring. And because it was a relatively small pipe, it wasn’t as intrusive for construction. And we ran that throughout the entire city. So every home in the city that has a septic tank could hook up to the sewer today if they wanted to.

And thus far, it’s getting close to 50% [hookups] since 2015 when the STEP program was initiated. That kind of leads us into some of the great work that Judy’s group is doing to help. There is a cost for these people to hook up. It’s about roughly $15,000, which is certainly not cheap, but it is much cheaper than a traditional impact assessment you would receive from a municipality [for] installing a traditional sewer system.

So this program is kind of a win-win. It’s relatively cheap for the residents and it’s less expensive than the traditional sewer. The kind of carrot program the city has is, instead of going through the entire city and mandating everybody hooks up today, when it started in 2015, we said, “You can’t build any new septic tanks, and once your septic tank fails, you can’t get a permit to fix it.”

So we kind of used a natural order if there was someone who wanted to hook up for environmental reasons, just out of the goodness of their heart, they certainly have that ability. But for the homeowners who had a drain field fail, the cost to fix that is getting close to what it costs to hook up to STEP anyway. So it was very cost competitive. They’re doing something environmentally friendly and it’s cost-effective.

And then for a new home, it’s a no-brainer. The cost to install a drain field is pretty on par with STEP’s [cost]. So [it’s] for new construction where someone rebuilds a home — and we see a lot of this on the Barrier Island where they knocked down the home with the sep tank they hook up.

So now everyone’s [home] over time would come into compliance and we’ll talk about other things later about accelerating that. But for someone without the means, there would not be an incentive for them to ever hook up early until it was mandated by a failure or a future mandated date. So that kinda leads into what the Clean Water Coalition’s doing, and we’re very appreciative of their efforts for this.

Yeah, that’s great. And I’m kind of wondering about [that]. Judy, how did you get involved and how did the coalition get involved with trying to get homeowners to hook into [the] sewer?

So in 1990, the county actually passed [a] regulation that required all new subdivisions to provide sewer. Now the challenge is retrofitting the old neighborhoods that were constructed prior to that.

See, for the new homes, the cost to connect is built into the price of the mortgage. But now when you’re trying to retrofit these old neighborhoods, it’s homeowners who have to stroke a check to do it. Seven years ago when the city started installing the STEP lines, the Clean Water Coalition — and even prior to our being formed — the Indian River Neighborhood Association, along with their Lagoon committee, went to every homeowner’s meeting and we were kind of like the front men before Rob told the details about what it was going to cost to connect.

We would always tell the story about how important it was to connect and how the nutrients impact the lagoon. And we’d tell the whole story about seagrass demise and whatever. So we had actually worked pretty closely as citizen advocates for a long time. Then here we are years later and we’re only at a 47% connection rate.

By the way, when the STEPs started being installed, it was installed on the beach side first, and then the last areas to be installed were the mainland side. On the mainland side are where our oldest neighborhoods are, and the lower in value of the properties and so forth. It’s not so much the retirement community as the working community. And so the connection rate over time on the beach, you know, it’s a little bit better than it is on the mainland.

We realized that we were never going to get a hundred percent connection rate if somebody didn’t figure out a way to help these folks connect who really, truly couldn’t afford to just write the check. So because the actual cost to connect is about $15,000, that was when we had worked with the city on being an advocate for the STEP system.

Ironically, Rob from the Indian River Land Trust was talking to the city because he actually had a donor, and as people probably realize, the Land Trust has purchased the majority of the riverfront property in Indian River County. They’ve preserved that so it will not be built on, and to preserve it for nature. So there this donor’s like, “Well, we’ve already bought all this land. There’s no more riverfront land available, what can I do?” And that was when she became educated that septic systems were a problem. She said, “I would like to help find ways to help people connect to septic systems.” So Rob put us together with Ken, and [Ken] offered a challenge grant.

Anyway, the bottom line is we ended up raising $225,000 — part of it from Clean Water Coalition, part of it from donors who gave to us, part of it from the Land Trust, and then part of it from Indian River Community Foundation. So with that money, we were able to start this kind of pilot program to see if people would connect if they didn’t have to stroke that big check to connect.

So as your discussions with the city went on [with] the Economic Opportunities Council, [and] the Land Trust went on, how did you all get together and develop the plan for what you all wanted to do?

Tell us a little bit about the role of each partner and how things kind of rolled out and how you got the city to be okay with things and help you out with that.

Okay. So when we started working with the Land Trust, they were particularly interested in putting some money in super high impact areas. They really were interested in [the] lagoon front, but we were more interested in helping the lower income people because we felt like the lagoon front people. When push comes to shove, they can figure out how to pay for it if they need to.

So we settled on a neighborhood that’s in the mainland of Vero Beach called the Atlantic Boulevard Neighborhood. Basically it’s close to the airport and it’s right along the main relief canal. So that made the Land Trust happy, right along the main relief canal, which leads straight to the lagoon.

And it’s a neighborhood that has lower property values and it’s a working class neighborhood. We had done some research through United Way. And United Way had an ALICE report that they published in 2023. The ALICE report indicated that 45% of all the households in Indian River County struggle to pay for basic needs.

And Judy, let me interrupt just for a second. For our listeners at home who don’t know what that means, tell us what ALICE is about.

So the ALICE report from the United Way did studies of the families and [how] they were not able to meet the basic needs of childcare, clothing, medical, [and] so forth.

The ALICE report stands for Asset Limited Income Constrained Families. And 45% of all the households in Indian River County do meet those ALICE criteria for struggling to meet their basic needs. If they’re struggling to meet their basic needs, they certainly aren’t going to be able to write a check for $15,000 to connect their septic system. Or if their septic system fails, some of these families we heard were actually paying for a septic company to pump them out, but then they’d have to do it a month later [and] pump it out again just to keep functioning.

So they were spending a lot of money to just egg along. The community foundation came in to help us with the final little leg of our challenge grant from the Land Trust. So they were able to help us with $10,000 just to get us over the edge. And that was wonderful.

One of the really important partners that we came across — and it took us a while to come across them — was the Economic Opportunities Council. The Economic Opportunities Council has a lot of programs that you might be familiar with — Head Start being one of them. But they also have programs that help people if they get in a fix and they need help with their utility bill, that sort of thing.

So there are other programs they’re working on. And when we met with them and told them what we were trying to come up with, they said, “Oh, well we can help you find those applicants because we deal with those populations all the time because they’re coming to us for assistance for other reasons.” So that worked out great.

And we don’t have to qualify the applicants. The EOC qualifies the applicants and then lets the city know who is financially qualified to meet our criteria — I don’t think I’ve mentioned the criteria. The criteria we settled on was you have to make less than 300% of the federal poverty level.

That has to be quite a boon to the working families in the area. That $15,000 is a lot of money to be just handed over if many of them probably don’t even have that in the bank. You know, how would you get that money if you’re struggling to meet your basic needs? So that’s been a real boon I would imagine. Have families been lining up to get on board with that?

Well, that’s an interesting question because I think these families are a little reluctant. They’re a little bit shy, or maybe not particularly trusting. They’re a little bit afraid — of course, they don’t want to lose their home. So they’re afraid of these programs.

We actually do a lot of handholding and so does the EOC to convince these families that this is okay, “We’re here to help you.” I should probably explain first how we help them. Once they meet the income level of less than three times the federal poverty level, they also have to be in a homestead exempt piece of property — own the home and have homestead exemption.

So then they go to the EOC. They make a simple phone call, go to the EOC, the EOC determines that they’re qualified and then the paperwork begins shuffling between the EOC and the city. It’s quite a bit of paperwork because part of doing the STEP system is you have to allow an easement on your property for the city to install, you know, for the equipment to be installed. It’s a lot of technical paperwork — so these folks need a lot of explanation.

But once they get through the paperwork, fortunately the city has been very cooperative in this program. And the woman at the city who’s actually working with the clients too, she’s got a big heart. So she’s a great person to work with. The city hasn’t offered their portion of incentives, too. So there’s a $3,390 connection fee, which the city waives.

The city has been wonderfully cooperative in this program and really supportive. Matt, why don’t you tell people what their incentives are for this program to help us out?

Why yes, as you mentioned, whenever someone connects to the city sewer plant, there’s typically some kind of upfront capital impact fee. You’ll hear the term impact fee or connection fee. The intent of that fee is to kind of have the customer pay their fair share of the cost of the sewer plant. It’s kind of at a big picture level.

So this is a big discussion when you talk about [how much money] the septic to sewer programs is kind of usin. Just make up another county as an example — [I] don’t wanna point fingers at any particular agency. But let’s say 50% of your customers are on sewer now, they’ve paid for that sewer plant, they’ve paid for that capacity, and now you [have] to expand it to the remaining 50% that haven’t contributed a dollar towards the maintenance, the operation, or the construction of that plant.

Utilities have to be fair and equitably assign those costs to the customers, but it is a bit unfair to say, double your capacity and then not have those new customers compensate the existing customers for what they’ve historically paid. So that’s kind of the idea of the impact fee.

With the considerations for the city, [they] don’t want to leave anybody behind on this. Eventually everybody’s going to have to connect. Luckily the city has a program to get everybody on board. This is an incentive that is somewhat discretionary on the city’s behalf to waive some of these impact fees.

Because we’re the agency, we own our utility, so that gives us some authority to do so. And that’s part of the incentive we’re offering — we can’t waive everything. There’s capital for the equipment itself — that’s a set cost from a vendor to buy a pump [and] to buy a tank.

I don’t think we offer incentives in that regard, but for other fees that are more discretionary, the city has latitude and our city council has supported that. So that’s something we’re trying to do to get the whole community to connect.

That’s fantastic. I really think that this is kind of a role model for other cities in how to partner with your community to get things done and make sure that everybody can get onto sewer from septic — that’s going to be a big help for the lagoon.

What are your thoughts — and this is to both of you, either of you can answer on both. How do you think about this as being sort of a model for other communities to accomplish getting people onto the sewer? Do you think it’s been working well?

I know you’re just kind of at the beginning stages of it, but give us some lessons learned. If there was another community that wanted to do this and they called you up, what would you tell them? Matt, you could probably take this one.

Yeah, I’ve learned a lot. Like I said, I’ve been in the lagoon looking at the big picture level for a long time. And whenever you talk about this stuff, you know, when someone houses floods, they don’t care about the environment. They just want that water gone. This is kind of the dilemma with restoring the lagoon — the amount of infrastructure and public works projects you have to do to make this happen is enormous.

I think something that the Lagoon Council’s done a great job of is being an advocate for saying, “Well, the lagoon generates $8 billion a year.” I think that study is being updated and I imagine that number is greater now. Imagine how much revenue the lagoon would generate if it was fully restored, all the fishing, all of the maritime, all of the property values that would skyrocket if the lagoon was in the condition it was a hundred years ago before land development. I mean, it would be a completely different picture for this community. So, it’s hard. You have to look long-term at the cost.

I can say one thing that we’ve learned from the STEP program is a model that other communities can use — it’s spreading out the load. And with the STEP program, we are going to have a date certain that people have to connect. But when we started it, there were some grants and opportunities for people to have an incentive to connect early.

I believe we had grants through St. John’s water management district to hook up and give those customers some kind of discount for connecting early. There was a financial incentive, so that took care of the people with means. They had an incentive, “Okay, I’m going to save a certain percentage of the cost if I hook up now.” Then, as with everything with infrastructure, it’s always going to be more expensive in the future. So [it’s important] having that distribution and not forcing everybody to connect at once because this is what’s a deal killer.

If you were to go to this community with a traditional sewer and say each one of these properties is going to be assessed $40,000 to $60,000, that’s going to be on your tax bill for the next 10, 20, 30 [years], whatever loan and financing the government can get for it. Those residents are going to riot and talk to their city council or county commissioner and say, “Do we have to do this? Is there a mandate?” And that’s something you’re seeing on the other end of the state now with the legislation that’s being passed that’s saying Florida has to connect by date certain.

You’re going to see pushback from the community saying, “We don’t have the means, our residents can’t afford to do this.” I think something that Vero can serve as a model is say, it can be done if you look far enough ahead and you have the foresight and will and determination to do it. But if you do the minimum and wait for the state to mandate it, it’s going to be expensive. It’s not going to be popular.

At the end of the day, we’re not going to see the lagoon restored. So I think that’s why this model works for the city — not everybody has to pay and connect at once. When your system fails you, you’re not losing any money. When you built your home, let’s say in the ’90s, installed that septic tank, paid $20,000, $30,000 for it, you’re going to get the entire life out of it. But once it fails, you’re not going to get a new one, you’re going to get something better.

I think that has helped the community digest a very large pill of the cost of this. And I think that’s something that can be used as a model for other communities.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s the old ‘how do you eat an elephant’ idea, right? You take one bite at a time and spreading those costs out is certainly very much common sense and kind of just makes the whole thing more palatable.

Judy, what are your thoughts on that? You as an advocate and the coalition, I can foresee you all out there giving talks to other communities on how to do this. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, one of the things that probably makes this work is the fact that the lines are in the ground. If the lines weren’t already in the ground, it would be hard for the Clean Water Coalition to help these residents connect. It’s harder to work in communities where they have to do the infrastructure from the ground up. You know, start with the gravity sewer line or start at the very beginning.

We didn’t finish talking about how we help these residents connect. I’ll just summarize that also. The city offers that connection fee waiver, and then there’s equipment that the family has to put on their property. And in place of the drain field and the septic system, they put the STEP system in place — it’s equipment.

So for this program, the city charges the homeowner $540 for an initial payment to purchase the equipment, and then they finance it over 10 years at 0% interest. The final cost of the program is for the electrical and the plumbing for the equipment to be installed. That’s where the Clean Water Coalition comes in. We pay approximately $6,000 per house and this has been a really effective thing to do.

[What] other cities should listen up to is the fact that we wait until we have five homeowners approved in an area, and then we put it out to bid to all the plumbers in groups of five. The price that we’re getting for the plumbing is a good savings from what it would be if it was a one-off plumbing job. So we’re paying about $6,000 to connect all the plumbing and electrical. And we possibly may have some additional costs of landscaping, but not frequently — it should be an infrequent occurrence.

That’s where it’s a little challenging to work in other areas because there’s certainly other neighborhoods that would be the same kind of income level that are going to need just as much assistance as these city of Vero Beach downtown areas. But if the plumbing lines aren’t already in the ground, it’s hard to help the homeowners.

Yeah, I think [that’s] a great point, Judy. I didn’t think about that until you mentioned it as having the lines in place.

That reminded me, I think we’re kind of talking to our audience that maybe already knows what this is, but for people who [dont], I don’t think we explain how the STEP system works. Basically, we replace a customer’s septic tank and drain field with just the vault — the septic tank portion. Their home connects the same way.

There’s a discharge from the home to some kind of container. Then in that container we have a pump that uses pressure to pump out to a relatively small line out in the road. That’s why [with a] gravity sewer, you have a six or eight inch pipe. Since we have a grinder that grinds the material in the customer’s sewage and then has pressure, the pipe doesn’t have to be as big. So that’s why the STEP system works the way it does. I just wanted to mention that.

So the other additional benefit to these homeowners is the fact that once this tank and pump is put on the owner’s property, they have no more maintenance to worry about.

The city then maintains the little alarm on the outside of the house and if something goes wrong with the system, there’s a 24-hour [per] day phone number for them to call. There’s already been 800 and something of these installed in Vero Beach, and they seem to be very reliable [without] having problems.

But even in a power outage, the tank is large enough to hold — Matt, you can straighten me out if I’m wrong — several days worth of waste before you’d run into a problem. The solids that are going to gather in the tank would be then pumped out on a regular basis by the city of Vero Beach. It’s all maintained by the city.

That’s a real advantage to the homeowners — they will have a sewer bill to pay. So that’s a monthly cost, but everybody’s going to have a sewer bill to pay.

That it seems like a fair price for getting forever maintenance on your system though. That’s not a bad deal.

Yeah, so I believe that the 10 year 0% interest loan is put on the properties. It’s a non-ad alarm assessment similar to… let’s say you live on a dirt road and you pave it. You know, sometimes the residents chip in for that and that cost goes on their tax bill. So it’s a similar capital expense.

But as Judy mentioned [about] the city, we’re kind of concerned about the septic tank and our pumps and stuff — that’s something Judy mentioned. The reliability is another benefit or model for communities. Rob was able to find the exact tanks, the exact pumps that he thinks are good and reliable and shops them out. Then we buy them in bulk so we get a decent deal on them and we store them in our warehouse for the plumbers to pick up when they do the installation.

So there’s the advantage of [having] control over the quality. It isn’t just a customer buying a pump and then we have to maintain some brand that we don’t know of and we have to stock a bunch of brands.

Yeah, that’s great. It’s sort of like one stop shopping — you buy in bulk, you get the discounts for that. That’s great.

Alright, well thank you guys. [I’m] so appreciative of you coming on to talk about this. I think it’s such an innovative program and it’s going to do a lot of good for the people in Vero Beach, particularly those in the working communities. I think this is just a terrific, terrific program.

I can’t wait to hear your next updates and hopefully we can bring you to a council meeting at some point and get a presentation so you can share that with the whole Lagoon community.

Yeah.

Let’s get your web information. So before we sign off, I want to give you both an opportunity to give some closing thoughts if you have them, and let people know how they can find you on the internet or on social media.

Judy, you want to go first on that?

Sure, I’ll be glad to. The Clean Water Coalition would certainly welcome donations to help us with this project. We’re totally run on donations and should I mention the grant?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. We’re thrilled to announce the fact that the Indian River Lagoon Council has awarded us with a grant so that we can expand this project in more areas. So by October, I believe the grant will be funded and hopefully do another 30 or so homes. So we’re thrilled about that.

Private donations are welcome to Clean Water Coalition, PO Box 2171 Vero Beach, 32961. And you can look us up on the web at cwcirc.org. But most importantly, if you know of someone who lives in the city of Vero Beach and is an ALICE type of resident, someone who’s struggling to meet their basic needs, please tell them to call the Economic Opportunities Council. That’s who does the screening for this program.

We have funding available, it’s going to go on a first come first serve basis. And the two ladies at the EOC that are helping us are Judy and Angela. The phone number is (772)-562-4177. They also have on their website some information about the program. Our website does, too, but if you want to look at theirs, you would go to that website, EOCOV, Economic Opportunity Council of Indian River County. So it’s eocofirc.net. They have a programs tab, and you tab down and there’s a septic tank, effluent pump system tab, and you can open that up and it tells you all about the program. So encourage people to apply.

That’s great. You sent me something this morning that had a QR code on it. If we post that on our website, where does that go? Does that go to the EOC website or to your website?

It goes to the EOC website.

Okay, perfect. So they can go directly to that and we’ll get that posted on our website.

Good. Thank you.

Great. And Matt, why don’t you give us your handles and social contacts and all that?

Yeah, I just wanted to say a big thanks to the Clean Water Coalition in our neighborhood association and the Lagoon Council. Something you’ll hear our city council mention a lot is public private partnerships and to get the lagoon cleaned up. It can’t just be municipalities and governments. We really need these local organizations that get the resident support and buy-in for these things to be successful.

So I just want to say a big thanks for that. The city’s information, you can find everything at the city’s website, www.covb.org — C-O-V-B as in the city of Vero Beach. Under the water and sewer department, you can find general information of how the STEP program works, the equipment and a contact number for a water and sewer and utility department that can help get you more information on the mechanics of it.

You can also go to our GIS MAP gallery that has a STEP system dashboard that shows you how much nutrients your house would remove if you hooked up to STEP — and every house adds up. This is one of our biggest projects in the BMAP program that’s going to help reduce nutrients to the lagoon. So we are very proud of it and want to see it continue and blossom.

I know one question you had, Kathy, is that the city is mandating that all residents connect by June 1st, 2028 in advance of the state mandates of 2030. I can’t remember the Senate bill number, but the state did require that. So that’s going to be a discussion in the future — we’re going to see communities go through how to hook up by the deadline.

Right, right. Alright, well thanks again to Judy and Matt for coming on today. Very much appreciate it and it was a great talk.

All right, thanks Kathy. We appreciate you and everything the Lagoon Council’s doing. Thanks for these programs and the public education.

You’re welcome.

Thank you so much, Kathy, for having us on. It’s been a pleasure and it’s really fun to be able to talk about this program. We’re working hard to make it a success, and we appreciate everything the council’s doing. Thank you.