Virginia Key Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

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We need a lobbyist disclosure. Of course, this won't be an official meeting because we're lacking quorum. Call to order.

Peter Ehrlich.

Here.

Stephen Leidner. Lynn Lewis. Gary Milano. Vincent Richter. Monty Traynor. Nicholas Lopez Jenkins.

Here.

Jackie Collier. Gary Johnson. And Luis Casamayor.

Here.

Thank you.

Are there any requests for absence waivers?

Lynn Lewis requested.

Okay. Good evening, everybody. It's May 27th, one day after Memorial Day holiday, Memorial Day weekend. It's difficult to get a full quorum. I think we did pretty well getting five people. We will be hearing a presentation today from Andrew Patasso on the shoreline and environmental issues affecting Virginia Key Park and Biscayne Bay. And also, if there's anything anybody here would like to bring up, we're here. We can certainly discuss any issue. Or if anybody has, any board members have any ideas for future items for our agendas, you can bring them up now or pass them along to Rafa via email in the next few weeks. Anybody want to discuss anything at the moment? Andrew, can we hear from Andrew? Would that be all right, Rafa? Andrew, would you mind coming up and presenting? We'd love to hear from you. Hopefully we can see your photographs too.

Do you need an HDMI cable to connect, or do you have one there?

This seems to be a standard Mac cable that's connected, but it's not showing up.

Let me see. Do you need to connect, or?

Connected.

Oh, you are connected. Okay. Let me see if communications can.

Hmm.

I just reached out to communication to see if they can connect.

Great. No problem. There he is.

Hey.

And also, thank you.

I'm sorry? Sure, let's do it.

And Rafa, our meetings are taped and are available for the public after, when are they available to the public?

Pretty much immediately, I believe. It records automatically.

Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay.

Try the other port. Well.

Are you guys on Twitter? Andrew's on Twitter. He posts his volunteer work. You've seen it?

Oh, thank you. Oh, thanks. 15, 30,000 pounds. Yeah, we'll get into it. Hopefully this works. If not, I can just talk.

Oh, did he go back to check on his computer?

I would like you guys to see the pictures, though. Yes. They're pretty wild. I'm sure.

Thank you.

But if not, I can definitely email it to you. No, that's not going to work. Okay, yes, I'll email it to you.

Thank you. All right. Amen. Nothing yet? Okay. Okay, let's see if this works. Okay. Yeah.

All right, that's the whole meeting. Bye, everybody.

Okay, so we can get started, I guess. Thank you very much. And Andrew, can you introduce yourself and provide an address for our wonderful professionals?

Sure. My name is Andrew Otaso. I was born and raised in Miami. I currently live in Key Biscayne, and I am a communications consultant. But more to the point, thank you very much for having me here today. It's a pleasure and an honor to speak to you about some of my work that I've done in Virginia Key and elsewhere. But, yeah, I've removed 30,000 pounds of trash from South Florida's coastal ecosystems over the last eight years. That includes, let's see, everything from Crandon Park, Bear Cut Preserve, West Point Mangrove Preserve, some of the spoiled islands offshore, down in the Keys and Rhodes Key, Elliott Key, Sands Key, and then way down in Flamingo in the Coastal Prairie Trail, as well as along the eastern, basically the eastern Everglades. But more to the point, for today's meeting, I've also done a lot of work.

Can you hear me?

Oh, okay. I've also done a lot of work in Virginia Key, specifically in North Point. So just a little bit more background on me. You can see me there with some trash. But okay, please tell me this. There we go. Okay. So yeah, these are examples of some of the items that I've picked up over the last several years. You have everything from, I've removed three different rafts, probably Cuban rafts. A lot of the waste that I pick up usually comes from the land. So essentially, people will litter on the street and when it rains, that goes into the gutters and that goes straight onto the bay and then it winds up in the mangroves. But a lot of the trash is also associated with Lobster and crab traps. So the the truck it's called trap line. It's a dark area rope, essentially, and derelict crab and lobster traps wind up on shore all the time. Tons of styrofoam, tons of plastic, really big marine debris from passing cruise lines, boaters on the weekend, and also dumpers. So, for example, in the lower right-hand corner there, you'll see a tent and a barbecue that somebody left on a beach that I had the joy of picking up I also completed the 2019 Miami Marathon carrying 35 pounds of trash on my back, which was a horrible decision. I don't suggest any of you ever try that. But with that, I learned from that experience. And the following year, I collected a team to share the misery. and we pulled a 135 pound trash cart that shapes like a fish along the length of the Miami Marathon and that helped raise $30,000 for Miami Waterkeeper to basically ensure the sustainability of our shorelines. Very painful, haven't done it since and for a very good reason. And so here we go. This is the work that I've been doing on Virginia Key. Since I believe I was given the permit back in February. So I was able to work from February to April. Unfortunately, my permit expired. And I was told that it can't be renewed until October. So we're paused at the moment. But I removed 3,200 pounds of trash. That's more than a ton and a half of trash. And you have a whole variety of different items that I found out there. On the upper left-hand corner, you can see what is very clearly a dump site. I removed, I think in total, it was something like 38 tires from this area. It's very clear. This happened a while ago because some of the roots... I've been doing this long enough. I can tell how long a piece of trash has been out there. Some of the roots had grown through those trash tires. But there's essentially a hill that then transitions into the mangrove forest. And somebody had gone out there and rolled a bunch of these tires down there. And there they ended up. And that's where I took them out. And right next to that is a 220-pound tractor trailer tire. That does not wash up on shore. I promise you. That does not float. That was left there. And then you have all sorts of different trash that you can see on the bottom side there. So some of it probably did wash ashore. Some of it was probably a hurricane or a large storm that, you know, for example, that sign there that says beach parking only. I bet you that was on a beach somewhere. And then it was washed out into the ocean and then wound up in the Everglades. A lot of styrofoam, a lot of plastic bags, a lot of bottles. But again, everything that you find, everything that we create as a species winds up in the ocean, that winds up in the mangrove. So name an item, I've picked it up. And that's all there on Virginia Key. And that's me on the lower right-hand side with a trash, with like this card essentially. that the Virginia Key Mountain Bike Club was kind enough to lend me. So every weekend I'd go out there on Saturday morning, I'd fill it up with 300, 400, 500 pounds of trash, and the next day they'd come by and haul it out for me, which was very, very nice, because the worst part of this is not picking up trash, it's getting the trash out. So that made my job much easier. So that's basically... my work that I've been doing there or that I've done there earlier this year. And I want to give a very special shout out and a thank you to three different people, Melba, Leiman, who's the waterfront park manager. She's basically helped me coordinate everything I needed to do in order to get this permit. Gloria Anita, she too was a senior park naturalist. She's there on the ground. She's helped me put everything together. And then Nick Salatini from the Virginia Key Motorbike Club. He's the one who would coordinate with me to remove that trash. So I'm not putting it in my Jeep and trying to take it to a dumpster or something. But that's basically my presentation. There's not much more to say, just that I probably picked up maybe a quarter of the area I want to clean up on Virginia Keys. So take my tonnage, multiply it by four, and that's probably what is still remaining there, not to mention what washes up a shore every single day with more tides. I would love to continue this work. I'd love to clean as much of the mangroves as I can. and leave it in as pristine condition as possible. But I'm happy to take any questions you might have.

I have a question. Sure. Have you gone back to places that you've already cleaned up and find a lot more trash again?

That is an excellent question. So it depends where I'm cleaning up. If it's along the coastline, like right on the coastline where the water overlaps the dry land, absolutely. I have cleaned up the same areas dozens of times and removed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds from the same stretch. If you go deeper into the mangroves, those areas remain pretty pristine because the way the trash winds up there is that there needs to be a big storm. There needs to be a big storm surge to lift that trash out of the ocean bottom and bring it into the interior and then drop it there.

And I'm just curious, have you found any treasures in your?

Treasures, yes. The vast majority, well, first off, in the mangroves, the mangroves are one of the most caustic environments you can find. Everything breaks down. The salt and the dirt and the bacteria and the mud and the sun and the heat just will disintegrate everything. But I did find a GoPro. I still have it. It works. And I found a kite board, which I sold for $300. So that's basically the only useful stuff I've ever found in the mangroves. Everything else is very much trash. My friend did find $20. I found a couple wallets, but the money disintegrates. But she did find $20, which I found funny, because in my eight years, I've never found any actual money out there.

I also want to say, I'm sorry, I just want to say thank you for your work. I mean, it's amazing what you're doing. I follow you and what you've been doing. I've seen, heard about you. And thank you. I'm glad there's people out there like you doing that. So thank you. My pleasure.

What was the issue of getting the permit renewed?

Apparently what I was told, again, I'm not in the weeds on the permitting issues. I was told that in the summer they kind of shut down activities given the heat. I understand that. I work for a living, and then I do this as a hobby. But I'm well acquainted with the threats of heat stroke and dehydration. But I'll work through the summer in other areas. I'll probably be back in the bags or other areas to clean up. It's just you have to be very intelligent about when you go out there. Otherwise, you could very well die.

Thank you, Andrew, for sharing your story with us. You have an interesting perspective in that you go out on your own as a hobby to go out and pick up this trash. And this is a real community problem here, where there's a lot of litter, a lot of trash. I mean, what do you see as a solution or ways that we can kind of encourage the community to do better? That's an excellent question.

So before I continue, I want to say I'm definitely not the only person doing this. There's a whole constellation of organizations and individuals who are out there doing this as well. I focus on the mangroves because that's an area that I feel doesn't get a lot of attention, for good reason. It's a very difficult environment to be in. But I think there are a couple things that need to happen. One, we have to build a greater culture of stewardship for the environment. So if you go to other areas, so for instance, I spent a lot of time in Western North Carolina. I love hiking there. And you walk down a trail, you won't find any trash. Because even if someone litters, the next person has this mentality of leave no trace, and they'll pick up that piece of trash and take it with them. For better or worse, Miami doesn't have that at the moment. Not widespread the way it should be. So that's the cultural side of it. There's obviously things individuals can do on their own to reduce their consumption of plastic, but I'm more interested in systemic societal change. So, for example, if I don't ever consume a piece of single-use plastic again for the rest of my life, it will make no difference. to the amount of plastic that winds up in the ocean or in these environments. So you need regulation and you need legislation in order to change it. This is a systems problem. This is from the top down. If you think of it as a stream of trash, I'm at the very far downside of it. I'm as far down as you can go. And if you're relying on people like me and other organizations to clean up trash, We've lost, because if I walk into your house and I see your kitchen sink overflowing, the first thing I do is not grab a mop, I turn off the faucet. And we have to turn off that faucet. In the state of Florida, for example, you have the preemption laws that don't allow for plastic bag bans, for example. That's something that has a detrimental effect on our environment. So municipalities like the city of Miami, or other ones within the county or the county itself can't implement their own policies in order to lessen the use of single-use plastics within their jurisdiction. So things like that need to change.

You know, I saw where the city had put a few rangers on the islands, especially on the busy weekends. How much impact has that had and how many do we have now? Has it increased the... participation is helped out? Or what is the city doing as far as that, as far as personnel on the islands?

So the city, unfortunately, just like the county or like other local organizations, they don't have sufficient resources to, like, they do an excellent job taking care of the resources that they have in their parks. I really do think that. But there are these, there's so much There's so much ground to cover and the problems there beyond trash, right? You have invasive species, you have poachers, you have people that don't respect local environments, you have endangered species as well. So this is a very broad problem. And there really aren't enough local, either city or county employees to really steward these areas, unfortunately. And to your point, you said on more busy weekends. Yeah, absolutely you see more trash on more busy weekends. I can think specifically in Barricade Preserve. If you're driving to Key Biscayne, that smaller bridge between Virginia Key and Key Biscayne on your left-hand side, you see this little beach that's off limits. You'll see it full of jet skiers and boaters. They're there illegally. They have signs every 20 feet that says, do not enter. And they'll leave that, let me see if I can go back. Okay, that tent and that barbecue was right there after a long weekend, after Fourth of July weekend, for example. Like, it's a disaster. And it's just part of it. And part of that is enforcement, right? So whenever I see people there, Yeah, I'm calling Marine Patrol or depending where I am, Florida Fish and Wildlife or City of Miami police and telling them they're trespassers in these areas, go get them. And they usually don't like arrest people or anything. They might hand out a couple of tickets. But once you build that memory in people's heads of, oh, if I go to this area, I'm going to get a ticket, then they're less likely to go there and trash it.

Mr. Chair, I have one other question. You spoke of permitting. Can you talk a little bit about that? Do you have to get a permit to pick up trash?

So for Virginia Key, North Point Park, I did need a permit.

North Point Park? Yes.

And I needed to, I don't even remember how many organizations needed to sign off on it, but it was a lot. Because you have a lot of different intersecting jurisdictions there. You have the critical wildlife area, Bill Sadowski, right offshore and technically the mangroves are part of that. So FWC, they needed to get involved. You had to have city parks involved. Durham was involved. So like it was just a lot of different people that needed to sign off before I was able to start picking up trash there. And hopefully the process is smoother once I get my permit renewed. Fingers crossed I get it renewed.

And does your permit cover the whole county?

No, no, no. So, um, when it comes to County land, so I've been working in, in Berkut preserve for again, eight years. So I know that I have my County handler, so to say, and all I do is coordinate with him, um, that I'm going to be picking up this specific area on this specific time. Here's, um, where you can pick up the trash once I'm done with it. Or like you find, um, usually they're homeless people, but sometimes they're just like, people out camping, there's like an illegal campsite, I'll let them know, I'll send them a pin, like this is exactly where this is, please kick them out, because they do a lot of damage to the local environment, but when it came to the city, yeah, I needed to go through this whole permitting process, which took about two months, I think, and then I was able to start, I wanted to start working last year in November, but I was able to start working in February, and unfortunately only until April, but If it were up to me, I'd be out there every weekend. But I understand. Again, I get it. Very few people know how to pick up trash in the mangroves. It is a very narrow skill set that I and literally a handful of people have. You want to be careful who you're letting out there. Again, I was given a permit for one person. So I don't want to bring 30 people into these environments, because they'll trample everything. They'll do a lot of damage to the environment. I want to go by myself, on foot. It sucks. I mean, there's no way around it. But I do less damage as a result.

Well, thank you for what you do.

Sure. Andrew, quickly. We have an assistant city attorney in the room who might be able to help you with the permitting process. or at least make some introductions to people that maybe you haven't met. Great. Can you get contact, share contact with Andrew? He's obviously a hero and does an incredible job, and we'd like him to have all the permits he needs and get them as easily as possible.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Andrew, I know that you're here speaking to us today from a shoreline committee. How many people like you are there in the city that are watching over the shoreline and guiding us on this

What kind of department? There are some excellent organizations and individuals out there. Debris Free Oceans is one that comes to mind. Volunteer Cleanup. They're basically a platform online where you can go and you can search for cleanups in your areas, whether it's beach cleanup, mangrove cleanup, Everglades cleanup, whatever. Clean this beach up is great. They do some very difficult cleanups down in the Keys and also all over the mangroves and on the beaches. Clean Miami Beach, pretty self-explanatory. They clean Miami Beach. Then down south, you know, you've got, his name is Mangrove Sasquatch. His actual name is Frank. He does great cleanups. He does kayak cleanups. And Manny Rionda on Key Biscayne as well. I'm sure you know Manny well. He's a local hero and he does amazing cleanups, paddle boarding kayak cleanups all the way, like literally around the entire coast of the island. there's again it's it's it's a whole movement of people i'm just a small part of it um and yeah the the reason why you know i actually count the trash and i record my work is because you know though i can make a local difference to a specific mangrove forest if i then take that content and post it online i have an opportunity to educate thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people at a time about the importance of these issues. And that's really what this has been for eight years. This has been a long-running public relations campaign to lift the visibility of these problems.

Andrew, can you give us your information so that people could watch you on Instagram and Twitter?

Sure, yeah, it's at Andrew Otazo, O-T-A-Z-O. You can find me on Instagram, you can find me on Twitter, and yeah, that's where I post all my cleanups. The same address? Yes, yeah, for both Twitter and Instagram, yes.

So Andrew, I have one more question. Sure. Do you go back to the same area over time?

Absolutely.

So have you thought about putting together a publication and sharing that with some of the government agencies? Because I think that information is really important as far as to document what type of trash is recurring on these shorelines.

That's a good idea. There are definitely very different types of trash that you find out there. Along the coastline, you'll find these lighter pieces of trash that are very obviously brought in. If I go into the hardwood hammocks, there's no shoreline trash there. Obviously, it's too high in elevation, but you will find these squatters that will be out there, and they abandon these different campsites for years. I've come across a decade-old squatter camp, but there'll be hundreds of pounds of trash there. But I definitely do inform people at the county of where these camps are or what I find. Specifically, what I do more than anything else is when I notice that someone had gone in there and disturbed the environment. So, for example, there was a bank robber. in Bearcut Preserve a few years ago that had cut down, I got people's attention, that cut down a bunch of the red mangroves, which was, it's illegal to do in the state of Florida, and he'd built this camp there, and so I helped the county track down this guy, and they went and got him. That's because I go back to these areas, I know where people set up camp. It's like there's certain locations because I just know these areas that well that people just keep going back to that I just know every year there will be another mess there.

Thank you.

My pleasure. Any other questions from fellow Key Biscayne residents?

My pleasure. Thank you.

Thank you very, very much for joining us this evening.

Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do it. Thank you for inviting me.

Potential agenda items, please email them. Andrew, thank you very, very much for taking time and coming. Would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn? I will. Second. Motion to adjourn.

Thank you.