|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Miami-Dade County Commission voted on Tuesday to move forward with the purchase of the La Quinta Inn on Caribbean Drive in Cutler Bay. Ron Book, the combative chair of the Homeless Trust spoke forcefully about the need to find a place to house the growing unsheltered elderly
population.
The process still requires at least one more round of voting by the Commission and the signature or veto by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
The county will be spending $14 million for the motel, plus another almost
$900,000 to retrofit kitchens into the micro spaces. That’s $4 million more
for the 107-room motel than the two state-required appraisals claim that the
complex is worth.
However, what nobody is talking about is that the motel site is
contaminated with known carcinogens and chemicals that pose a grave risk
to the health of persons exposed.
How do I know?
I know that it’s standard procedure for the county to require an
Environmental Assessment Report (ESA) before it buys any real property
like the motel.
I made a public records request for the ESA. Here’s what I found.
Baywood Hotels, the company selling the motel, did have its own
environmental survey conducted around September 2020 when it bought
the motel and shared that with the county in March 2023. Baywood’s
environmental survey claimed that there were no known sources of
pollution near the motel property.
That was not true. A quick check of county records showed that a Dry
Cleaner operated for an extended period to the immediate northwest of
the motel.
Before the 1980s, dry cleaners often disposed of their cleaning solutions by
just dumping them down storm drains. Today, any site that is near where a
dry cleaner was is assumed to be contaminated.
The failure of the Baywood Hotels report to admit to a nearby potential
source of contamination prompted Wilbur Mayorga, PE, Chief of the
Environmental Monitoring & Restoration Division of DERM, to recommend
that a Phase I ESA be conducted by the county at the La Quinta Inn.
The gears of any bureaucracy grind slowly. The county directed the
company that monitors environmental hazards at Miami International
Airport to conduct the survey at the motel.
The county’s Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources oversaw
the Phase I ESA and the contractor drilled a well on the edge of the
property and drew groundwater samples for testing.
The tests revealed the presence of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS)
and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). PFOS and PFOA are used to impart
stain-resistance to clothing and were common components of dry-cleaning
fluid.
The first round of testing showed levels of PFOS and PFOA well above the
permissible toxicity level under standards set by the federal Environmental
Protection Agency. That called for a second round of tests from that well,
which still showed PFOS and PFOA at prohibited levels.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, exposure to PFOS and
PFOA can resulted in increases in the level of dangerous cholesterol, lower
antibody response to some vaccines, changes in liver enzymes (which can
lead to liver damage and liver failure), pregnancy-induced hypertension and
preeclampsia (which can lead to damage to or death of the fetus), and
decreases in birth weight.
Exposure to PFOA also results in increased rates of kidney and testicular
cancers. Other investigative agencies have linked PFOS with a higher
chance of developing a broader spectrum of cancers, heart disease, and
diabetes.
The county’s contractor recommended that further monitoring wells
be drilled on the La Quinta Inn property to verify that the source of the
chemicals and to determine the shape of the contamination plume. It called
for a Phase II ESA to be conducted. It is from those wider tests and results
that the county could formulate a plan to remove the toxins, if that is even
possible.
From the documents produced in response to my public records request, it
appears that no new wells have been drilled at the motel property and no
further testing has been done.
The effects of PFOA and PFOS appear after long-term exposure. That
might not be a problem for a guest who only stays a night or two in a motel.
But when these motel rooms are turned into apartments, the residents will
be staying for months and even years.
We may, in effect, be moving the homeless onto what could turn into an
EPA Superfund cleanup site.
And the cruelest part of all of this is that the motel will be housing the poor
elderly — people whose physical conditions and immune systems already
are weakened. Living at the La Quinta Inn will put them in further jeopardy.
If the county goes forward with the purchase, it will not be just procuring a
quaint 107-room motel. It will be buying into a tsunami of lawsuits by any
and every elderly resident who develops any of the conditions that are
listed above.
In a county with over 19,000 lawyers, I’m sure that some are already
salivating while reading this column over the size of the fees they imagine
they could extract. And understand that the sovereign immunity granted to
Miami-Dade County by state law wouldn’t even offer the coverage of a fig
leaf in federal court.
I am sure that the appraisers who valued the property were never told
about the contamination at the motel by PFOA and PFOS. If that were
considered and the cost of cleanup were subtracted, it might drive the
value of the property to less than one-third of the current asking price.
I have questions for the Miami-Dade County Commission and Homeless
Trust chair Ron Book. Why weren’t the results of the county’s Phase I ESA
widely distributed and discussed?
The commission spent three hours debating whether to accept a report on
alternative sites, but there was nary a whisper about the chemical
contamination at the motel site.
And while we’re at it, what did the commissioners and chair Book know and
when did they know it? The County administration was aware that the
survey conducted by Baywood Hotels was inaccurate and that it needed to
conduct its own Phase I ESA. Did the county administration fail to inform
the Commissioners and Chairman Book or did they just not care? Why is
there such a rush to buy a site that is over-priced and polluted with known
carcinogens?
Those questions need to be answered and the voters and taxpayers in
Miami-Dade County deserve those answers today.
As the commissioner in whose district this homeless shelter will sit,
Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins can put a “hold” on this project to
prevent it from moving forward. She must rein it back with all the strength
she can muster.
At the very least, the county should put the purchase of the property on
hold while it follows the recommendation of the report and drills many more
wells and conducts more tests and determines the extent of the pollution
and the cost of cleanup.
The smarter thing would be to let the purchase of the La Quinta Inn die and
to find alternative sites for our vulnerable elderly homeless that will not
endanger their lives and health.
NOTE: If you’d like to read some of the reports that were provided to me, you can click the links below and if you have any questions, call me on my cell at (305)
323-8206 or email me at Grant@cnews.net.
2021-09-01 GEG Phase I ESA Report.PDF
2023-03-14 DERM Memorandum.PDF
2023-08-18 AECOM Phase II ESA Report.PDF
2023-08-31 DERM Memorandum.PDF
2023-10-02 AECOM Phase II ESA Report Addendum.PDF
2023-10-12 DERM Memorandum.PDF
