Day 89-90 - 4-5 March

While we were back at Marathon, planning a cruise into the key area north of Key West and Marathon, we listened to the weather forecast and it looked as if we should remain at Marathon for another several days. We also received a call from Sarah's daughter about the wet and snowy weather at home. Tiffany also sent some photos that gave us serious concern about the continuing lack of ground water drainage around our house. While there was nothing we could do immediately about the accumulated water, it's clear we have to do something more than what has been done so far to alleviate the problem. At least the high water alarm in our sump pump hasn't gone off indicating that the problem appears to be under control. What we don't know is our margin of safety. So we considered our options:

1. Wait several days for the incoming front to pass so we could head into the area of the keys we hadn't visited yet and hope the weather window stayed open long enough for us to get back to Marathon and leave a comfortable amount of time remaining to head back to Beaufort, SC and return home to file our income tax reports and deal with the lack of ground water drainage.

2. Start heading back north and find an anchorage where we could wait comfortably for the incoming front to pass and open a weather window for us to get back into the ICW with a comfortable amount of time to stop at some of the places we missed on the way south before heading home to deal with taxes, water and local government bureaucracy.

Since there were too many uncertainties associated with the first option, we decided on the second and will leave Marathon on Thursday, 6 March. Meanwhile, here are a few photos of the water problem we have to face when we return home to face what keeps us awake at night while we try to enjoy retirement. The photos on the left were taken a few days ago. The photos on the right were taken a year ago.

This photo looks even worse than a year ago when ground water completely filled the south and west side of our property to a depth of more than a foot. The water was prevented from flowing downhill following the natural grade of the land (to the southeast) by the lack of a drainage ditch along the township road on the south side of our house (foreground of the first photo), the lack of a culvert under the township road and the lack of a drainage ditch along the county road to the east of our house (left side of the first photo).

When the problem first appeared, we contacted the township and the county authorities whose first reaction was it's not their problem. After several meetings with the township and county, both agreed to support development of a road project to improve the drainage, but only because ground water had risen to cover the township road. Of course in keeping with a government bureaucracy, the county insisted on a study and we were told that without such a study, the project would be disapproved, but might be approved the following year if adequate justification (e.g., the aforementioned study) was included.
We volunteered to assist with development of the project documentation. However, our offer to assist was ignored, the deadline for submission of the project passed and, to our knowledge, the road project was not developed adn submitted. So, after over a year of discussion, there has been nothing done to solve the problem!

This isn't completely surprising since local governments tend to ignore ground water problems. Years ago, when farmers had a ground water drainage problem, they installed clay pipe...so-called "tiles"...to drain their fields and let them plant crops. Local government were quite happy to let the landowners deal with their problems...especially since they weren't prepared to deal with them.

Fast forward to the present and these same local governments still operate the way they did 50 years ago and are still not prepared to deal with water drainage problems. Instead they rely on the old, broken drainage systems installed by the farmers years ago. There aren't even any records of where these drainage systems may have existed and many farms have been broken up into local government-approved house lots. In our area, one house can be built on two acres.

To exacerbate the growing water drainage problem, local governments issue permits to build houses and permits to occupy houses and levy taxes without addressing the increased water drainage problems resulting from the houses they have approved. On the other hand, they collect real estate taxes without setting aside some portion of these taxes to address the lack of a drainage and sewage infrastructure.

We believe the water drainage problem is the tip of just one of the icebergs facing these local governments. However, with the exception of a few open-minded people, most of the local officials we have met and talked to, are not even willing to consider that there might be a common problem. Meanwhile water is impeded from flowing downhill by the lack of a proper drainage system.