Residents frustrated with water pollution under $1 million Titusville walkway: 'Slapping lipstick on a pig'
TITUSVILLE, Fla. - A million-dollar infrastructure project in Titusville to celebrate the beauty of the Indian River Lagoon in Brevard County has been overshadowed by pollution.
Construction finished on a brand-new walkway connecting Space View Park to Veterans Memorial Park over the lagoon. However, the community isn’t talking about the path on social media.
Instead, drone pictures of the project have people worried about pollution. A photographer who captured the images says he had been tracking construction at the site and wanted to capture the final stages of the walkway, but when the photographs hit Facebook, people were fired up.
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Some taxpayers believe spending a million dollars on water quality improvements in this area would have been a better use of the money.
"It was so visible to them that it made the project invisible," said Stel Bailey, a Titusville resident and water quality advocate.
Green and brown water was fully displayed in photos from the sky of the new Space View Park walkway in Titusville.
"We should not have tourists coming here locally and walking over E. coli-infested waterways," Bailey said.
Credit: Lennys Aerial Imagery
She says it's easier to see how contaminated the water really is from the sky. She's an environmental health advocate for the non-profit "Fight For Zero," which she started and still leads.
Her group tested the water nearby for years and found harmful toxins in the park, so she wasn’t shocked by the photos since she's been fighting for years to improve the area.
"As a taxpayer, I feel that a million dollars would have been better spent on cleaning up the waterways," said Bailey.
"That’s a lot of money," added Lenny Davies, who took the drone photos of the walkway.
RELATED: Concern grows over Indian River Lagoon pollution
Davies didn’t think his photos would go viral because of dirty water.
"Get the water cleaned up," said Davies. "I would have rather it went viral because of the city’s progression of the park."
The city tells FOX 35 News that this walkway construction cost $998,656 and has been in the works for three years. The city’s water director also says improvements in the lagoon are underway, totaling $13 million, because improving the water people will walk over is still the long-term goal.
"We don’t want to do projects that’s slapping lipstick on a pig," Bailey concluded.
The city says construction is complete on this walkway, and the fence blocking it off should be taken down soon. A ribbon cutting for this new walkway will take place on April 22. Some of the projects totaling $13 million are adding more baffle boxes and replacing force mains that move sewer water through the city.