On Tuesday night, Jeani Duarte, a 2026 candidate for Palm Coast City Council, charged that the city was constructing a sewer system that would make locals cannibals. She was wrong.
As Circuit Judge Chris Francetwicetermed a civil action she attempted against the city, before France tossed it, Duarte frequently addresses the council at its workshops and meetings, often multiple times per meeting (she did so at least three times Tuesday). Her statements are frequently erroneous or nonsensical.
During public comment periods before the council or other local governments, other members of the public occasionally make absurd claims. Unless the individual is vying for public office, the absurdity would not be noteworthy.
Duarte, a 58-year-old retired dietitian from the C-Section, is vying for the vice mayor Theresa Pontieri’s seat in District 2. There are now two declared contenders for that seat, including Duarte. The other is Tony Amaral Jr. Pontieri has stated that she will continue to be involved in local politics, although she has not indicated if she intends to run for council again. Duarte was a candidate for the position of Charter Review Committee member for the city.She wasn’t chosen.)
Duarte spoke to the council during a forty-minute discussion of the city’s water supply management plan. She talked for two minutes. She said five things that were false or deceptive. She was not corrected after speaking, with the exception of one of her remarks.
According to Duarte, the oldest wastewater treatment plant in the city, Waste Water Treatment Plant 1 in the Woodlands, has a lot of capacity that is underutilized. No, it doesn’t.
The facility has a capacity of 6.83 million gallons per day, as anyone who has attended council meetings in the past year (Duarte is typically present) would have heard. Usually, it is under capacity during the dry months and above capacity during the wet ones. In 2024, Hurricane Milton caused a 14 million gallon increase in a single day. Its expansion and modernization are subject to a state permission order. If it had sufficient capacity, it wouldn’t be subject to a consent decree.
As part of a nearly $300 million spending plan for the utilities infrastructure over the following five years, the council approved investing $168 million in March to upgrade the facility to produce 10.83 million gallons per day. In order to relieve strain on WWTP1 and allow it to grow, Waste Water Treatment Plant 2 recently quadrupled its capacity to 4 million gallons. (See: Palm Coast Relieves Itself Three Years Later by Doubling Capacity with Much-Necessary $31 Million Sewer Plant Expansion.)
Duarte went on to discuss brackish water, which she described as shower, toilet, dishwashing, etc., though it’s unclear why. That isn’t true. According to Peter Roussel, the utility’s deputy director, who gave Duarte the only correction that night, brackish water occurs when freshwater has a particular level of salt. For instance, the Intracoastal may be categorized as brackish water. Duarte might have mistaken brackish water for wastewater.
The fact that Wastewater Treatment Plant 2 and Water Treatment Plant 3 (which generates drinkable water) are so close to one another that their backup generators are kept in the same building worried Duarte. It was false to imply that a co-mingling of operations was inferred by the co-located generators.
Since generators are designed to be at the same site for maintenance and refueling, co-located generators allow the plants to run for ten days before refueling in the event of crises or prolonged power outages. This is an efficient solution. It would be the same as if a baby formula plant and a manure processing plant shared an access route.
According to Duarte, the recovered sediments and wastewater are utilized for fertilizer and irrigation. On both points, she was correct. Golf courses, lawns, and medians are irrigated by recycled or reused water from the city. The factory sends its biosolids to Merrell Brothers, which turns them into fertilizer pellets by drying and pasteurizing them.
Danny Ashburn, the wastewater treatment and reuse manager, told U.S. Representative Randy Fine during his visit to WWTP1 today that this is something that we want to try to build here in the county in the future. In Pasco County, Merrell has a facility. Flagler County could be able to have one.
Duarte claimed to have worked in Californian alfalfa fields where the most water-intensive crop, alfalfa, was only given to horses and was watered with recycled water. In actuality, alfalfa is typically used for horses, cattle, and other animals rather than for human consumption (except from supplements).
The more outrageous charges followed. According to what I understand, these wastewater treatment facilities’ long-term goals include recycling the recovered water back into drinkable water, she stated incorrectly. The city, which doesn’t even fluorinate its water, has no plans to use recycled garbage for anything, despite the fact that it is a standard practice and a topic of continuous debate aboard the International Space Station.
According to Duarte, the idea of drinking reclaimed water from human waste that contains human DNA and who knows what else is completely prohibited and equated with cannibalism for those of us who have religious or spiritual concerns. Madness is a sign of cannibalism. I’m not sure about the others, but this looks really wicked and unethical.
Although cannibalism has been practiced for thousands of years, it has never been connected to insanity. However, in more recent times, it has been related to a tendency for mental disease and psychosexual disorders.
Later in the evening, Duarte spoke to the council once more, stating that the nearly $100 million that the Legislature had appropriated for the Loop Road—which crosses the vacant scrubland west of U.S. 1 and connects Matanzas Woods Parkway to Palm Coast Parkway—should be reallocated, reclaimed, and proposed for Waste Water Treatment Plant 1. It wouldn’t be allowed.
