Key Biscayne residents and Village officials will be starting to learn more about an alternative analysis being conducted by GIT Consulting LLC for the Zone 1 stormwater system to reduce flooding around the K-8 school.
This will be the first of four “deliverables” from GIT’s leading engineer, who has been tasked with coming up with, presumably, a less costly, yet still effective, plan and design than produced by AECOM.
The workshop on Zone 1 Alternative Analysis Workshop meeting will take place at 6 p.m., on Thursday, Jan. 8, in the Council Chambers and will be streamed live on VKB-TV. The public is invited.
GIT’s analysis was approved at a cost not to exceed $240,810 and the contract signed on Oct. 24, 2025.
“This is an alternative model,” explained Councilman Michael Bracken, who has been part of Mayor Joe Rasco’s appointed Ad Hoc Committee, along with Ed London and Fernando Vazquez, to seek lower-cost alternatives to the comprehensive AECOM design proposal.
Mayor Rasco, speaking at a November meeting, said GIT’s analysis from its principal engineer, Georgio Tachiev, would be a four-month process.
“It’s sort of a comparison (with AECOM’s longstanding project),” Rasco said. “We want what’s in the best of our residents’ interest. We’re not moving ahead with AECOM’s design until we get to this point. We’re going through this for valid reasons, but we still have to look at those numbers at the end of the line.”
AECOM’s initial cost estimate was $35 million for Zone 1 of the Resilient Infrastructure and Adaptation Program, the area on Key Biscayne most susceptible to flooding. Less than a year later, the company estimated it would cost some $75 million to replace the stormwater pipes effectively, a cost later estimated at $80 million after an independent review.
Two months ago, Councilman London noted that $998,000 has been spent with Black & Veatch to support an AECOM project “that may or may not come through” and another $2.3 million with AECOM.
The new analysis would still need to work in tandem with whichever option, if any, the Village chooses as far as undergrounding power lines and telecommunication lines, brought up at the Oct. 9 Undergrounding and Telecom Workshop.