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Marco resident Mike Sullivan has hope.

He has hope that his children will not be wakened by noisy trucks starting up at 6 a.m. each morning. He has hope that workers on the other side of his fence will not relieve themselves within view of his home. And he has hope that a new City Council will help alleviate some of his problems.

But from past experience, he doesn’t have much, he said.

Sullivan is seeking a remedy for the disruptions that he says have become a constant in his life over the last year-and-a-half during which the city’s south water treatment plant has become a noisy hub of construction activities.

“It’s been pervasively getting worse,” Sullivan said at Monday night’s City Council meeting.

The Eagle reported on Sullivan’s concerns in March of 2007.

Most recently, Sullivan brought his concerns before City Council following a Planning Board meeting in which Public Works Director Rony Joel requested a conditional use permit to place four steel storage containers on the site and to relocate 12 utility employees to the area. The request was denied by the board by a 5-1 vote, but the item will still come before council at the April 7 meeting.

Sullivan said activity at the plant has actually increased since then, but Joel said any increase is related to construction staging approved by City Council.

“I don’t believe that we are performing any function that we will be asking City Council for approval,” Joel said. “We’ve been operating the utility to meet the city’s needs. The request is very specific. We’ve made every effort not to undertake any function that is being requested.”

Three of the four steel storage tanks are already on site and have been there since the request before the planning board. Joel is seeking approval for the fourth. He said the dozen workers he wants to relocate are still working out of the north plant.

That plant, which is in a largely commercial area, is about to undergo renovations that Joel said require the workers to be based out of another facility. They are the people who have to fix leaks and patch roads, and need a place to change and shower, Joel said.

Sullivan said he has never had a problem with the workers who staff the water treatment plant for the city.

“It smells quite often,” he said of the plant. “But, they’ve normally been quiet. But it’s all of these other public works employees that they’ve dragged down here that have been a problem.”

He said one worker set off fire crackers just on the other side of the fence on at least three different mornings before 7 a.m., and he has seen contract employees peeing just beyond his back yard before. At the Feb. 22 Planning Board hearing, one woman testified that workers have stood atop flatbed trucks to peer into her windows at she and her teenage daughter.

At the meeting, Joel agreed to draft a letter to the contractors working out of that site explaining the inappropriate nature of their actions.

City Council has authorized the plant to be used as a staging area for utility work, including recent approval for installation of reuse water lines along South Collier Boulevard. Joel said authorized staging activities are scheduled to end in April, and the council would have to approve further plans for those activities to continue.

“We’ve got construction activity going on at the site,” Joel said. “We’ve got activity at the site that the council has approved ... That’s a choice that council has to make. What they’ve approved to date will be completed in April sometime.”

But Sullivan has been complaining about disruptions for well over a year. He said other residents are equally fed up.

Nearly two weeks ago, the city discovered an incident of vandalism near the plant. The water plant itself was not damaged, Interim City Manager Tony Shoemaker said in an email to City Council, but several vehicles were damaged.

“The damage was intentional and if not discovered before starting the equipment today, would have caused serious damage to a dump truck and a bobcat,” Shoemaker wrote in the March 10 email.

Sullivan said he believes a fellow resident committed the vandalism.

“It’s one of the neighbors over on the other side that snapped,” he said. “People are getting fed up with this, they’re banging their head against the wall.”

Police Chief Roger Reinke said his department is investigating, but has no leads in the crime.

Because of the vandalism, the city is implementing more strident security measures, including placing barbed wire atop the fence at the property line.

Drinking water for roughly half of the city is supplied by the south plant, which treats water from wells with reverse osmosis. Since it is a source of drinking water, it is also sensitive to homeland security restrictions. The city was required to notify the Florida state authority on homeland security.

While Sullivan waits for the issue to come before council, he continues to fight to bring his concerns to the attention of fellow residents and new council members. He runs a Web site where he blogs about the plant and posts photos of perceived problems. He is in the process of taking Councilor Frank Recker up on an offer to view the problems for himself.

But Sullivan said his concerns stem from a larger problem.

“It’s because of our municipal code,” he said. “When I’ve called them out here, the police were very accommodating, but they showed me a piece of paper that says why Public Works can do what they’re doing. It’s in the municipal code. Public Works maintenance and construction is exempt. It means Public Works can do anything they want on the island 24 hours a day. That’s something that needs to be changed.”

At Monday’s meeting, Shoemaker told council that the city is drawing up a report on the south plant to explain the activities there.

Some on the council appear to have come to conclusions on the matter already, however.

“This is an issue that, frankly, has embarrassed me,” Councilor Rob Popoff said. “And I’m very irritated that we’re still talking about it. We need some reconciliation here, we need some compromise. I want to see some action.”