Gimenez Meets Islamorada Leaders on Infrastructure, Business, and Environment

U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez sat down Thursday with Islamorada Mayor Don Horton and Village Manager Ron Saunders, connecting the village's federal representative directly with local officials who have spent the past year managing a compounding list of infrastructure repairs, environmental pressures, and small-business concerns across the Upper Keys.

Gimenez represents Florida's 28th Congressional District, which covers all of Monroe County and a portion of southwest Miami-Dade. In February, his office announced more than $78 million in federal investments secured for the district through the fiscal year 2026 budget, spanning public safety, water quality, housing, and economic development. Among his standing project requests is a $6 million Army Corps of Engineers proposal for the Florida Keys Water Quality Improvement Project, aimed at helping Keys communities meet stringent wastewater and stormwater standards while protecting the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

That federal funding priority intersects directly with pressures Islamorada has been managing at the local level. The village's wastewater collection system accumulated six sanitary sewer overflows and unauthorized discharges between May 2021 and March 2025, including a 400,000-gallon release at the North Plantation Key pump station in July 2022. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection responded with a consent order requiring corrective action. Saunders, who joined the village as manager in April 2025 after a period of leadership turnover, helped negotiate an agreement with the Key Largo Wastewater Treatment District to move the remediation forward.

Horton, a former Monroe County building services director who won his council seat in 2024 with nearly 61 percent of the vote before being elevated to mayor, has pushed environmental protection as a central priority. Earlier this year the council passed a resolution opposing offshore oil drilling in the waters surrounding the Keys, underscoring the village's commitment to keeping the marine ecosystem intact.

Small business concerns add a third dimension to the agenda. The Islamorada economy runs almost entirely on fishing, diving, and tourism, industries that depend as much on clean nearshore water as on accessible federal regulatory relief. Gimenez, who has earned the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and has long advocated for reducing regulatory burdens on small businesses, brings direct congressional leverage to that conversation.

Thursday's meeting placed Islamorada's most pressing local challenges squarely in front of the representative best positioned to influence federal appropriations and agency priorities. The wastewater remediation timeline, water quality funding, and economic conditions in the village will test whether the conversation translates into concrete federal action.