The “Deep Dredge” project, a critical and controversial key to PortMiami’s ambitious $2 billion expansion plan, is back on schedule after a legal settlement announced on Wednesday.
Environmentalists, who had argued that two years of blasting and digging in the port’s main channel would leave long-lasting scars in Biscayne Bay, agreed to drop an administrative challenge that threatened to delay the work for months or longer.
In exchange, Miami-Dade County has agreed to an additional $2.3 million in restoration and monitoring projects and other tweaks, such as a narrower daily blasting window, intended to enhance protection for corals, sea grass beds and other marine life.
“This is a win-win for the entire community,” Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said in a release. “The agreement provides additional funding for important environmental projects while at the same time allowing for the timely completion of the dredge project.”
Laura Reynolds, executive director of the Tropical Audubon Society, said the settlement didn’t address all of environmentalists’ concerns but had “raised the bar’’ on protecting the bay’s surrounding, fish-rich waters.
“What we’ve been able to do is make the permit a lot stronger,” said Reynolds, whose organization joined with Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper and local fishing captain Dan Kipnis last November in filing a legal challenge to a Florida Department of Environmental Protection permit issued for the project.
The deal, expected to be approved by the Miami-Dade County Commission on May 1, clears the way for work to begin as early as this summer.
For port managers, keeping to that schedule is important. With a truck tunnel under Government Cut in the works and a new freight rail system also coming on line, the plan was to complete the dredging in 2014, putting Miami in position to lure a new class of mega-size cargo ships at the same time an overhaul is completed at the Panama Canal. Port Director Bill Johnson has projected the deeper channel could double the seaport’s container shipping business and spawn thousands of jobs in coming years.
The work — widening the port’s offshore entrance to the main channel by some 300 feet and deepening much of the port to 52 feet by scooping out about eight feet of rock, sand and rubble — would also consume some eight acres of sea grass beds and seven acres of reefs, including about five acres of previously undisturbed reef at the channel’s mouth.
Environmentalists had argued that the DEP and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers didn’t include enough “mitigation” to offset the loss of reefs and sea grass beds or set strict enough water quality standards to minimize silting damage to surrounding areas. They also warned that blasting during the two-year-long project could harm or kill marine life from snook to dolphin.
Port managers, backed by state and federal agencies, insisted most impacts will be minimal and short-lived, pointing out a smaller dredging project a few years ago that left no lingering scars to surrounding areas.
Under the terms of the settlement, reached after three days of mediation involving environmental groups, the county, the DEP and the Corps, the seaport will transfer $1.3 million into a Miami-Dade trust fund for environmental enhancement projects.
via miamiherald.com