Environmental Intersection by George Lindemann

TALLAHASSEE -- A bill that won the support of the Florida House on Thursday could jump-start the stalled Port of Miami Deep Dredge.

The proposed legislation — which passed by a 110-5 vote — has to do with permits for storm-water management systems.

But earlier this week, House Majority Leader Carlos Lopez-Cantera, R-Miami, tacked on language about permits for deep-water ports. The amendment requires legal challenges to dredging projects to be heard within 30 days of the motion being filed.

The revised version of the bill could come in handy for the $150 million Port of Miami project, which is being held up by challenges from environmental groups and the community of Fisher Island.

An administrative law judge in Tallahassee recently ordered a hearing for August — putting the dredging and blasting scheduled to start this summer on indefinite hold.

During a trip to Tallahassee last week, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez asked members of the Miami-Dade delegation to help get the dredge underway as soon as possible.

“We need to speed this up,” Gimenez said.

Lopez-Cantera said opponents of the dredge had employed “delay tactics” and were afforded ample opportunity to have their voices heard.

“The economic impact to our community is too important to let a small group of obstructionists delay it any longer than necessary,” he said.

But Laura Reynolds, executive director of the Tropical Audubon Society, said the amendment sounded like an effort to circumvent legal procedure. She pointed out that the groups had already scheduled mediation hearings next month with Florida regulators in addition to the hearing set for August.

“We have a date scheduled and now we’re seeing this sort of an end run,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds said the aim wasn’t to derail a project that port managers say could create thousands of jobs, but to ensure that the work doesn’t come at the expense of the surrounding marine environment. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she said, had rejected what she called “minimal” protections for things like water quality originally requested by the state.

“We have no delusions about stopping the port expansion,” she said. “We just want to protect Biscayne Bay.”

In a meeting Thursday with members of The Miami Herald’s Editorial Board, Corps project managers insisted the environmental impacts of the project would be short-lived and minimized by closely monitoring turbidity and temporarily shutting down buckets or cutters to prevent dense, damaging plumes from forming.

Terri Jordan-Sellers, the port’s biologist for the project, said critics had exaggerated the impacts from blasting.

“They think of bombs going off in the bay,” she said. “That’s not what we have here.”

Corps contractors would use special “confined” blasting techniques, which cap the small charges to direct impacts to the rocky channel bed and greatly reduce the underwater pressure waves that can hurt marine life.

Similar techniques were used in a 2005 dredging of another section of the port and follow-up surveys of sea grass and reefs showed no damage from silting, Jordan-Sellers said.

The Corps said no manatees, dolphins or turtles were killed during blasting and an average of 14 dead fish were recovered after each of 40 rounds of blasting — most of them small bait fish. There were also no complaints of vibration or damage from residents on Fisher Island or other nearby communities, Jordan-Sellers said.

Bill Johnson, the director of the Port of Miami, characterized environmental groups, two Fisher Island condominium associations and me as “lunatics” for challenging the viability of the port’s deep-dredge plan. Johnson, as a high-ranking public servant, demeans concerned citizens who have raised serious issues with the project’s viability.

This language is not only uncalled for, it also degrades Miami-Dade residents who value the continued health and well-being of Biscayne Bay.

His statement, “Time is money. . . . One thing we cannot do, which is delay the dredge,” shows that money will always trump sound decisions. Biscayne Bay is too important a resource to rush ahead with a project that, if executed with the same disregard for the bay as were the last three dredging projects, will destroy this finite resource.

For the past 13 years, I have known the challenges of executing a project of this size. I have been intimately involved in the planning long before Johnson showed up on the scene. My past positions as a Biscayne Bay Management Committee member, city of Miami Waterfront Board Vice Chairman, Florida Marine Fisheries Commissioner and Biscayne Bay Regional Restoration Coordination Team member place me in a unique position to appreciate the complexities of the issue.

I haven’t taken my commitment to do the right thing for Biscayne Bay lightly.

As a lifelong resident of Miami-Dade County, I have seen many “build it, and they will come” schemes, usually with disastrous results. This time, Johnson will have to wait until the parties involved reach a settlement in the negotiations that begin next month or take his chances with an administrative judge in Tallahassee who has deemed our concerns credible enough to schedule a hearing date.

This time maybe money won’t trump good judgment, especially when the viability and vitality of Biscayne Bay is on the line.

Dan Kipnis, Miami Beach

An Audubon scientist sees a flash of pink hope in the return of roseate spoonbill to nests on the mangroves dotting Florida Bay (Miami Dade, 2/17/2012)

Suwannee River Water Management District Executive Director David Still has announced his resignation, making him the fourth water district chief to resign in the past year.

Suwannee River Water Management District Executive Director David Still, who warned a Senate panel on Tuesday that residents in his region are "mad as hell" and are taking revenge on water management districts, has announced he is resigning effective May 1. He becomes the fourth water district chief to resign within the past year.

Florida has five water management districts, established by the Legislature in 1972 and established in the Florida Constitution by voters in 1976. Some observers say the resignations are part of an effort to run the regional water management districts from the state capital in Tallahassee

Gov. Rick Scott last year directed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to oversee the districts to ensure they focus on their core missions of water supply, flood prevention and resource protection.

Still, who spoke at a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, said Wednesday he had no idea he would be asked to resign by the district's governing board later in the day.

"I think they [board members] were looking for somebody different -- that is the bottom line," Still said. He joined the district in 1994 and has been executive director since 2008.

On Tuesday, Still told the Senate Committee on Environmental Preservation and Conservation that he had met Monday night with some Suwannee County residents and "they are mad as hell." 

"And they are going to get some revenge and they are getting it on us, the water management districts," he said. Still said Wednesday that he didn't think his resignation request was related to his comments.

The Suwannee River Water Management District is holding a series of public meetings in the coming weeks with Still and Hans Tanzler, the executive director of the St. Johns River Water Management District, to address groundwater issues. 

The Suwannee River Water Management District said the Alapaha River basin, the upper Suwannee River region and the upper and lower Santa Fe river basins may be short of groundwater within 20 years. Some studies have pointed to groundwater pumping in Jacksonville as contributing to water shortages in the Suwannee River region.

DEP and the Suwannee River Water Management District are supporting HB 157, which requires water management districts to identify water bodies that could be affected by water use in neighboring districts. Some environmentalists say the bill doesn't address over-pumping that already is occurring.

"Senators, we are at a crossroads with water supply in our area," Still told the Senate committee on Tuesday. "And what we need to do is look at conservation as the main key.

"We also need to look at alternative water supplies and implement those fully as we go forward. A lot of that burden falls on the Legislature, in my opinion, to set new water policy," he said.

Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness and committee chairman, said his visits to the Suwannee region had convinced him that "there is nothing on the agenda in the state of Florida more precious or more at risk than our water supply."

"People have asked me, 'How you like what you're doing in the Legislature?" he said. "The truth of the matter is I really want to tell them -- you wont hear this out of me very often -- I'm scared. I'm scared what is going to happen in our future with water."

His committee on Tuesday voted to confirm Still and three other district executive directors.

Once Still resigns, Doug Barr of the Northwest Florida Water Management District will become the only executive director remaining from when Scott took office.

And Barr appears to be on thin ice with at least one senator. Sen. Jack Latava, R-St. Petersburg, signaled during the committee meeting his unhappiness with what he called "business as usual" at the Northwest Florida Water Management District, including the agency having $30 million in unallocated reserves. 

Sonny Vergara, a former executive director of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, said Still is "an extremely good person and was a perfect professional fit for the Suwannee district."  

"His departure reflects an assault that is endemic upon the water management districts," Vergara wrote in an email.

Reporter Bruce Ritchie can be reached at britchie@thefloridacurrent.com.

 

With a fast-growing medical school on a built-out campus, the university is pursuing state-owned land bordering the Everglades to exchange for the existing county fair grounds; environmentalists question the plans."