Environmental Intersection by George Lindemann

The deal struck by Miami-Dade County and state and federal agencies with environmentalists to proceed with the “Deep Dredge” project — instrumental for PortMiami’s growth and this area’s economic future — is a victory for Biscayne Bay’s sea life and every resident and visitor to our area.

It allows the port to keep to the dredge schedule so that it will be ready by 2014 to receive new super-sized cargo ships coming through the Panama Canal that need 50-feet deep waters to dock in Miami. How the agreement was reached was not ideal, however.

Environmentalists’ appeals were rushed within a 30-day deadline imposed by Tallahassee legislators and supported by county officials. Tropical Audobon Society, commercial fishermen and other groups concerned that the drilling blasts would destroy coral, kill sea life and muck up the bay’s pristine turquoise waters agreed to drop an administrative challenge if the county provided $2.3 million more than previously budgeted for restoration and monitoring projects that will save or restore corals, sea grass beds and other sealife.

As Laura Reynolds, executive director of the Tropical Audubon Society, noted, the deal “raised the bar” for environmental protection.

The Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, has experience in the bay, having successfully dredged there before. That bodes well for Biscayne Bay’s marine life, including turtles, dolphin and snook as the agreement limits the time frame of the blasts to better protect fish during times of day (dawn and dusk) when they become more active. It also bans blasting along the northern jetty of Government Cut during snook spawning season.

About eight acres of sea grass beds and seven acres of reefs (most at the entrance of the channel) will be lost to the dredge, which includes widening the port’s offshore entrance to the main channel by some 300 feet and deepening the port to 50 or 52 feet from the current 42 feet of depth.

Under the settlement reached during mediation with the state Department of Environmental Protection, the county and the Corps, two more acres of new sea grass areas will be added for mitigation, resulting in 16.6 acres. Small corals would also be moved to a new artificial reef or brought to other natural ones in the bay not affected by the blasting. Also, money will be spent to restore coastal dunes on north Virginia Key and two mangrove and wetlands projects at Oleta River State Park in North Miami.

The Miami-Dade County Commission likely will approve the settlement next week. But that still leaves one big environmental issue unresolved: an old and potentially defective sewer pipe that runs under the shipping channel and must be replaced. It carries 25 million gallons of raw sewage a day from Bal Harbour, Miami Beach and other beach towns to the county sewage treatment plant on Virginia Key.

The county is working on a fix, which will require burying a new pipe deep enough to be safe from the blasting for the dredge. There is no room for error. Residents and beach-goers’ health and safety are at stake.

With the deeper port, thousands of new good-paying jobs will result, combined with a new rail system that will move cargo directly from the port, saving time and local roadways from heavy truck traffic. Port Director Bill Johnson says the deeper channel could double the port’s container shipping business. That’s why reaching an agreement was so important to South Florida’s future.

 

An unusual legislative maneuver intended to push the accelerator on PortMiami’s Deep Dredge project, which has been indefinitely stalled pending an environmental review, could quickly encounter a speed bump.

The measure would force such reviews to be held within 30 days — but environmentalists question whether it will hold up in court. James Porter, a Miami attorney representing environmentalists challenging a state permit for the controversial $150 million dredging project, called the effort to rewrite rules and then apply them retroactively “extremely uncommon.”

The measure, attached to an important transportation bill, was expected to pass in the last hours of the session Friday. It would go into effect once signed by Gov. Rick Scott, potentially forcing an administrative challenge now set for August to be moved months earlier.

“From my perspective, this is highly prejudicial,” said Porter, whose clients include Audubon Society, Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper and Miami Beach fishing captain Dan Kipnis.

One of the measure’s supporters, House Majority Leader Carlos Lopez-Cantera, R-Miami, said he was not concerned about potential legal challenges, which he dismissed as “another stall tactic” from environmentalists. “The language doesn’t stop them from having the ability to be heard,” Lopez-Cantera said. “It just speeds up the process.”

Lopez-Cantera said he was confident the measure, which he said was drafted by Miami-Dade County attorneys and reviewed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, would hold up. The measure doesn’t specifically mention PortMiami but it was written to force a quicker administrative hearing.

Porter called the accusations of foot-dragging “hogwash.” The groups were unable to formally appeal the permit to allow the dredging until a draft version was issued in November. He said the request was filed within a 14-day window.

Timing of the dredging is important for port managers. With a tunnel under Government Cut to give trucks better access and a new freight rail system coming on line, the plan was to complete the dredging in 2014. That would open up Miami for a new class of mega-sized cargo ships at the same time when the Panama Canal, which is also undergoing an overhaul, will also be able to handle such cargo.

The project is a priority for both Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and the governor. In his first months in office. Scott took the unusual step of pledging to cover the $75 million federal share in the project, with hopes that Congress will pay the state back.

Environmentalists contend the state and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers haven’t set strict enough water quality standards to minimize silting damage surrounding sea grass beds and reefs and warn that weeks of blasting to deepen the channel could harm marine life. Port managers, as well as state and federal agencies overseeing the job, insist most impacts will be short-lived and minimal, pointing out a smaller dredging project a few years ago that left no lingering scars to surrounding areas.

Port Director Bill Johnson, who calls the dredging critical to an ambitious $2 billion port overhaul, said the plan had already been exhaustively and repeatedly reviewed. Port managers weren’t being the “bad guys,” he said, but trying to ensure the success of a project that could help produce thousands of new jobs.

“This is not something that has just been pulled out of the rabbit’s hat,” he said. “Thirteen years this project has been around. Let’s be honest, this is nothing new.”

But Kipnis, a charter captain and activist, said the preliminary permit Florida environmental regulators issued includes variances that will allow contractors to produce “mixing zones” that are five times larger and more turbid than typically allowed. Kipnis called the maneuver a blatant power play. “This is like old time Chicago politics.”

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