This came to me from the Miami Business Review and the article points out the legal battle between environmentalists and port business proponents. This needs to get resolved if Miami is to compete with other ports already preparing for larger ships that will pass through the Panama Canal after it is greatly expanded in the next few years.
Two of South Florida’s most vital economic engines are on a collision course when it comes to a proposed dredging project at Port Miami.
The port is one of the busiest in the country. It’s one of the main reasons Miami is called the Gateway to the Americas as products and goods move between the United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
It is also one of the top cruise ports in the world.
But the health of Biscayne Bay, which intersects the port channel, is vital to tourism. Boat charters rely on its fish populations. Snorkeling outfits need clear water for its customers to see the coral reefs. Manatees bask in its sea grasses. Visitors demand hotel rooms with water views.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection on Aug. 31 proposed to issue an environmental resource permit to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorizing the dredging, deepening and widening of portions of Miami’s channels. Port Miami director Bill Johnson said a date for the hearing will be set today.
Two South Florida environmental group have filed an administrative challenge, saying the proposed two-year project would devastate the bay by destroying up to 24 acres of sea-grass beds and eight acres of sea bottom.
The 4,000-member Tropical Audubon Society and Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper say the Corps’ permit application fails to adhere to Florida’s Coastal Zone Management Program. There also is an issue of whether the National Marine Fisheries Service will authorize the Corps to relocate native bottlenose dolphin.
Resident groups from nearby Fisher Island also have filed petitions with the state objecting to the dredging project, concerned about their seawalls.
“The effects of Port Miami’s Deep Dredge Project on Biscayne Bay’s aquatic resources will be devastating,” said Dan Kipnis, who runs a charter-boat operation and has put his name on a petition for an administrative hearing filed Dec. 11.
“You don’t invest $2 billion on a whim,” Johnson said. “The studies show that if we go to a depth of 50 feet, it will substantially grow the port and that translates into jobs.”
The port is the second-largest generator of high-paying jobs in South Florida and employs 180,000 people at an average salary of $56,000 a year, Johnson said. He said studies show the project could double the annual container count, currently 900,000, by the end of the decade.
The port last underwent a dredging project six years ago for maintenance. The Corps was cited by the state then for failing to meet turgidity standards after a barge overturned, environmentalists say. The proposal is much larger in scope and is intended to widen and deepen the channel for post-Panamax cargo ships.
Johnson said the environmental standards will be the highest ever for any American dredge project, and not one dolphin or manatee died during the last dredging.
No ‘Field Of Dreams’
James M. Porter, a Miami attorney who represents the petitioners, said this isn’t a “Field of Dreams” scenario where the port expands and post-Panamax ships stream down the channel.
Ships passing through the Panama Canal are carrying goods for the continent, not just Florida, he said. It makes more sense for ships to go farther up the coast to Savannah, Georgia, or to Baltimore or into the Gulf of Mexico to get closer to roads and rail lines intersecting Middle America.
Port officials insist a $50 million rail extension at the port will connect t into the national rail system. The project includes rebuilding a bridge damaged in 2005 by Hurricane Wilma and a rail yard on Dodge Island.
A tunnel project for trucks streaming in and out of the port also is under way.
Corps officials had no comment by deadline.
The environmental groups’ petition filed with the Department of Environmental Protection is set before Administrative Law Judge David M. Maloney, who will review the case. The petitioners have a right to discovery, which will at the very least is expected delay the plan to start the project this year.
Laura Reynolds, executive director of the Tropical Audubon Society, said the first draft of the proposed permit provided a number of protections for Biscayne Bay and mediation for coral reefs.
“In the second draft, most of them were removed by the Corps,” she said. “They red-lined through that document.”
The petition filed by the environmental groups say the Corps has down played the impact of the project, under-estimating the amount of sea grass and coral beds that will be destroyed. It also questions whether the mitigation anticipated by replanting corals or creating artificial reefs is adequate under the law.
The petition notes more than a dozen threatened, endangered or protected species are known to inhabit or migrate through the work area, including manatees, bottlenose dolphin, sea turtles and even whales. Threatened or endangered birds also use the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve, the Bill Sadowski Critical Wildlife Area and other nearby areas as habitat.
The area also is prime territory for commercial and recreational fishing, known for shrimp, redfish, stone crab, spiny lobster, grouper and snapper.
Reynolds said the port is considered by some an industrial area but is adjacent to pristine marine retreats. She has spent hours snorkeling and kayaking the area.
“If you have ever been near there, it’s just beautiful,” she said. “Some of the best fishing in the bay is right near the port.”
‘Freaked Out’
The biggest concern is what will happen when the project stirs up sediment and the clear waters of the bay turns into a murky mass. Cloudy water kills sun-reliant seagrass beds, where young coral, fish and manatee can be found. The snorkeling and dive industry would suffer from any damage.
“No one is thinking about the kind of tourism that Biscayne Bay attracts,” Reynolds said. “We have regattas from all over the world. Fishermen come here to stay. Imagine what this type of project will do to South Florida tourism. We saw what the BP oil spill did. Yet no one cares.”
Miami Beach attorney Kent Harrison Robbins sent a Dec. 19 letter to the National Marine Fisheries Service on behalf of the Miami chapter of the Sierra Club about the project’s potential impact on bottlenose dolphins.
Dolphin, considered one of the most intelligent animals on Earth, use sonar to detect prey, predators and danger. So any type of noise that disturbs the pattern of the water is particularly disruptive.
Biscayne Bay is an identified habitat for a distinct genetic stock of bottlenose dolphins, and manatees often frolic in the area, Robbins wrote. He said the permit conditions do not meet the necessary requirements to protect wildlife.
Kipnis said there are significant soft and hard corals, sponges and other invertebrates on the port’s seawalls that will be destroyed.
“This critical habitat has led to a surge in fish numbers of both resident and migratory species,” he said. “I am confident that blasting will impact the thousands of snook that spawn in Government Cut during the summer and an equal number of tarpon that overwinter in the cut and turning basin.”
He also noted the port is a huge supplier of bait fish.
The dredge project will remove up to 6 million cubic yards of material and increase the channel depth on average of eight feet to 52 feet and widen the entrance by 300 feet. There will be 600 days of “confined blasting” to accomplish this engineering feat.
Opponents point to an incident six years ago when the impact of explosions in the channel reached far beyond the impact zone where a dolphin was swimming with its mate.
The dolphin started to jump out of the water frantically as if it were hysterical.
“To use a nontechnical term, it freaked out,” Porter said.