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Hernando Today

Dredge Spoil Site Still Opposed

County officials dismiss other options.

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By TONY MARRERO

HERNANDO TODAY

Published: February 11, 2008

HERNANDO BEACH - HERNANDO BEACH -
The couple can look northwest from their three-story, canal-front home on Eagle Nest Drive and see the shimmering Gulf of Mexico beyond fields of swaying marsh grass.
If they look east, however, they can see the piece of property where the county still hopes to put the briny muck — called spoil — to be dredged from the bottom of the Hernando Beach channel.
The Bambauers say they are less worried about their vista than about the ugly picture of briny slurry being pushed into wetlands on the five-acre site and the dump trucks that will rumble up and down the same road on which their children ride their bicycles.
The Bambauers say they and about 20 of their neighbors are wholeheartedly for the dredge project.
But they contend there are better alternatives to dispose of the spoil, and the county should have vetted those before foisting the plan onto Eagle Nest residents. Had those sites been further explored, residents say, the dredge might be underway by now.
"They knew this site was going to be problematic," Lisa Bambauer said. "They've delayed the project because they've picked the wrong site."
County officials, however, say the ship has left port.
The Department of Environmental Protection has informally approved the county's strategy to make up for, or mitigate, the loss of just more than a quarter-acre of wetlands, Assistant County Engineer Gregg Sutton said Monday.
That means DEP will likely soon give an official notice of intent to issue the permit, Sutton said.
Once that happens, the county must publish a legal notice in local newspapers. That starts the clock on the 14 days that residents have to formally log their objections with DEP.
"This is a major, major milestone," Sutton said. "We're on the home stretch."
For the Bambauers and their neighbors, though, it's a disheartening reversal.
The county already has a permit to deepen the channel to six feet to allow boats to pass safely. Currently, shallow areas in the channel make for treacherous travel, especially at low tide when some boats can't even make the journey.
The dredge phase could have started already, but is being held up by the need for a permit for the spoil site.
Back in December, county officials decided to fall back to another site because DEP wanted more mitigation for the impacted wetlands on the Eagle Nest parcel.
Officials also worried that legal challenges from residents could bog down the already long-delayed $9 million project to widen and lengthen the channel for many additional months or even years.
The backup plan was a four-acre tract at the corner of Petit Lane and Shoal Line Boulevard. It would mean pumping the spoil some 2,500 feet farther than the Eagle Nest site, which would add significantly to the cost, Sutton said.
After further consideration and encouraging signs from DEP, the county decided to stick with the original deal struck with the Manuel family of Brooksville, which owns the Eagle Nest site, Sutton said.
Workers would construct a four-foot berm on the property and place the spoil within the berm to let it dry. Trucks will then transport the material away and tear down the berm.
However, per the deal with the Manuels, some of the material will be left on the site, permanently filling in the quarter-acre of wetlands.
To mitigate for the loss, the county plans to remove an existing man-made berm on the parcel and create a conservation easement on a portion of property, protecting it from development.
The DEP most recently agreed that additional work to restore a canal that runs along the north side of Eagle Nest will help make up for the destruction of the wetlands, Sutton said.
The county is comfortable that any challenge from residents will not hold the project up once DEP issues the notice of intent to hand over the permit, Sutton said.
"It's not apparent what would be the basis for objection" from neighbors, he said.
Neighbors say county is misinformed
The Bambauers and their neighbors contend the county has provided "misinformation" about the project that may have helped dampen opposition.
They cite minutes from a December 2006 meeting of the Hernando County Port Authority in which Sutton, according to the record, stated "the wetlands have been carefully delineated and are not allowed to be impacted.
"He stated the berms will be constructed away from the wetlands and the dredge spoil will be placed in them for dewatering," according to the minutes.
"That's not what I said," Sutton said Monday. "We told everyone right from the outset, and included in our drawings, that wetland impacts were going to happen and that we were being required by DEP to adequately mitigate those."
The Bambauers also question why the county never did a formal cost analysis to determine just how much more expensive it would be to use the Petit Lane site, which has no wetlands, before dismissing it.
"When I go to buy a gallon of milk I compare prices," Doug Bambauer said. "I can't believe on a $9 million project that they haven't."
Sutton acknowledged that there hasn't been a formal cost study comparing the two sites but said it is "very obvious" it would be more expensive because of the additional pipe and other equipment needed to get the spoil to the parcel.
Sutton said he was reluctant to cite that number because it is a "rough" estimate but, when pressed, said that pumping the spoil to the Petit Lane site could cost about twice as much as the estimated $50,000 a contractor will likely charge to pump to the Eagle Nest parcel.
County officials also have dismissed an idea by Ray Gustafson, an engineer who lives on nearby Daisy Drive, to dump the material in the canal behind his house.
Gustafson said Monday that he has spoken with dredge contractors who told him that such a plan would be feasible without impacting the right of way of boaters. He said floating barriers used to isolate the silt could feature gates to let boater pass and that the pipe could be placed outside of the channel.
Sutton disagrees.
The plan would require just as much piping as the Petit Lane site and would make navigation in the already-narrow channel treacherous, he said.
The pipes would also restrict canal access for dozens of homes, and there are no such gates, Sutton said. And, he added, though DEP officials said during the December meeting that they would be willing to consider filling the canal because it could mean better water quality, the county's consultant has indicated it has never heard of DEP offering a permit for filling canals with spoil.
Perhaps most important, Sutton said, reverting to another plan would cause the county to have to "start all over in the permitting process," a delay that would likely jeopardize the $6 million in state funding for the project.
Sutton said dump trucks will not go "up and down Eagle Nest Drive every day, all day."
"This is no different than any construction project," he said.
Once DEP provides the notice of intent to issue the permit, residents can request a forum to log their opposition through the state's Department of Administrative Hearings, said DEP spokeswoman Pam Vazquez.
That department decides whether to assign the case to a judge, who would decide whether the information from the residents is enough to hold up the permit.
The Bambauers and their neighbors said they haven't mapped out their next move but say they likely will formally lodge their opposition.
If that process does not create a lengthy delay and DEP issues the permit in the coming weeks and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers follows suit with its own approval, "we could be dredging by summer," Sutton said.

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandtoday.com.

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