Dredge Hearing Set For January

It will a few more months before the dispute over the controversial plan to dump material dredged from the Hernando Beach channel onto a parcel on Eagle Nest Drive gets a hearing.

The hearing that had been scheduled for Oct. 23 by the state's Division of Administrative Hearings has been reset for Jan. 28-29. The hearing location has not been set, but state officials have said it will likely be in Brooksville.

The petitioners - a group comprised mostly of Hernando Beach residents - had asked that the hearing be put off indefinitely after the county announced it would seek a permit to dump the slurry onto county-owned property on Shoal Line Boulevard, just north of Petit Lane. The state denied the request but granted a continuance.

The group maintains that dumping the material on the Eagle Nest site could harm water quality and wetlands in the area and increase the threat of flooding in nearby homes.