New Site Considered For Dredge Slurry

An effort by residents here to spoil the county's plan to dump thousands of cubic yards of slurry, dredged from the bottom of the channel onto a parcel on Eagle Nest Drive, appears to have worked.

The county now has a new site in mind to dump the material. County staffers will ask county commissioners at their regular meeting Tuesday for $146,400 to pay a consulting firm to draw up and submit a permit request to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

The proposed site is four acres of county land behind the wastewater treatment plant on the west side of Shoal Line Boulevard, just north of Petit Lane.

The goal is to submit the permit request to DEP by early November, have the permit by the end of January and put the project out to bid by the first week of February, Assistant County Engineer Gregg Sutton wrote to commissioners in a memo.

That could allow dredging to begin by spring, Sutton said Friday.

"It can't happen soon enough," he said.

The new course is necessary because formal opposition to the Eagle Nest site by residents in the area could cause a delay in the permitting process that could put $6 million in state funding for the $9 million dredge in jeopardy, Sutton wrote in the memo.

"Without the State funding, the dredge project could no longer be accomplished," he wrote.

The Shoal Line site already has a berm that was used to dry sludge that can now be used for all of the estimated 50,000 cubic yards of slurry, Sutton wrote. That will eliminate the need to truck the dried material away.

The new site will keep the slurry away from homes and wetlands and save the county the time and money necessary to fight the legal opposition, he wrote. It also will negate the need to submit a flood study to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

However, it will also mean pumping the slurry about 4,000 feet farther, Sutton said. He said staffers are still figuring out how much that will add to the cost.

Halcrow is the consulting firm hired by the county in 2005 to help with dredge project. The change order would bring the total contract with the firm to $558,660.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection was poised to issue a permit to the county for the Eagle Nest site owned by the Manuel family of Brooksville, but objectors to the plan filed two petitions to get a hearing in front of an administrative law judge.

Both petitions claim the county and DEP did not adequately study the site and the possibility that building a berm to collect and drain the spoil could harm water quality in nearby marshes and canals and increase the chance of flooding in the area.

At least one hearing is tentatively set for Oct. 22. The second petition could be heard at the same time, DEP officials have said.

Eagle Nest Drive residents Lisa Bambauer and her husband Doug are part of the second group of about a dozen residents granted a hearing.

"We're cautiously optimistic the county is going to do the right thing and move the spoil site out of this high risk flood area," Bambauer said.

The group had already had the wastewater plant property in mind as an alternative, Bambauer said.

So far, the group plans to proceed with the hearing, but at some point the group could drop the legal action, Bambauer said.

"We'll have to see what happens Tuesday," she said.

The contract with the Manuels had the county leaving about 20,000 cubic yards of fill on their property to make it suitable for a residential development. Cliff Manuel said last week his family is most concerned about getting the dredge done but said the family expects the county to hold any alternative site up to the same level of scrutiny that his property has received before changing course.

The commission meets 9 a.m. Tuesday at the Government Center, 20 N. Main St., Brooksville.