County Moves Forward With Alternate Dredge Spoil Plan

The county is sailing full steam ahead with plans to place the slurry dredged from the bottom of the Hernando Beach channel on an alternate site.

Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously agreed to pay a consulting firm $146,400 to submit a permit application for the plan to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The permit would allow the county to pump and store some 50,000 cubic yards of slurry on a four-acre tract of county-owned land on the east side of Shoal Line Boulevard, north of Petit Lane.

County staff recommended the action after residents who oppose county's first choice for the disposal site - four acres of privately-owned land on nearby Eagle Nest Drive - were granted a hearing to present their concerns to an administrative law judge.

Residents claim the county and Florida Department of Environmental Protection have not fully considered the possible impacts that building a containment berm and dewatering the spoil would have to water quality in nearby canals and marshes. The requests for a hearing also cites concerns the berm would increase the threat of flooding in the area.

Commissioners agreed that the threat of delays caused by those hearings warranted the need to move on another site. A stalled project could jeopardize $6 million in state funding for the $9 million project to lengthen and deepen the channel.

"We need to keep all options open," Commissioner Rose Rocco said.

But the county could face similar problems with the new location, Cliff Manuel, owner of the Eagle Nest Drive site, told commissioners Tuesday. Manuel's family company temporarily leased the property to the county for $10 a year. In return, the county would leave some 20,000 cubic yards of sand to be used as fill dirt.

The property, a former wastewater treatment plant, is near the headwaters of Minnow Creek, Manuel said. The site was used for sludge disposal and allowing the spoil to dry there could cause any pollutants still there to drain into the creek, Manuel said.

"I don't know if running from one site to another is going to solve your problem," Manuel said. "It's just going to move it."

No permitting process is a sure thing, County Administrator Dave Hamilton acknowledged.

Still, Hamilton said, "We think it's in the county's best interest to proceed with this."

The county can still use the Manuel property if the hearings go well for the county and residents decide not to appeal, County Attorney Garth Coller told commissioners.

The alternate site was still functioning as a wastewater treatment plant when the county was looking for spoil sites back in 2005, Assistant County Engineer Gregg Sutton told commissioners. The slurry will have to be pumped about 4,000 feet farther, but Sutton said he didn't yet have estimates of how much that will add to the cost.

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, Sutton said.