In fairness, the Panama Canal took almost twice as long

Yippee.

Or maybe an end on the horizon for the Hernando Beach dredging project deserves something more nautical.

It certainly deserves something. It took long enough.

Someone born when the project started would be old enough to enlist in the military, vote and have a high school diploma.

If you remember that far back, Major League Baseball went on strike, skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed in the leg and Newt Gingrich was named House Speaker.

Yeah, 1994 when this project got under way was a long time ago. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit wasn't even part of our lexicon. And at the start of that year, a gallon of regular cost less than a buck.

The epic public works project to scour a channel 60 feet wide and 6 feet deep going 3 miles into the Gulf of Mexico seems like it's down to the county's punch list. The county will hold on to the final payment of $256,000 until all the items on that list are done, a sign things are winding down.

Though with this project, there's nothing certain.

On something as complicated as a dredging project, the 30 problems the county is waiting to be polished off seems like a pretty small number. The company doing the work says the last of untied ends should be knotted up in late March when a damaged seawall is fixed.

This is nothing against BCPeabody, the company that took over a project that carried with a high amount of, uh, history, and seemed to have become as complex as digging the Panama Canal, though in fairness, the Hernando Beach dredging project has taken only slightly more than half as long.

The company got the job done, or close to it at this point.

Something still could pop up. Nothing in Hernando County's version of building the pyramids gets done without drama. And no one is setting a date to cut the ribbon on the new channel.

But man, this thing has been a mess, even just in the last year or so that included some tawdry antics and more delays than the debut of the newest version of Windows.

And it cost Hernando County a ton of money. Maybe not a ton. The county's share would be more like around 200 pounds of hundred dollar bills. It would be nearly 10 tons in singles, though, so maybe a ton of 10 spots.

By the time the invoices end up dribbling in, the long trench may come to $15 million. If the state lives up to its promise and reimburses the county what it pledged for its share, Hernando's portion would come to the neighborhood of $9 million.

Put that amount into some proportion, commissioners are in a lather about rampant claims of sinkhole damage and sagging property values in general sapping $2.5 million from the county treasury this coming budget year.

Granted, that $9 million might be spread over some time and come from different accounting wallets, but $9 million would ease a lot of troubled nerves in the county and maybe keep commissioners from raising taxes again or laying off more workers.

A lot of county commissioners inherited the project that reached a point where shoveling more money into it was necessary, kind of a financial point of no return.

There should be little doubt the straight, deep channel will make it safer for boaters to reach open water, including those earning their living from the Gulf. It will make the trip faster for recreational boaters and may even attract more mariners from other counties who will hopefully spend money.

But at the millage the county levies for its general fund, something like 16,000 houses taxed at $100,000 each would be needed get $9 million. The county has about 61,700 single-family homes on its tax roll and another 11,900 mobile homes.

It will take a lot of fast, safe boat trips from Hernando Beach into the Gulf and out of town sailors buying bait to make up $9 million in county tax money.