Every Tuesday morning at 8:30 AM, a community club gathers to voice their opinions, discuss the politics and changes for the city of Miami Beach. It’s called the Breakfast Club and it meets at a historic restaurant landmark called David’s Café II on Lincoln Rd in the heart of South Beach.
A few side topics kicked off the meeting like wouldn’t it be better if the people voted on Casinos in Miami Beach rather than the city commission, but shortly thereafter the speakers were introduced and we got to the meat of the meeting.
The purpose of this meet was to discuss the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) to dredge, deepen and widen shipping channels within the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve, a designated Outstanding Florida Water, which shares a maritime boundary with Biscayne National Park. Addressing this issue were Captain Dan Kipnis and Alexis Segal.
According to Capt. Kipnis, once this project is underway, it will effectively kill our bay. The Sea grass will be gone, the fish will be gone, the coral reefs will be relocated with no guarantee they will survive and the bay will turn into a gigantic mud-pit—all funded by local taxpayer monies, not federal.
The plan is to deepen the bay by another 12 feet from what is now 40’ up to 52’. This is to allow larger cargo and Panamax tankers to dock in our Port of Miami. But, here’s the kicker. There is no guarantee at all they will come here. Moreover, the price-tag of $150mm is bogus according to Capt. Kipnis; it’s more like $2 billion for the total cost of all improvements.
Now, according to Alexis Segal, Governor Scott is very pro-port expansion and his goal is to attract Super Post Panamax Ships (Vessels of about 22 or more containers wide)—kind of an, if you build it, they will come thing. And since we are now in phase III of the project, one of last stages of approval must come from the FDEP (Florida Department of Environment Protection) to grant the Army Corps a water quality certification in order to move ahead. This is at minimum, a two year project with over 600 days of confined blasting which will remove ~ 5 million cubic yards of soil (Or about 10 football fields). And all of that soil needs to be relocated.
This is why The Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper, Captain Kipnis and the Tropical Audubon Society are challenging the permit. The Army Corps via the local sponsor who is the Port of Miami, is supposed to restore certain amounts of destroyed sea grass and corals they are dredging; but in the latest draft permit the FDEP has required much less than prior drafts and not accounting for previously dredged areas even as long ago as twenty years—pretty much allowing the ACE to destroy the bay without having to restore it to the level it should. For instance, of the 24 acres of destroyed sea grass, they are only required to restore 14, of the 24 acres of coral reefs < 10 and so on.
Moreover, the number of jobs created by the dredging is woefully overestimated to 33,000—a figure only reachable if all the ports in Florida were expanded—not just the Port of Miami. The true figure, according to Ms. Segal—summarizing a report from Martin Associates, Economic Analysis of Seaport Priority—it is more like 4,000 temp construction jobs and ~ 1500 on-going after completion.
Suffice to say, the new permit has radically changed from the original permit and is, in the challenger’s opinion, sub-standard, with several exemptions disregarding the environmental impact to the bay, the laws in place to protect the water, the residents and potential job creation.
However, construction is slated for next summer which may or may not allow for enough time to address these concerns. The issues raised probably can’t be fixed quickly. It may be that additional studies, surveys—like a Secondary Environmental Impact Study (SEIS), or hydrology studies of the bay are necessary. Again though, it’s no guarantee exemptions will be re-modified to protect our aquatic preserve as stated by the law. And at this point, the law is not being followed correctly. According to Capt. Kipnis, if they were to follow the law, they simply wouldn’t be able to meet the criteria; which gives one pause as to why the dredging is taking place at all.
And so speaking to the reasons, the residents of Miami and the beaches—who are going to pay for this—stand to gain nothing, but the shipping companies who run the port do; an estimated increase of off-loaded containers from 900,000 to 3 million. Once again, the cost of doing business is squarely saddled on the backs of the taxpayers so the shipping companies can increase their bottom lines.
One last fact, Biscayne Bay is estimated to rise or be under water within 50 years or earlier from now. The amount of pollution in the bay mixed with the pesticides on agri-land and our sewer plant on inland will be collected with the tide and make its way back into the bay. This, in turn will cause massive algae blooms and higher salinity. It won’t be pretty.
In the end, the issue is not that anyone is against job creation or progress, the issue is that the FDEP—under the direction of Herschel Vinyard, appointee of Governor Scott—has sub-standardized wetland rulings, and is bending over backward to accommodate the ACE. In doing so, FDEP is doing exactly the opposite of what it was established to do. Moreover and maybe more to the point, there are several bills in the state legislature to deregulate protections for water quality and over-development specific to Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve, not to mention attempts to close the BB Aquatic Preserve field office last session.
So I guess if you get the laws out of the way, progress wins and no one is left accountable.
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