County, nature taking care of botched canal culvert project

County, nature taking care of

botched canal culvert project

BY TERRY SCHMIDA

Two seaweed and debris-choked canals off Venus Lane on Geiger Key are now benefiting from both nature and nurture, following a county department’s previous mistaken and costly attempt to improve tidal flow there.

The two canals were connected two each other via a culvert running beneath Boca Chica Road back in May. The test project was undertaken by the county’s Sustainability Program, at a cost of nearly $200,000 in local and state funds. But the effort backfired, causing a surge in seaweed, dead marine life and other rubbish that led to “sea fart” gasses, and left nearby residents fuming.

Before long, county staffers and politicians were receiving angry emails and other communications from teed-off residents, irate at the double-whammy of an expensive boondoggle.

“The seaweed cleanup work was completed [on July 6,] said Sustainability Program Manager Rhonda Haag. “And much of the waste washed out on its own over the [July Fourth] holiday, thanks to a strong wind that came through prior to the weekend. The culvert has now been plugged, as of [July 2.]”

Haag said the problem came about as the result of county efforts to work around a resident’s seawall brace.

“The culvert had to be placed at the side of the canal instead of the middle, because of a support system for a neighbor’s seawall that reached out into the middle of canal bottom,” according to Haag. “To avoid impact to that neighbor a failed decision was made. That helped the bayside canal, which had some of the poorest water quality in the county, with no tidal flushing. But when we put the culvert in the side, it created an unintended effect in the oceanside canal, resulting in an eddy, so that when the tide went back out it didn’t take the seaweed with it. It just circulated in the canal eddy. Once we saw that regular tidal flushing wouldn’t solve the problem, we had to plug the culvert and remove the seaweed that was there.”

Now that the foul trapped flora has receded Haag said the county will be inspecting the canals and culvert in an attempt to find a long-term solution to the problem.

In the meantime, the canals will be monitored by personnel from Florida International University, which has a three-year contract with the state Environmental Protection agency.

“They’ll be going out there soon to sample the water quality,” Haag promised. “These are demonstration projects and we’re learning from them. We want to reopen the culvert as quickly as possible, once we have a long-term solution. Any seaweed that may occur while the culvert is plugged will be a natural process.”

The Venus Canal fix was one of a handful of test schemes aimed at improving canal water quality and flow in unincorporated Monroe.

The county has set aside millions of dollars in infrastructure sales tax funds for these types of enterprises, and is also targeting millions more in Restore Act cash, raised through Clean Water Act fines on the B.P. And Transocean companies, for their role in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.