Environmental Battle Brews over Port Everglades Dredging Plan

Environmental Battle Brews over Port Everglades Dredging Plan
By David Fleshler

An environmental fight is brewing over plans by Port Everglades to blast and dredge a deeper entrance channel to accommodate the super freighters that are beginning to dominate the world's trade routes.

The $321 million project would deepen the channel to 50 feet from 42 feet, and make other improvements to safely accommodate bigger ships. It would have a dramatic impact on one of the region's busiest economic engines, a port for cruise ships, cargo ships and petroleum tankers that accounts for 10,000 jobs in direct employment and helps diversify a tourism-dependent economy.

But several state and federal environmental agencies say it could also have a dramatic impact on coral reefs, sea grass and endangered species.

The Army Corps of Engineers recently completed its latest draft environmental impact statement, which it declined to make public, saying the completed draft would be released early next year.

Several state and federal agencies that reviewed the draft were sharply critical of it, filing letters this summer that said the Corps understated the likely damage to natural resources. The National Marine Fisheries Service said the destruction of 15 acres of coral reef along the entrance channel would constitute impact on an "unprecedented scale" and threatened to take the issue to the White House Council on Environmental Quality if its concerns were not adequately addressed.

Meanwhile, Port Everglades faces competition from ports along the east coast of the United States, which are racing to dredge deeper accommodations in anticipation of the widening of the Panama Canal. The 48-mile canal is undergoing an expansion that is expected to transform trading patterns between Asia and the United States.

Ships from Asia typically dock at west coast ports such as Los Angeles or Long Beach, where automobiles, flat-screen televisions and other exports are loaded onto trains and trucks for distribution throughout the United States.

But with the widened canal, expected to be completed in 2014, the big ships will be able to deliver these goods directly to east coast ports. To accommodate ships that could be 1,000 feet long and 140 feet wide, several ports — including those of New York, Norfolk, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville and Miami — are planning or engaged in projects to deepen to 50 feet.