Sebastian Inlet to be dredged

Dredging to begin on deep channel for Sebastian Inlet

By ELLIOTT JONES
elliott.jones@scripps.com June 7, 2007

SEBASTIAN — A 2-mile-long line of flashing nighttime beacons and large floats are being extended across scenic Indian River Lagoon here. They are markers for what begins Friday: the long-sought dredging of a deep boating channel to the Sebastian Inlet. The channel will cut through the shallows, west of the inlet, that have been an obstruction for boaters going from the Indian River Lagoon to the popular inlet to the ocean.

"It's a dire necessity, absolutely," said charter board captain Dick Catri, who operates his 32-foot vessel Escape II out of the Sebastian Inlet State Park marina, on the park's north side. "It is a crying shame this has gone on for so long without being taken care of. The other ocean inlets (with deep channels) are 25 miles away in either direction."
Dredging of the three-quarter-mile long channel is to last 30 to 45 days.
But solving the problem is expensive: $3 million, one-third of which is because of the project's environmental consequences, principally disruption of sea grass beds.
Concern about protecting the grasses — that scientists say are vital to marine life — has held up the work for years, said Marty Smithson, director of the Sebastian Inlet District that is doing the project.
To finally get approval, sea grass in the channel's way had to be dug up and transplanted to neighboring areas.
At least 36 caution signs for boaters will be arrayed outside the channel to keep boaters off the sea grass beds.
The dredged-up material is too poor a quality to be put on eroding beaches, so it will be piped away to the mainland at an added cost of about $500,000. Further, to make up for the channel construction, the district must give Indian River County $750,000 for cleaning up fertilizers flowing into the lagoon in Vero Beach from a large canal draining the mainland.
All that is to create a channel that will be 9 feet deep, from channel bottom to the top of the water. The project will straighten part of an existing channel that ends abruptly, with depths going from 8 to 3 feet.
"They put us through it," said Smithson, referring to finally getting dredging permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The west side of the inlet has 240 acres of grasses, including one of the rarest, the endangered Johnson's sea grass. And just south of the proposed channel is the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge.
Smithson did convince government regulators the channel will concentrate boating traffic, which has been spreading out, finding its own way through the grass-filled shallows. The result, he said, is boat bottoms and propellers have destroyed an equivalent of three-fourths an acre of sea grasses.
In the end, though, boat owners hope the channel makes the inlet an easier and less dangerous place to use. Owners of larger boats have run aground, ruining propellers costing thousands of dollars, Catri said.
Opening up a large channel, "Will be a boon to the local fishing trade," he said. "I don't know of a fisherman who would disagree with that."
Capt. Terry Wildey operates a 37-foot sports fishing boat out of Capt. Hiram's Marina in Sebastian. "It will be great if they do it (the channel dredging)," he said. "Every time we go out the inlet we have been chewing up the grasses because of the shallows."
SEBASTIAN INLET NAVIGATION CHANNEL DREDGING
Purpose: Create a deep navigation channel linking the Sebastian Inlet to the Intracoastal Waterway in the Indian River Lagoon.
Timetable: Dredging to begin Friday and will last 30 to 45 days.
Size: The 3,200-foot-long channel will be 150 feet wide and 9 feet deep, from the water's surface to the channel bottom.
How: A floating dredge will work in daylight hours. The sandy soils will be pumped away through an underwater pipe across the Indian River
Lagoon. The pipeline ends eight miles away at a man-made reservoir west of Barefoot Bay. Six miles were already in place for the dredging of the St. Sebastian River.
Who pays: Sebastian Inlet District, with a $325,000 grant from the
Florida Inland Navigation District, Jupiter.
Usage: The inlet is well used by boaters. A survey showed 400 boat trips during one four-hour period on a weekend.
Sebastian Inlet District