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CHARLOTTE COUNTY -
Several residents in northwest Port Charlotte are angry with state regulators for not allowing the shallow canals behind their homes to be dredged deeper.
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The canals that lead into the Myakka River, just southeast of Myakkahatchee Creek near North Port, are barely deep enough for a medium-sized boat to pass. But they become much shallower as they near the river.
"I put my boat back on the trailer because it's just too shallow to get in and out," said Jerry Lord, who built a home on the Apollo Waterway three years ago.
He said that when he purchased the home, he thought the canals would be dredged to become easily navigable. Many of the other 750 residents on the Apollo, Cheshire and Venus waterways are in a similar predicament.
The frustration stems from a combination of environmental laws designed to protect shellfish beds, and poor dredging performed in the 1970s by General Development Corp., the developer that platted large parts of Charlotte County and North Port before going bankrupt.
While General Development transformed the Apollo, Cheshire and Venus from meandering creeks into 5-foot-deep canals, the company did not continue the dredging out to the Myakka.
Now, state laws forbid dredging in that area of the river, because shellfish propagate there and because it is considered an outstanding Florida water resource.
Years ago, Charlotte County asked the Department of Environmental Protection for permission to dredge the mouths to a 5-foot depth. But the agency balked, said Charles Mopps, coastal programs project manager for the county.
"I've got a file that's about 2 feet thick on this project because I've been working on it since 1999," Mopps said.
In 2004, the state budged a little, allowing a "maintenance dredge" of the original creek beds. Apollo and Cheshire were dredged 3 feet and Venus 2.5 feet.
The mouth and upper canals are becoming silted in now. To remedy that, the special taxing district for the neighborhood decided recently to pay for another maintenance dredging.
The dredge will cost each resident on the Northwest Port Charlotte Waterway $100, an expense some say is a waste.
"If they don't dredge the mouth of where we can get out to the river, then what good is it?" said David Hurt, who lives on the Cheshire Waterway.
On Sunday, he said, he returned from a boat trip when the tide was just high enough for him to make it past the shallow mouth in his 19-foot boat, which draws about 18 inches of water.
Clearing up the navigation problem entirely would involve a mile of new dredging to connect the canals to a channel in the Myakka, Mopps said. Unless laws change, that is unlikely.
The DEP must follow state law when issuing permits, said department spokesman Elijah Fleishauer.
"The protection of that environment is a benefit for everyone in the state, and to make it deeper for the bigger boats to come through, it only benefits the people who want the bigger boats," Fleishauer said.
Source Link:http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080923/ARTICLE/809230362/1011/news
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