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Port Richey Wades Through Dredging Troubles

Misinformation plagues city’s delayed dredging project

Jessica Bair/SUNCOAST

PORT RICHEY CANALS are the cause of much heated debate among city council and residents. City officials are upset with the amount of misinformation and delays that have set the permitting process for the long-awaited dredging project back even farther.

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By Jessica  Bair | The Suncoast News

Published: September 27, 2007

PORT RICHEY, Fla. - PORT RICHEY, Fla. - Tuesday night for several hours, city officials tried to clarify misinformation and how setbacks occurred in the process to obtain permits for the city's decade-old dredging project.

Councilman Mark Hashim presented information to fellow council members with a timeline that addressed where things may have gone wrong.

"There is a very clear explanation and paper trail of what has occurred," Hashim said to council. "I feel they (LPA Group, a Tampa consulting firm hired by the city) have put the city in a compromising position," he added.

On Aug. 28, council members voted to remove canals 6, 11, and 13 from the permit application via a resolution, asking Project Manager Mariben Andersen of LPA Group to do so only if a set of requested tidal flow and flushing studies would speed up the process.

Residents of Port Richey who appeared at that meeting and members of the Port Authority Board, who asked council to keep the 26 canals grouped together in the application, protested the vote to drop the three canals.

One week later, after speaking to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which requested the studies, Councilman Hashim discovered that the flushing studies could been completed in a few days. LPA Group had originally proposed a longer time frame, anywhere from six months to a year, to complete the requested studies.

Council's next move was on Sept. 11 with a vote to rejoin the three canals to the multimillion-dollar project with hopes to submit the application to DEP by a Sept. 24 deadline.

Mariben Andersen was on hand Tuesday night to explain where the project stands at this stage and to address concerns.

"It seems like every time we turn and try to expedite your project, things happen that affect it," she said of a series of stumbling blocks.

Andersen says the approach they use for the permitting process "is to always meet and always coordinate with the agencies involved so we that can cross our T's and dot our I's," she explained to council.

Lack of communication between LPA Group and the DEP led to these discrepancies, she said.

"It was never our choice to drop those three channels," Andersen said. "It was only to move them. We have been fighting for all the other channels," she said. LPA preferred to include the three channels in question to a permit with channels 27 and 28 instead.

There are three separate permit applications covering all the dredging.

The Port Authority Board members disagree and at Tuesday's meeting presented council with five recommendations including replacing the LPA Group with another consulting firm to obtain the highly sought-after dredging permits.

"She stands up here and puts on a good show," said Mike Latini, Port Authority Board member. "But we're not hearing anything new."

Another recommendation is to have a representative from LPA Group and/or city manager attend Port Authority meetings, as well as have biweekly progress reports from the consulting group.

"We feel we're being left out the loop here on certain communications," Roland Brier, board chairman said.

The decade-old dredging project that hasn't taken off, involves unclogging approximately 400,000 cubic yards of mud and silt from 30 canals and waterways in the city.

The city has paid the LPA Group roughly $457,000 since it was hired in 2005 but have no completed permits, said Hashim. Before LPA assumed the project Tampa Bay Engineering was involved and it couldn't get the job done and had to be replaced.

City council also voted Tuesday to spend more than $9,000 on flushing studies on the three canals. Some studies are being performed this weekend. The city has an Oct. 24 deadline to complete the set of studies and submit the dredging application to DEP.

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