There are lessons to be learnt from Miami’s dredging-related issues, explains Stevie Knight

The heated media battle over the environmental impact of Miami’s dredge is still running, but there’s a hidden story that other ports should consider.

Large-scale dredging of Miami’s port to accommodate mega ships caused damage to the area’s coral reef, according to a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with up to 81% of the reef near the dredging site buried in sediment.

Andy Strelcheck of the National Marine Fisheries Service says: “The impact from Miami’s dredging was bigger than anyone could have expected.” The sediment was, he says, carried by the current far to the north.

Whether this is true or not, it seems that the impact may be carried much further.

At the end of May a coalition of local and environmental groups gave notice that they intend to take the US Army Corps of Engineers – the body responsible for all US dredging projects – to court to demand “mandatory, common-sense protections for nearby reefs”.

It’s doubtless been given heart by the National Marine Fisheries Service recent report which challenges the Corps earlier assertion that the impact at the Port of Miami was largely down to white plague disease.

Plague doubts

Rachel Silverstein of Miami Waterkeeper sees the ‘plague’ attribution as an attempt to obscure the real issue: the coalition’s letter notifying intent to prosecute expresses concern at “widespread reef destruction” and says that the Army Corps “illegally injured and killed Endangered Species Act-listed staghorn corals and buried alive more than 200 football fields of reef habitat”. Ms Silverstein adds that as much as 93% of the corals within 100 yards of the dredge have suffered partial mortality.

She argues the original dredging permit was based on ‘flawed and inaccurate data’ as there were many, many more corals in the area than the 30 or so predicted “and in fact a later count, which reached the hundreds, was never completed”, she added.

Further, she sees the ‘adaptive management’ strategy as failing the environment and says that even when these corals were found “it was easier to declare them dead rather than stop work and attempt to rescue them… leaving later mitigation down to others”.

For her, the problem is now that the Corps has applied for the Port Everglades dredging permit, which is likewise next to the reef, based on “the same old, inaccurate surveys and mistaken assumptions”.

All this seems pretty damning, but there is another side to the story. While the Corps admits there were many more corals than predicted, there are large disagreements as to its response and it’s a little miffed that “significant mitigation efforts” – relocation, propagation and introducing artificial reefs etc – have not made the news. Further, there’s disagreement about the reef’s resilience: Eric Summa of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) says “storms kick up sediment all the time… and the reefs recover. Ms Silverstein takes issue with this and says that “although storms are intense… dredging impacts are, by contrast, chronic and ongoing” and adds that the fine sediment dispersed by dredging is harder for coral to deal with.

Conflicting claims

However, when it comes to the notion of ‘widespread destruction’ Mr Summa says: “We did predict 150 acres of surrounding impact from sedimentation… instead it was 250 acres. But when you add it all together the total impact of the dredge affected 0.4 square miles… in a reef tract of 600 square miles”.

Getting out the calculator, yes, it’s the same number as the 200 (small-ish) football fields. What about the 93% ‘partial mortality’ of coral colonies near dredging?

Not quite what it seems according to William Precht of Dial Cordy Associates, the company responsible for the monitoring. The 93% figure is the number of corals in only one of 26 areas showing dieback, noted “even if the colony recovered”. He does say that there were real impacts, but according to him the more accurate figure “is around 2% total mortality from sediment”…. Note the word ‘total’. For Ms Silverstein this falls short: if severe, ‘partial’ death can – eventually – threaten the whole colony’s survival.

However, Mr Precht’s point is the Fisheries report that has given a boost to the protesters was based on ‘one-shot’ dives performed more than six-months after the project was completed and not backed up by long-term observations – giving an ‘unfortunate’, false impression of steeper die off close to the dredge site. He says the nearby corals were simply of a different kind and more vulnerable to the disease that killed many corals across the entire region that year.

Further, “in many cases, the divers didn’t know what they were looking at with the result that they confused correlation with causation… so if they saw a dead coral with sediment over it, they assumed it had been killed by dredging rather than dying and obviously then not being able to shed this sediment”. He notes that one researcher labelled a mucus-shedding coral as ‘distressed’ when in fact the level of mucus sheathing observed was “perfectly normal” for that type of coral.

Problematically, the report has a number of erroneously labelled pictures that, as they were in his tagged data set, have a clear record of the timeline of death – from white plague disease. “It’s all in the public domain” he reiterates “if people go and look”.

Long term

Why does this matter to those who aren’t rubbing shoulders with coral reefs? Because according to Mr Precht, it’s casting a long shadow.

Unfortunately he says “the accusation that the survey information is missing or unreliable” is being used by related pressure groups at other sites like Jacksonville. It can’t be countered by government agencies and associates during an active court case, providing the organisations “with breathing space to gain media attention and momentum”.

The second, somewhat harsher criticism is one of the monitoring bodies’ independence. Andrew Baker of the University of Miami wrote in the Miami Herald that environmental consultants should not be chosen by the Army Corps or its contractors: “Such an arrangement sets up a clear conflict of interest.”

This stings Mr Precht: “We are scientists… selected because of our expertise, but by saying this you are saying we are manipulating data to be favourable to the Corps.” He underlines his team’s autonomy: he says that far from just going along with the dredge they recommended the slowing of operations on a number of occasions during the 70-plus month project.

But, despite this, Mr Precht reiterates that the contractor’s response was independent of the monitoring team: who determines the nature of this response is of course is set out in the permit.

So, Ms Silverstein may have a point when she says: “We need to leave less at the discretion of the dredging contractors and use more ‘mandatory’ language.”

Whatever happens next, it will mean changes. As Mr Strelcheck concludes: “There’s going to be a much higher level of scrutiny now – not just from other government agencies but from the public too.”

A STEP TOWARDS HIGH TECH TRANSPARENCY

There may yet be some areas of agreement between the warring parties on each side of Florida’s dredging operations.

Eric Summa of the US Army Corps of Engineers admits to the failure of the sedimentation monitors, test-tubes and cinder blocks that were supposed show how much was settling at Miami.

While these “worked well on other projects in Florida Keys” says Mr Summa, in Miami the strong current flow swept the sediment off the blocks while the test tubes only reported averages “so we couldn’t distinguish acute events”.

Given this, the Corps is, he says, going much further for the Everglades operation: this too is nudging against Florida’s fragile coral reef tract.

“We will be using a numerical model that tracks how the current moves around, both outside and inside the throat of the inlet as these have different movements,” he says.

But it’s not just the reef it’s now protecting: “We will be asking other government agencies ‘hey, just how far do think we should go?’” he says. This should avoid a repeat of the damning Fisheries Department report which laid the blame for coral death at the door of dredge-related sedimentation.

Stinging media comments have also been an issue, so the Corps is therefore trying something new for the Port Everglades project: a video link to aid “transparency”.

Instead of just depending on the usual reporting methods “which take far too long” to get out into the public domain, he explains the organisation is investigating the use of internet-linked cameras on the bottom with rulers planted beside them “so anyone with a web connection can see the information in real time”.

So, in the future technology-supported transparency could allow people to evaluate the conditions for themselves “instead of relying on one-shot dive reports” he concludes.

Source: Port Strategy