The deepening and widening of the Port Everglades shipping channel was supposed to start in 2017, but after the PortMiami dredging project buried millions of corals, Miami Waterkeeper and partners Earthjustice, Dive Equipment and Marketing Association, and Florida Wildlife Federation brought a lawsuit to force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to redo their environmental assessments and mitigation plans. Since then, they’ve been working to account for lessons learned from the PortMiami dredging and its impacts. But serious issues still remain unaddressed and mistakes are being repeated that could wipe out Florida's last remaining stands of listed corals and populations of conch.
The Corps has walked away from measures that could reduce impacts on these reefs and protect the species that call them home. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has called the Corps’ analyses “unintelligible,” “lack[ing] fundamentally important information,” and “contain[ing] significant factual and analytical flaws.” Furthermore, mitigation requirements to address impacts to millions of corals are still not possible with current coral restoration capacity.
Why might the Port Everglades dredging project prove so damaging?
The last thriving staghorn corals and queen conch populations live right next to the channel and will likely be wiped out by dredging
It has the potential to cause the largest permitted impact to coral reefs in U.S. history
Current plans allow over 200 days of blasting
It's anticipated to last ~ 5-6 years (compared to 2 years at PortMiami)
The current plans also put snook and other marine resources at risk
Planning details fail to meet the Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulatory standards and permitting necessary for determining environmental effects
The Corps has refused to undertake key minimization steps to reduce impacts to corals