JaxPort’s deep dredge scam won’t stop with deepening the St. Johns River shipping channel from 40 feet to 47 feet.
If the port’s current project is completed — hopefully a lawsuit in federal court will stop it — JaxPort’s tune will change that 47 feet is enough; instead 50 feet or 52 feet or 54 feet will be needed to handle the cargo ships that keep getting bigger.
Here’s now it works:
It was just three years ago that PortMiami dredged its channel in Biscayne Bay to 50 feet, destroying critical coral reefs and seagrass beds along the way.
According to the Miami Herald, Port Miami is already back asking for more — deeper and wider.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers accepts some blame for environmental damage in Biscayne Bay but makes the excuse that the dredge was hurried as part of the federal government’s push to get infrastructure work done.
Don’t look now, but JaxPort’s dredge was also part of the hurry-up plan, and environmental concerns, especially mitigation, were given short shrift.
If you think the flooding from Hurricane Irma was bad, just wait until the channel goes to more than 50 feet in depth.
And remember all of this — at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money — is being done by an unelected board.
Well said. And with regard to the JAA, Jaxport and most assuredly the JEA, there is way more than a scintilla of evidence that on this, the 50th anniversary of Consolidation, the Independent Authorities , it would appear, have gone rogue!
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