Port St. Lucie 'assault' on land along North Fork 'obscene,' alliance says
PORT ST. LUCIE — A project designed to mitigate environmental damage caused by the Crosstown Parkway Bridge does more harm than good, according to a local conservation group.
The $1 million handicapped-accessible kayak launch and access road the city built will harm wildlife and native plants in the Halpatiokee section of the Savannas Preserve State Park just south of the proposed bridge across the North Fork of the St. Lucie River, say members of the St. Lucie Conservation Alliance.
"It's an assault on one of the most important pieces of natural area along the North Fork," said Grant Gilmore, a Vero Beach marine biologist and fish expert. "The fact that it's being done to a state park preserve just makes it obscene."
Yes, the project will impact the preserve's environment, but the damage will be minimal and more than offset by the increased public access it will provide, said George Denti, project administrator for the Crosstown Parkway Extension.
"We believe in protecting plants and animals," Denti said, "but access is important. Now this site can be used by a greater number of people, and that will lead to more people understanding, appreciating and supporting the environment."
The alliance has no problem with getting more people on the river, including handicapped people, said George Jones, project director at the Ocean Research & Conservation Association in Fort Pierce. "The problem is with where and how it was done."
It's painfully ironic, alliance members say, that a project meant to mitigate environmental damage would cause environmental damage.
"What the city did here was mitigate for humans, not for the environment," Gilmore said.
The alliance, a consortium of several environmental groups in St. Lucie County, has filed a federal lawsuit to stop construction of the bridge.
DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
The Halpatiokee preserve is 50 acres. The bridge will affect 30 acres, and the new launch and access road take away an additional 5 acres, said alliance President Shari Anker. "It wasn't a big tract of land to begin with, and this just makes it smaller."
Here are some of the alliance's complaints about the project and the city's responses:
Complaint: Rainwater runoff along the half-mile paved road from U.S. 1 to the launch site on Evans Creek and at the paved, waterside parking lot will flow into and pollute the creek and river.
The wetlands along the east side of the river helped absorb runoff from U.S. 1, Anker said. "By putting a paved road from the highway to the river, they not only took away some of that ability, they actually added more runoff into the river."
Response: The road was sited so it would have the least environmental impact on the preserve, Denti said. And it was designed "so that all the rainwater that falls on it is treated in roadside swales. There is no runoff. It doesn't cause any pollution."
Complaint: The access road is lined with non-native Bahia grass that "will soon be invading the rest of the preserve," said Diane Goldberg, a native plant expert with the St. Lucie Audubon Society.
And when the Bahia grass dies back in the winter, non-native species will take over the open ground "like bacteria takes to an open wound," Jones said.
Response: Bahia grass was used because it provides "an immediate and robust ground cover," Denti said, "and we needed to have immediate erosion control. Native plants would have taken months to establish."
Complaint: The access road "fragments the scrub habitat, one of the most fragile and imperiled habitats" on the Treasure Coast, Goldberg said.
The area is home to endangered species such as gopher tortoises and indigo snakes, Goldberg said, and there are ongoing efforts to re-establish scrub jay nests. Dividing the preserve, the road "makes wildlife areas smaller and impedes animals' ability to survive," said Carol Herzog, a volunteer at Savannas Preserve State Park.
Response: "That's being a bit dramatic," Denti said. "It's not a wall; it's a roadway. Raccoons, gopher tortoises and snakes are able to cross it with no problem."
Also, the project includes restoring a 5-acre scrub habitat that had been overgrown with non-native plants in hopes Florida scrub jays will return to the area.
WHAT'S APPROPRIATE?
The launch is one of four mitigation projects planned for the bridge. The others are an educational center at the Savannas Preserve State Park; a 2.5-mile nature trail through the freshwater marsh on Midway Road south of Fort Pierce; and new native plantings at Platt's Creek in White City.
Enhancing those projects won't have any direct effect on environmental damage done by the proposed bridge, alliance members said.
"Mitigation has to be appropriate," Anker said. "Why would you do mitigation projects that don't take the resources you're impacting into consideration?"
Denti agreed, but said mitigation projects are often much farther away from the site they're supposed to mitigate.
"We were fortunate to find projects as close as we did," he said.