What $11 million would do for Bayou Chico
- December 10, 2014
- / William Rabb
- / community-dashboard
While local officials are celebrating their good fortune in $11 million for Bayou Chico watershed restoration projects, property owners and scientists say that's only part of the story.
The once-pristine body of water won't be clean again until it's scoured of toxic chemicals – from head to toe.
[caption id="attachment_11923" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
Attorney Tom Ratchford stands on Bayou Chico. Ratchford represented homeowners along Bayou Chico in the 1980's trying to get pollution cleaned up. Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today[/caption]
“There's more poison in Bayou Chico than in Love Canal,” said Tom Ratchford, a Pensacola attorney who represented homeowners in a 1980s effort to clean the contaminated sediment. “It's still there, and it needs to be dredged six feet deep or more, for the whole bayou.”
A 2006 study by University of West Florida biologists showed a wide range of pollutants, including mercury, lead, other metals, arsenic, PCBs, dioxins, creosote products and petroleum products in high concentrations all over the bayou.
Scooping those sediments out would be expensive, but proponents say the funding coming from penalties paid by companies involved in the 2010 Gulf oil spill would go along way toward cleaning the bayou.
“That's our goal, to use the RESTORE money to dredge it back down to the white sand that's under all that muck,” said John Naybor, owner of three marinas on the bayou and president of the Bayou Chico Association.
[sidebar]
The RESTORE Act is the federal law that requires the lion’s share of fines imposed under the Clean Water Act be spent in the counties most impacted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The process is complex, but Escambia County stands to receive as much as $200 million from criminal and civil penalties paid by BP, the global oil company held most responsible, and TransOcean Ltd., which operated the doomed rig.
[/sidebar]
Last month, Florida Gov. Rick Scott submitted a $16 million plan that included $357,000 for design work for dredging for the northern feeder branches of the bayou and money to convert hundreds of bayou-area homes from septic tanks to central sewer lines.
Projects to be funded from another batch of the oil spill money would reduce stormwater runoff and expand wetlands.
Progress has come slowly
In the past 15 years, a number of county and state projects have restored wetlands and upgraded aging sewage treatment stations.
All of these projects are aimed at improving water quality in the bayou, and much progress has been made.
The amount of enterococcus bacteria, commonly found in sewage, have been cut in half in the last decade, according to county and state data; and osprey, dolphins and other marine life have returned to the waters in recent years.
Local activists say that progress is important. But there is much work to be done.
“Bayou Chico is the nastiest body of water on the northern Gulf Coast,” said Ken Davis, a Bayou Chico native who runs Pensacola Environmental Services.
Davis’ company has for 22 years conducted remediation and soil-sampling work.
“If you want to make it clean again, you have to remove the sludge and get the contaminants out.”
Carl Mohrherr, one of the UWF biologists who conducted an exhaustive 2006 study on the bayou, would like to see all of that material taken out of the bayou and disposed of properly.
“It's good to remove it, but it has to be done right,” Mohrherr said.
[caption id="attachment_11917" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
The view from the Bayou Chico from Barrancas Avenue. Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today[/caption]
As long as the bottom is contaminated, the chemicals will accumulate, starting with bottom-feeding fish and crab, which pose a threat to people who eat them, UWF studies show. Also, plants and microorganisms that build the base of a healthy marine ecosystem can't thrive in polluted sediment.
Escambia County officials say that a pitch for more dredging funds will come later in the RESTORE process.
The idea is to use the initial oil spill money for planning and design, said Keith Wilkins, community and environment director for the county. As more BP penalty money becomes available, the county will apply for it.
Bayou Chico could be transformed from the industrial ditch it had been for decades, off-limits to swimming and fishing, to something of a clean, mixed-use waterway, with homes, restaurants, recreation and marinas, officials have said.
“Ultimately, that's the goal: to make it swimmable again,” Wilkins said.
A costly proposition
Wilkins and other county officials say any dredging project likely would focus on the most contaminated spots on the Bayou floor, polluted by decades of discharge from industry that once surrounded the inlet.
[sidebar]
The Department of Environment Protection on Thursday is meeting with stakeholders in Escambia County to provide updates on the ongoing restoration plan for Bayou Chico.
The Bayou Chico Restoration Plan Annual Update meeting starts at 1:30 p.m. at the Escambia County Board of Commissioners Central Office Complex, 3363 W. Park Place on Palafox Street.
The restoration plan, known as a basin management action plan, or BMAP, covers Bayou Chico and six water body segments, all of which flow into Bayou Chico and the bay: Jones Creek, Jackson Creek, Bayou Chico Drain, Bayou Chico Beach, Bayou Chico proper and Sanders Beach.
For details about the plan, click here.
[/sidebar]
The extent of the dredging would have to be determined by a careful investigation, requiring months of sediment sampling, said Chips Kirschenfeld, senior scientist and manager of the county's water quality and land management division.
For any dredging program, the cost may be difficult to nail down.
Naybor and Davis have conducted cost estimates that put the price at $10 million to $12 million for dredging most of the bayou, from the mouth to the upper branches. But others say that estimate is far too low.
A 2005 study for dredging all of Bayou Texar, five miles to the east, for example, put the cost at close to $600 million, Wilkins said.
For the smaller Bayou Chico, a similar dredging project could cost as much as $200 million, he said.
[caption id="attachment_11913" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
John Naybor president of the Bayou Chico Association stands and owner of Island Cove Marina on Bayou Chico. Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today[/caption]
When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Bayou Chico ship channel in 2007, the cost came to about $2.8 million, according to news reports. But that was only for a narrow channel about a mile in length, removing some 240,000 cubic yards of silt.
That came to about $12 per cubic yard, partly because channel sediment was dumped, after environmental testing, in the nearby Clark Sand Pits surrounding Jackson Branch, the northwest tributary of the bayou.
Dredging all of Bayou Chico would be much more expensive, said Clif Payne, a biologist at the corps.
For one thing, the more-contaminated sludge would have to be hauled away to an approved hazardous-waste landfill, which could add another $60 per yard in hauling and disposal fees.
At that price, if five linear miles of the bayou were dredged, and 1.2 million cubic yards of muck removed, the total cost could top $80 million.
Bayou's future
The cost of dredging can't be borne by all the original polluters because most of those companies have long since closed down.
Davis believes a less-expensive dredge process could be used, one that removes the water from the dredge spoils, filters it through sand and carbon and returns clean water to the bayou.
[caption id="attachment_11916" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
The view from the Bayou Chico from Barrancas Avenue. Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today[/caption]
That would reduce the amount of solid material, which could be mixed with binders and clean sand to dilute and contain the contaminants, making it suitable for a conventional – and less expensive – landfill.
Davis has studied the process for years, and has offered to oversee such a three-year project for Bayou Chico.
“I wanted to do something before I croaked, and if I could get the bayou cleaned up, that would really mean I had done something,” Davis said.
Attorney Tom Ratchford stands on Bayou Chico. Ratchford represented homeowners along Bayou Chico in the 1980's trying to get pollution cleaned up. Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today[/caption]
“There's more poison in Bayou Chico than in Love Canal,” said Tom Ratchford, a Pensacola attorney who represented homeowners in a 1980s effort to clean the contaminated sediment. “It's still there, and it needs to be dredged six feet deep or more, for the whole bayou.”
A 2006 study by University of West Florida biologists showed a wide range of pollutants, including mercury, lead, other metals, arsenic, PCBs, dioxins, creosote products and petroleum products in high concentrations all over the bayou.
Scooping those sediments out would be expensive, but proponents say the funding coming from penalties paid by companies involved in the 2010 Gulf oil spill would go along way toward cleaning the bayou.
“That's our goal, to use the RESTORE money to dredge it back down to the white sand that's under all that muck,” said John Naybor, owner of three marinas on the bayou and president of the Bayou Chico Association.
[sidebar]
The RESTORE Act is the federal law that requires the lion’s share of fines imposed under the Clean Water Act be spent in the counties most impacted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The process is complex, but Escambia County stands to receive as much as $200 million from criminal and civil penalties paid by BP, the global oil company held most responsible, and TransOcean Ltd., which operated the doomed rig.
[/sidebar]
Last month, Florida Gov. Rick Scott submitted a $16 million plan that included $357,000 for design work for dredging for the northern feeder branches of the bayou and money to convert hundreds of bayou-area homes from septic tanks to central sewer lines.
Projects to be funded from another batch of the oil spill money would reduce stormwater runoff and expand wetlands.
Progress has come slowly
In the past 15 years, a number of county and state projects have restored wetlands and upgraded aging sewage treatment stations.
All of these projects are aimed at improving water quality in the bayou, and much progress has been made.
The amount of enterococcus bacteria, commonly found in sewage, have been cut in half in the last decade, according to county and state data; and osprey, dolphins and other marine life have returned to the waters in recent years.
Local activists say that progress is important. But there is much work to be done.
“Bayou Chico is the nastiest body of water on the northern Gulf Coast,” said Ken Davis, a Bayou Chico native who runs Pensacola Environmental Services.
Davis’ company has for 22 years conducted remediation and soil-sampling work.
“If you want to make it clean again, you have to remove the sludge and get the contaminants out.”
Carl Mohrherr, one of the UWF biologists who conducted an exhaustive 2006 study on the bayou, would like to see all of that material taken out of the bayou and disposed of properly.
“It's good to remove it, but it has to be done right,” Mohrherr said.
[caption id="attachment_11917" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
The view from the Bayou Chico from Barrancas Avenue. Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today[/caption]
As long as the bottom is contaminated, the chemicals will accumulate, starting with bottom-feeding fish and crab, which pose a threat to people who eat them, UWF studies show. Also, plants and microorganisms that build the base of a healthy marine ecosystem can't thrive in polluted sediment.
Escambia County officials say that a pitch for more dredging funds will come later in the RESTORE process.
The idea is to use the initial oil spill money for planning and design, said Keith Wilkins, community and environment director for the county. As more BP penalty money becomes available, the county will apply for it.
Bayou Chico could be transformed from the industrial ditch it had been for decades, off-limits to swimming and fishing, to something of a clean, mixed-use waterway, with homes, restaurants, recreation and marinas, officials have said.
“Ultimately, that's the goal: to make it swimmable again,” Wilkins said.
A costly proposition
Wilkins and other county officials say any dredging project likely would focus on the most contaminated spots on the Bayou floor, polluted by decades of discharge from industry that once surrounded the inlet.
[sidebar]
The Department of Environment Protection on Thursday is meeting with stakeholders in Escambia County to provide updates on the ongoing restoration plan for Bayou Chico.
The Bayou Chico Restoration Plan Annual Update meeting starts at 1:30 p.m. at the Escambia County Board of Commissioners Central Office Complex, 3363 W. Park Place on Palafox Street.
The restoration plan, known as a basin management action plan, or BMAP, covers Bayou Chico and six water body segments, all of which flow into Bayou Chico and the bay: Jones Creek, Jackson Creek, Bayou Chico Drain, Bayou Chico Beach, Bayou Chico proper and Sanders Beach.
For details about the plan, click here.
[/sidebar]
The extent of the dredging would have to be determined by a careful investigation, requiring months of sediment sampling, said Chips Kirschenfeld, senior scientist and manager of the county's water quality and land management division.
For any dredging program, the cost may be difficult to nail down.
Naybor and Davis have conducted cost estimates that put the price at $10 million to $12 million for dredging most of the bayou, from the mouth to the upper branches. But others say that estimate is far too low.
A 2005 study for dredging all of Bayou Texar, five miles to the east, for example, put the cost at close to $600 million, Wilkins said.
For the smaller Bayou Chico, a similar dredging project could cost as much as $200 million, he said.
[caption id="attachment_11913" align="aligncenter" width="850"] John Naybor president of the Bayou Chico Association stands and owner of Island Cove Marina on Bayou Chico. Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today[/caption]
When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Bayou Chico ship channel in 2007, the cost came to about $2.8 million, according to news reports. But that was only for a narrow channel about a mile in length, removing some 240,000 cubic yards of silt.
That came to about $12 per cubic yard, partly because channel sediment was dumped, after environmental testing, in the nearby Clark Sand Pits surrounding Jackson Branch, the northwest tributary of the bayou.
Dredging all of Bayou Chico would be much more expensive, said Clif Payne, a biologist at the corps.
For one thing, the more-contaminated sludge would have to be hauled away to an approved hazardous-waste landfill, which could add another $60 per yard in hauling and disposal fees.
At that price, if five linear miles of the bayou were dredged, and 1.2 million cubic yards of muck removed, the total cost could top $80 million.
Bayou's future
The cost of dredging can't be borne by all the original polluters because most of those companies have long since closed down.
Davis believes a less-expensive dredge process could be used, one that removes the water from the dredge spoils, filters it through sand and carbon and returns clean water to the bayou.
[caption id="attachment_11916" align="aligncenter" width="850"]
The view from the Bayou Chico from Barrancas Avenue. Michael Spooneybarger/ Pensacola Today[/caption]
That would reduce the amount of solid material, which could be mixed with binders and clean sand to dilute and contain the contaminants, making it suitable for a conventional – and less expensive – landfill.
Davis has studied the process for years, and has offered to oversee such a three-year project for Bayou Chico.
“I wanted to do something before I croaked, and if I could get the bayou cleaned up, that would really mean I had done something,” Davis said.
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