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US Coral Reef Task Force: Public Comments
Thomas J. Goreau, PhD,
President We are appealing to the Coral Reef Task Force to take emergency action to save the last good shallow coral reef in Southeast Florida from being killed by an unnecessary, unsound, and irresponsible dredging project. 50 years ago, a coral reef full of fish, which you could swim to from the beach, stretched from right here off Miami Beach to past Palm Beach, for nearly a hundred miles. Only a handful of the oldest divers now remember it, because almost all of it was killed after the sand between the reefs was dredged and dumped on the beach so more spring breakers could be squeezed on, and more money made. The sand and mud added to these beaches washed offshore and killed the near-shore reefs everywhere in Southeast Florida except in one stretch, a few miles long, from Sunrise Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale to the Lauderdale by the Sea pier. This area was never dredge-filled because the beach is wide and not eroding. It now has the last shallow coral reef in good condition left in Florida that you can swim to from the shore. It is full of corals and fish, as you will see from the film Dan and Stephanie Clark will show next. Killing this reef is like burning down the last giant redwood grove. Incredibly enough an officially approved plan is now actively underway to dredge, dump, and fill the beach in front of the last reef, which will inevitably kill almost all of the corals. It is not needed because the beach there is not eroding, but actually growing! It makes as little sense economically as environmentally. For $100 million in taxpayers money to the dredging companies and the consultants who justify dredging, over a Billion dollars a year of economic benefits would be destroyed. Amazingly, this project, which would irreparably damage this national natural treasure, has been approved by every county, state, and federal agency with jurisdiction over it. Cry of the Water and the Global Coral Reef Alliance filed a formal public grievance with the US Coral Reef Task Force on July 29 2004 asking then to take 9 specific action steps to ensure that the best reefs of Southeast Florida are protected and managed (appendix). We are asking that all federal, state, and county agencies to obey Executive Order 13089, which requires that they shall not engage in any activity that could degrade coral reefs. We ask that they also obey the Magnusson Act, requiring protection of essential juvenile fish habitat. Compliance with the law should be binding on all current and future actions by government agencies at all levels in Broward County and elsewhere. Surely the US Coral Reef Task Force should make it's member agencies obey the very law by which the Task Force was created tin order o enforce its provisions. The Task Force has not replied or acted on any of the 9 specific action steps to protect the reefs outlined in the grievance, except for number 8, that the grievance be circulated to all members of the Task Force. I understand that this is now before each of you in your briefing folder under Tab 8. So I won't take the time now to read all of the specific recommendations designed to ensure the best reefs are protected, monitored, and managed to save them for the future, as you have them right in front of you (appendix). But I'd like to point out only that protecting Broward reefs was not made a formal agenda item for this meeting, as the public grievance requested. A clear declaration by the US Coral Reef Task Force is needed now that makes clear that the Laws will be followed, and the reef protected. If you do not act now to stop the dredge dumping that will kill our last nearshore coral reef, then in 4 years, when the International Coral Reef Symposium will be held in Fort Lauderdale, we will have to show thousands of coral reef scientists from around the world the dead reef right in front of them, and explain how and why it was killed. It is hard to believe that such destruction could be the legacy that the US Coral Reef Task Force would leave behind to show the experts. We urge you to take steps NOW that show a commitment to saving forever the best coral reef we have left., and show leadership for the International Coral Reef Symposium. This reef is the number one coral reef protection issue in this country at this time, and we request emergency action, not just talk, from the Task Force to save it. There are miles of reef with 30-40 % live coral cover, hundreds of ancient corals up to a thousand years old, and the largest stand of critically threatened staghorn coral left in the entire Caribbean region. In contrast the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary has only about 7% live coral left! Direct action by the US Coral Reef Task Force and all the agencies that belong the last hope for this unique reef and all who depend on it! Please don't fail us! I would to add that we have heard a great deal here about coral mitigation and restoration. The methods used in those projects are all versions of methods well known to Charles Darwin, using cement and epoxy instead of wooden stakes. They don't work when water quality is degraded. Because water quality and global climate change is impacting almost all reefs, the old methods no longer work almost anywhere. We have developed new methods of reef restoration that increase coral growth 3-5 times, speeds healing from breakage over 20 times, increases coral survival from lethal high temperatures 16-50 times higher than in nearby reefs, and increases coral and fish settlement hundreds of times. These methods are being used in over 15 countries, but not here. We urge that the modern state of the art methods be used in the US reef restoration efforts. (Note added later after Task Force refuses to act on the grievance): The Coral Reef Task Force flatly REFUSED to take any direct action steps in the grievance to save the reef, or even to comment in public on them. They said privately that it was beyond their authority to address these issues, and furthermore claimed that the Task Force had no jurisdiction that could require Task Force member agencies to obey executive order 13089 or to mandate preventing activities by member agencies that degrade coral reefs. They said that it was up to each agency to decide separately on whether to follow the law protecting corals, effectively amounting to self-policing with no public oversight. Their refusal to act made a mockery of all the claims made that the task force is protecting coral reefs and that public participation in decision making is meaningful, and of the very law they were set up to administer. Comments to the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force
Dan Clark Representatives from Florida got up here and told you how Warm and Fuzzy everything was here in Florida. As you have seen in the Video we have shown, things are Warm and Fuzzy but not necessarily good Warm and Fuzzy. The Fuzzy part is our corals covered with Cano-Bacteria and the Warm is the water that got to almost 90 degrees this summer causing bleaching. As we told you in Washington in February of 2004, we did not want to see our good Staghorn reefs look like the reefs down current of the sewer outfalls. Unfortunately this summer that is exactly what happened as you can see in the video. The water became very warm, nearly 90 degrees and the corals bleached. We saw an increase in coral diseases. That’s the Bad news. The Good news is just when we thought we would lose all our nearshore reefs, 2 hurricanes passed just to the north of us. The wave impact from these storms scrubbed much of the algae off the reefs and lowered water temperatures. We are afraid of what is going to happen next summer when the water gets warm, and the algae again smoothers the nearshore reefs. This will be compounded by the fact that Broward County and the Army Corps propose to be in the middle of a massive dredging project. Which will add chronic silt, sediment and turbidly impacts to a reef that is already stressed from pollution. The Video shows the dive I did with Richard Harvey the end of this summer and patches of Staghorn being smothered by Cyano-Bacteria. We need a comprehensive monitoring plan put in place immediately. The currently proposed project from the South Florida Action Strategy Team to spend $ 80,000 for NOVA Southeast University to review past papers on water quality and decide which studies should be used is a waste of money. This is not a project
that the Task Force should be funding it is a Coral List question that can be
addressed for nothing. That money should be put towards water quality testing
to determine the impacts from sewer outfalls, deep well injection and inlet
impacts. These
things need to be done quickly before we lose our reefs and our fisheries on the
East Coast of Florida. I don’t mean to be disrespectful but, As if all this was not bad enough we have had a study done on the Sand for the Proposed Broward Beach Project. The sand is of poor quality and will easily washed on to the reef like the sand used for the recent Boca Raton Beach Project. The material will continue to break down and cause chronic silt sediment and turbidity to the nearshore reefs. We will provide you with copies of Dr. Wanless’s study and a copy of the video take that was showed at the meeting. We are also submitting a new grievance that further addresses the poor quality of the proposed sources of sand for the Broward Dredge and Fill project and related impacts to the reefs. We also ask that you give some guidance to the State of Florida and the Southeast Action Strategy Team to establish a charter and some rules by which the process should be governed. We also ask that proper minutes be kept of all meetings and that public comments be put into all the meetings. All public comments at meeting are included in the minutes. We do not believe that this was done at the Miami Task Force Meeting, which is a violation of Florida’s own Sunshine Law. There needs to be accountability and accessibility to all SEFAST meetings. Dan Clark Stephanie Clark’s Comments to the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force December 3, 2004 meeting in Miami Thank you for the opportunity to participate on our local Action Strategy teams. Our group needs a charter and some structure and we need to level the playing field that is dominated by the agencies. The one time we were allowed to vote on the top priority in the Mechanical Damage group some to the agencies and consultants brought in more members that we never saw before, for the vote. I would say they keep changing the rules but there are no rules. There is also what I feel is a conflict of interest in the Mechanical Damage group. The Federal Navigator is an Army Corps employee, the permitting agency for the Broward Beach project. The non-Federal Navigator is with NOVA, the paid consultants on our project. At a meeting it was discussed how the Federal Navigator could get her tuition paid at NOVA with project funds for her work. This truly seems like a conflict of interest. I was assured at the first meeting that there would be an open bidding process for the projects to ensure a greater verity of universities and scientists could be involved. Now I’ve been told that they don’t need bids for State money so they can spend that first. I’m still not sure what happens to the bids on the Federal money, they tell be they don’t need them after they spend the State money. I haven’t seen any bids anyway. We need an ombudsman with the Task Force for us to bring our concerns to. So I don’t have to save it up till I speak before the Members of the Task Force. We have had in a request for Outstanding Florida Waters for our reef area off Broward for 2 years. This would give a lower turbidity standard for the protection of our reefs during dredging and other projects. Permits in Miami and the Keys get the lower standard. The state and the Army Corps did not give us the stricter standard for our reefs in their permits that would include our staghorn reef now in review for protected stature. I did receive this letter from Col. Carpenter for the Corps in Jacksonville. We have been telling you that over 24,000 corals will be buried by the Broward Dredge and fill Project. Col. Carpenter pointed out that we were wrong. Over 25,000 corals will be destroyed. I am also very concerned about our breeding population of Conch that will be buried with this project. The Keys receives money to relocate their Conch from nearshore areas to off shore reefs to breed. This year we had hundreds of Conch breeding on our nearshore reefs – no need to move them. But no plan has been established to protect our breeding population from burial on the near shore reef from the Beach Project. Stephanie Clark
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