The heavy equipment has arrived for the Fruit Farm Creek Mangrove Restoration Project on San Marco Drive. It’s the biggest mangrove restoration project in Florida history.
Interim Public Works Director, Justin Martin, expects the city’s portion of the project will go smoothly. “The contractor has the materials, they have the equipment,” Martin said. "They want to wrap things up."
A large portion of mangrove die off will be addressed with the Fruit Farm Creek Mangrove Restoration project.
You may want to plan on short delays when driving to or from the Goodland area during the next couple of months as Florida’s largest ever mangrove restoration project enters its final stages.
The huge Fruit Farm Creek Mangrove project kicks into high gear on eastern San Marco Drive as four five-foot diameter culverts are installed under San Marco Road, restoring tidal flow to 209 acres of mangrove forest that abut the road.
“They’re at full speed,” said Corey Anderson, project manager and restoration biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). "There have been delays. We’ve got the City of Marco Island subcontractor, Quality Enterprises, out there. They are beginning to do the heavy construction. They completed their relocation of the underground utilities. It took them a couple of months. They had to drill under the highway, put in some new pipe. What took a long time was getting the health department to sign off on it. That put us behind a little bit. It’s not out of the ordinary for municipalities to do.”
"“We had to deflect some city and county utilities,” said Justin Martin, the city’s interim Public Works Director. Martin has been with the city for 15 years. "The city serves Goodland with sewer. We take whatever is connected in Goodland; the boat park, the marinas and the first street with the newest development in Goodland."
Crews are currently removing water so the culverts can be installed. Two huge water tanks are integral to the project.
"They have started laying out dewatering,” said Anderson. "So basically they have to lower the water table in the area so they can dig their hole. They’ll be pulling the groundwater out and running it through the tanks so it can settle and they make sure it is clear before discharging it back into the environment. That way they can excavate their holes to put their culverts in. They’re starting on the western side. Once they’re complete with that, they’ll be starting on the creek crossing closer to Goodland.”
"What they’re doing now is putting in culverts where none exist right now,” Anderson said. "That’s a big deal, extending tidal flow back into that big dead mangrove area.”
The city’s portion of the project is scheduled to take five months. Martin feels things will wrap up sooner than that.
“The contractor has the materials, they have the equipment,” Martin said. "They want to wrap things up. The sooner they get this done, the sooner they can get on to their next job.”
The project is a big deal for Marco Island. But it’s also important globally.
"It’s the largest mangrove restoration, to date, in Florida,” Anderson said. "The total area of benefit is 209 acres south of San Marco Road. It’s a big deal.”
According to Anderson, the beginning of the end for the dead mangroves was when San Marco Road was built decades ago.
"The entire reason for the die off is because San Marco just didn’t have enough connectivity beneath it,” Anderson said. "Basically it’s kind of analogous to having cardiac arrest. You have clogged arteries, that’s our creeks. We go in and clear out the arteries and the blood vessels that are happy in the person, and all the trees will become happy over time in the mangrove forest.”
The heavy equipment has arrived for the Fruit Farm Creek Mangrove Restoration Project on San Marco Drive. It’s the biggest mangrove restoration project in Florida history.
"Not enough water was allowed to flow through the natural creeks, north to south,” Anderson continued. “The mangroves got cut off, choked, couldn’t get the tide that they need. Installing the culverts and cleaning out the creeks allows that tide to ebb and flow. It allows those mangroves to be alternately flooded and dry every day. Which is not what they’re doing right now. So then what we’ll start to see after all this construction is finished, is new mangroves will start popping up. We’ll start to get these new propagules that float in the water, they’ll find a hole to settle in. They’ll start popping up. We may get some at the end of the summer, but most likely we’ll really start to see them pop up next summer. Because most of the trees drop their propagules around August or September. So we’ll really start to see them take off next summer. We’ll start to see a little bit of greenery in there. At about year two it’ll look a little shrubby. There’ll be low shrubs in there for a long time. We’re looking at kind of shrubby coverage of small trees for maybe a decade or more. Then they’ll start to get taller after 10, 15 or 20 years. They start to fill in. The ones closer to the road are probably going to fill in a little quicker, and probably screen it out from the roadway. The idea is to let nature take its course.”
In case nature doesn’t respond the way Anderson anticipates, there is a plan in place to commence planting within three years. Anderson has every reason to believe nature will take its course.
“That is our intent,” Anderson said. "We’re hoping we can get away without any planting and that nature will take its course. But we do have an obligation by way of the regulatory agencies and the permits that we hold to do this work, that if it doesn’t get on the right trajectory in three years, we will have to start planting. They do hold our feet to the fire to make sure we do what we’re contracted to do. If for some reason we didn’t get trees to start taking off we would have to go in there and plant, or re-tool things to make sure it works better.”
Once the city’s contractors finish with the culverts, Anderson will return to excavating the tidal creeks. It looks like the project should be completed in time for the busy winter season.
Interim Public Works Director, Justin Martin, expects the city’s portion of the project will go smoothly. “The contractor has the materials, they have the equipment,” Martin said. "They want to wrap things up."
“The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission hired a contractor last year. They excavated out the existing creek to increase flow and improve tidal penetration back into the mangroves. Because that was restricted. They finished that creek that was over closer to Goodland. That was completed in January. I just went ahead and hired a second company to do another tidal creek cleanup starting in November. They’re going to do the creek closer to Stevens Landing that goes to the big die off. So that’s almost 1,000 feet of creek they’re going to be excavating that becomes clogged up over time. If they get started before Thanksgiving, they could be done and out of there in January. Things tend to slow down around the holidays. But once they get in there it shouldn’t take more than seven weeks.”
One of the major benefits of a healthy mangrove forest is protection from hurricanes. But there are many more.
"There’s lots of long-term benefits,” Anderson said. "The one that’s really going to stick with people is flood reduction. If you are behind a mangrove forest - if there’s one between you and the ocean - it’s going to block a lot of storm surge. It will significantly cut down the height, and you’ll potentially have to deal with less flooding and property loss. That’s a good one. After hurricane Irma they looked at property loss with and without mangroves, and by far it was much greater in areas without mangroves. They specifically looked at Collier County. The people with seawalls and a great view of the water do not have as much protection as people who are staring at a forest. There’s a tradeoff there, absolutely.”
"Other benefits are for fish and wildlife,” he said. “Mangroves are habitat for the birds we like to watch. And habitat for game fish and forage fish that they feed on. Everything from crabs, mullet, snook, goliath grouper, mangrove snapper, and redfish. Mangroves help to block sediment in place. They do help to clean up water quality. There’s quite a few."
The price tag of the project is around $3 million at the moment, according to Anderson. Marco Island pays for nothing.
"This is supported by funds from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and the State of Florida,” Anderson said, "for a fisheries disaster related to hurricane Irma. Several million dollars went to habitat restoration for fish habitat, including the Fruit Farm Creek project. We’re looking at over $3 million. That’s all Federal funding. Marco Island is getting the good end of the deal there."
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