Canals plan dredges up confusion

Reversing themselves, Port Richey officials will now seek a dredging permit for three dead-end canals.

By CAMILLE C. SPENCER, Times Staff Writer
Published September 13, 2007

PORT RICHEY - Confusion over the city's dredging project ricocheted like a pingpong ball during Tuesday night's City Council meeting.

Some city officials said they felt misdirected by the project's consultant, who was hired to help obtain permits to dredge the city's canals. Others were uncomfortable with how much the project has cost so far. And others questioned an earlier vote to remove three dead-end canals from the permit application because the city was told those canals required lengthy additional studies.

By the end of the night,the council reversed itself and added those three canals back into the first dredging permit application.

Council members also directed James Mathieu, the city attorney and interim city manager, to find an engineer to conduct those three canal studies, which may not take as long as officials originally thought.

During the meeting, residents questioned why the city had yet to obtain dredging permits after paying the consultant LPA Group about $487,000.

"My question is, when is enough enough?" said resident Brian Roberts. "How much money are we going to spend? The job's not getting done ... we don't want LPA Group hanging us up."

Others felt the situation had gotten murkier than the canals that needed dredging.

"It's a very disturbing, misleading circumstance," said Mike Latini, a member of the city's Port Authority Board. "I believe city officials did the right thing by putting the canals back into this permit ... but I think there's information that's not as crystal clear as it should be."

Part of the confusion stems from the time needed to perform the tidal flow studies the state Department of Environmental Protection requires for the three longest canals.

Originally the LPA Group consultant, Mariben Andersen, told Council member Dale Massad the studies could take up to six months. That prompted City Council to pull those three canals from the permit Aug. 28 so the remaining 23 canals could move forward more quickly.

But council member Mark Hashim, who voted against removing those canals, said he called a DEP official who told him the studies wouldn't take that long.

"It didn't make sense to me," Hashim said Tuesday night. "So I called Dr. Jack Wu, and he said it (the necessary studies) would take a few days."

Wu told the Pasco Times on Wednesday that the studies could take a few days or "up to a week."

Hashim said he was unsure how the confusion occurred over the time required for the studies.

Andersen didn't return calls Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Mathieu spent Wednesday trying to move the project forward.

"It's always difficult to run a project of this complexity with this many people interjecting," Mathieu said. "I am sure that might have been a factor in what happened."

Camille C. Spencer can be reached at cspencer@sptimes.com or (727) 869-6229.

[Last modified September 12, 2007, 21:34:31]