Video about Everglades restoration project in Cape Sable funded by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) (10 min. with closed-captions).
- Credit/ Author:
- NPS video by Jennifer Brown
- Date created:
- 2011-03-04
Hi, my name is Dan Kimball.
I am the Superintendent of Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Parks.
And, today, I would like to talk about a very, very important ecosystem restoration project to the park.
And this project is what we call the Cape Sable plugging project.
We are very fortunate, this is an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project that was approved by Congress and by the President to bring over seven million dollars to Everglades National Park to do this important plugging.
So, with this project, we have enough funding to get them built and get them built right.
Cape Sable is a very remote part of Everglades National Park.
It is really the very southwest corner of the state of Florida.
Not many visitors go there because it is a challenge to get there.
The key way to get there is either canoeing or powerboating out of Flamingo.
It is about ten miles to the west of Flamingo.
So, it is a hefty paddle to get there.
We have white shell beaches and then we have mangroves and then we also have a freshwater backcountry area.
It is the kind of area where you can see alligators and crocodiles and both freshwater feeding birds and also marine birds as well.
So, there are Roseate spoonbills and a full assemblage of freshwater species as well.
Tony Terry is my name and I am the District Ranger of the Flamingo district in Everglades National Park.
And we are now stationary at the mouth of the East Cape Canal.
It was originally dug by the Model Land Company back in the 1920’s to try and drain this area and make it an area to be developed for people to buy land, settle here.
And maybe, one day, this would have been Miami.
But, it did not make it to that, thank goodness.
We basically disturbed the natural process in the ‘20s by digging these canals.
And so a more natural phase would be saltwater outside of this canal and the mainland would separate.
And then we would have some freshwater that is more fresh in the summer during the rainy season than moreso in the winter season.
The park took over it late ‘40’s, ’47.
We were able to try and plug some of them.
That happened in the ‘50s.
I first noticed the dam being a problem with the breakage back right after Hurricane Andrew.
We realized that it needed to be replaced.
In ’97, they put a new type of dam in with sheet palettes and that worked for five to six years.
And then the water came around the side of it and washed all of that out.
The habitat back there wants to be more freshwater and that is historically for hundreds of years is what it has.
And, what we are running into is it has more saltwater.
So, we are killing off a lot of the marsh area by not having enough freshwater back there.
If we did not have a dam here in this area right now, the canal would keep getting wider because of the erosion going off.
Right now, with the canals open, the water just runs right in there.
There is no slow flooding.
So, for eighteen years, we have been talking about repairing this dam and repairing it the correct way.
And, this is the project that hopefully will restore this area to a more natural flooding process behind the dams.
My name is Chris Sheedy.
I am a Project Manager for this project for Jay Cashman, Inc.
We are a company out of Quincy, Mass.
This is the Cape Sable Dams project.
We are constructing dams in the East Cape Extension Canal and the Homestead Canal.
We are about 50% complete on this project right now, right on schedule.
This is the East Cape Canal.
The sheets have all been driven.
There is about 490 lineal feet of steel sheeting, two bulkheads approximately 100 feet apart.
And in between that is an earthen plug which is this limestone sand you are seeing being put in right now.
We are constructing now because this is the non-nesting season.
The nesting season goes between April 1st and October 1st.
So, you can not work in and around this area.
From my understanding, it is designed to withstand hurricane and tropical storms.
To what extent, what category of, I am not 100% sure of.
But, they did put a lot of effort into ensuring that this particular structure, same over at Homestead, is going to be able to withstand those storm events.
The riprap is on all four corners and that is for erosion control.
Because you will get some floods here and some storm events as well.
And, the riprap tied into the land area will keep the area from being washed out.
This is a combination of steel sheeting, riprap and soil plug dam system that all work together to keep the canal the way it is going to be.
The water already upstream of this area has already become way more clean than it was previously because of the sediments.
Because the turbidity values have gone way down.
The riprap really is the cornerstone of the project in terms of maintaining the integrity of the dam, maintaining the integrity of the canal.
Without it, eventually the soil materials would fall into the river, the water would come around the sheet piles that have been installed there.
So, as important to the project as the steel sheeting, it cuts the water source off.
You could actually build an entire dam out of the riprap if you needed to.
But, in this particular case, the sheets stop the water completely where you get some kind of penetration through the riprap.
Everything has to be trucked down to a staging area that is already predisposed by National Park Service in Key West.
So, everything gets placed on barges there and then brought over here about 70 nautical miles to the Cape Sable area.
Then we unload it and we have a tug service constantly going back and forth with empty barges, loading them, and bringing them out with full barges.
But, for the most part, our labor, equipment, and material resources came from south Florida.
All the limestone sand, the riprap is all indigenous to south Florida which was part of the design.
The steel sheets were bought from a company that was located in south Florida.
Almost all of the labor here except for a couple management personnel are all from the south Florida region.
Well, right now, we are sitting inside the Dottie.
I am the Dottie driver, driving the tugboat back and forth.
My full name is Yunesky Hernandez.
I am from Cuba and I have lived down here in Miami.
I have been here for ten years…ten years.
Driving the barge around is a little bit complicated sometimes with the current.
But, I can handle it…I can handle it.
If I did not have this job, I would be at home, sitting at home collecting unemployment, doing nothing at home.
When I get here and I see the alligators, you know, that is kind of exciting for me because I have never seen that before, especially in a national park.
I have never been in a national park before, so, that is cool.
When this project is done, first thing I am going to do, I am going to come back here fishing because this is good fishing back here.
And, I am going to bring my wife back here too.
This is about as remote south as I have ever been and seeing this kind of natural environment.
It has been a nice experience for me and for some of the other management that is working for Cashman that is here.
Crocodiles, we have seen rattlesnakes, alligators are out here, all kinds of different birds, the pelicans, the White ibis…
Manatees, yeah, we have seen a lot of manatees inside the marina.
A lot of dolphin, that is a cool thing to see, about 24-30 dolphin all in a big rush, sharks, no doubt, yeah.
These canals that were cut in the 1920’s were very effective at draining water out of the freshwater marsh.
And then also providing for an avenue for marine water to go into the freshwater ecosystem.
So, you have gone from what was freshwater now to a much saltier, brackish environment.
And, because of that, there have been adverse effects for example, on crocodiles.
Crocodiles are very dependent on a brackish habitat, especially juvenile crocodiles.
In summary, this project provides benefits on a lot of different fronts.
The major goal of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is to reinvigorate the economy and provide for jobs and it certainly does that.
Second thing this project does, it does a great job in restoring the ecosystem of the park.
Particularly, when we do not have the funding, normally, to carry these things out nor is this project part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
Our goal is to not only restore this area but a wide range of impaired habitats in the park.
And, with this project, we have shown that we can get the job done.
