Posted on August 24, 2026
By Ari Odzer
Two major dredging projects in Broward County are now on hold.
Last spring, federal agencies paused a huge effort to make Port Everglades deeper to accommodate the latest, massive cargo ships. Now another project, just north of the port entrance in Fort Lauderdale, is also in a holding pattern.
The project is creating an underwater sand reservoir, a 10-acre pit to collect drifting sand, which can then be used to replenish eroded beaches. The Army Corps of Engineers did not expect their work to cause as much damage to the marine environment as it apparently has.
“However, once the project started, we realized that there were huge plumes of sediment spreading further than predicted and then we realized that there were a lot of gaps in the endangered species act protections that the agencies had put in place because this area is absolutely critical as one of the last places in Florida where you can still find thriving populations of wild staghorn corals that were just declared functionally extinct in the state of Florida,” said Miami Waterkeeper CEO Rachel Silverstein.
Her group is one of the environmental organizations that sued to stop the project. Silverstein says another issue is the dredging’s capability to kill one of Florida’s last breeding colonies of queen conchs.
“So we were concerned about the queen conch, the staghorn corals, and other listed species in the area, the whole area, of course, is being designated as critical habitat needed for the recovery of these species,” said Silverstein.
The Army Corps agreed, after the lawsuit was filed, to pause the project until they get a new environmental assessment from the National Marine Fisheries Service.
“But we really hope that the agencies will be much more cautious and robust in their analysis of how to protect these corals and the conch during this project’s construction,” Silverstein said.
So the sand reservoir project is on hold until at least November. However, as Broward County points out, the effort was almost completely finished anyway, and it had already been paused for coral spawning season. Therefore, it’s unclear how the pause in dredging will impact the corals and conch population.
