Posted on June 13, 2019
TARPON SPRINGS — When the city learned in March that $3 million in federal funding for the Anclote River dredging project had been diverted to hurricane relief efforts in the Panhandle, Mayor Chris Alahouzos was upset, but he vowed the project would continue moving forward.
“I am very, very unhappy with what’s going on, losing the funding for the project,” Alahouzos said during a City Commission meeting.
Recently, following a couple of months of lobbying and bipartisan support, U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis and Alahouzos announced to a group of local merchants, fishermen and environmental activists at the Sponge Docks that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had restored the funding.
Bilirikas said he had worked with Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the acting White House Chief of Staff, as well as other officials in an effort to win back the dredge dollars.
The Anclote River dredging is being funded through a joint effort involving the federal and state governments and Pinellas County and Tarpon Springs.
The $3 million from the Corps of Engineers, Bilirakis said, is sitting in an account specifically for the Anclote dredging project.
“It’s a real victory for the area,” the congressman said.
The multi-phased, multi-agency project will remove nearly two decades worth of silt and sediment from the river bed, specifically in the shipping channel and turning basin, which will restore the river to its normal depth of 11 feet.
According to officials, some parts of the channel and basin are only 4 feet deep due to the buildup. As a result, many commercial vessels have been unable to utilize the docks.
Bilirakis, a Palm Harbor Republican who grew up in Tarpon Springs, said he fully understood the importance of the river to the region.
“The importance of this project is huge because the local economy depends on this river,’’ Alahouzos said.
Because the river was so shallow in key spots, fishing vessels have been docking at other locations, he said. “So, we need this project completed to bring them back to Tarpon Springs.”
Julie Russell, a longtime fixture of the Sponge Docks fishing industry and the owner of Rusty Bellies Waterfront Grill, agreed.
“It’s been a long time coming and I’m very glad to hear (the funding) has been secured,” Russell said. “It’ll help our industry as well as the tourism industry for Tarpon Springs.”
Russell, who along with her husband, Jack, opened the restaurant on Dodecanese Boulevard in 2005, after years working in her family’s seafood business, compared the dredging of the river to the reopening of an interstate.
“For us, it’s like opening up a highway,” she said with her 82-foot shrimp boat, the Julie Ann, in the background. “If the interstate was shut down, it would be a detriment to all the truckers. The river is the same way for us. We rely on it for seafood and to keep tourism alive.”
According to Alahouzos, the dredge project is still in the planning and design phase and should take about a year to complete.
“We all worked hard on this,” he said. “At times you find obstacles in the road and you either go over them or around them.”
Source: tampabay.com
