Posted on October 1, 2018
When Michael Sullivan moved his clam farming business to St. Augustine in 2012, it wasn’t by choice.
Sullivan would have been perfectly happy continuing to operate his business in the Intracoastal Waterway south of New Smyrna. He had 36 acres of underwater leases in the Mosquito Lagoon Aquatic Preserve for 16 years and, at peak production, Sullivan said he was cranking out the clams, selling 50,000 clams a week to Disney alone.
“I had 14 employees. I was doing $500,000 a year in volume in sales and it was going up,” Sullivan said Thursday.
But everything changed, Sullivan said, when the St. Johns River Water Management District started its Wetland Restoration Project close to his farm. That ongoing effort is attempting to turn hundreds of miles of mosquito control ditches back to their original state as coastal wetlands. Sullivan said the process destroyed the water quality and forced him to move north and downsize his business. He even sued the SJRWMD alleging negligence, but a court ruled that not enough cause was shown to win a judgment.
“I had to start all over again,” Sullivan said Thursday. “It took me seven years to get back into a profit.”
Now, after establishing a successful clam farming business and restaurant in St. Johns County, Commander’s Fish Camp, he’s fighting against another controversial wetlands restoration project in Flagler Beach that Sullivan said could threaten his livelihood again.
A plan to battle mosquitoes
Starting in the 1950s and continuing into the early 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers created hundreds of miles of mosquito control ditches through the coastal wetlands of Florida. The goal was to create canals in the wetlands to reduce the amount of standing freshwater and interrupt the life cycle of saltmarsh mosquitoes. The plan worked, but the problem, according to SJRWM Environmental Scientist Ron Brockmeyer, was the long-term impact on the environment.
“Dragline ditching was extremely destructive,” Brockmeyer said Wednesday. “In some cases it converted as much as 80 percent of the wetland to ditch and spoil pile.”
The goal of today’s restoration projects, like the $541,000 project currently being proposed for 113 acres near Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach, is to flatten the spoil piles and return the wetlands to their original elevation. The projects have converted more than 600 acres since 2000.
“The disturbance of that ditching has a lingering effect because we have sea level rise going on and those impacted areas are accumulating sediments like they would naturally so they are not keeping up with sea level rise,” said Erich Marzolf, SJRWMD director of water and land resources. “We are continuing to lose wetland area and those ditches and open water areas are continuing to increase over time. It’s not like area is in a stable condition right now.”
According to a statement from SJRWMD, coastal wetlands moderate storm and flood damage to upland areas by slowing advancing water and support production of fishery species.
But the project, which is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FDEP (Park Service and Aquatic Preserves), and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, was met with swift opposition from residents in the area. Members of the Flagler Sportfishing Club, nearby property owners and others have mounted a letter writing campaign, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal. The opponents want to either delay the work until it can be better investigated or try to stop it all together.
“You’ve got all this marine life now, crabs and minnows and mullet, just all kinds of stuff in these ditches now,” Flagler Beach fishing guide Rob Ottlein told the News-Journal. “They say they’re going to make it better. How are you going to make it better if you’re going to destroy what’s there?”
Some 20 miles north on the Matanzas River, Sullivan and other clam farmers share their concerns.
‘I know water quality’
According to Sullivan and Gerry Pinto, associate research scientist at Jacksonville University who worked with Sullivan in the past, the water management district did not comply with the conditions of the General Permit issued by the Florida Department of Environmental Protect during the Mosquito Lagoon project that started in 2009.
Sullivan brought his complaint to court in a 2013 lawsuit.
“I wanted to sue them as a citizen for not enforcing the guidelines of the permit,” Sullivan said. “The guidelines that they didn’t enforce were the guidelines that were meant to protect water quality.”
Sullivan provided The Record with photos he said were taken in 2012 during the restoration. The photos show barriers meant to prevent loose sediment from escaping from the restoration area that are not properly secured.
“Nutrients were leaking out and into surrounding area and sediment was moving and changing the depth in the area,” Pinto said. “They didn’t do a good job of monitoring what they were doing.”
The district’s attorney said in 2013 the Florida Department of Environmental Protection inspected the job site in at least two separate locations and found no issues with water quality near the restoration work, the News-Journal reported.
But Sullivan said he hadn’t been able to sustain clam growth in the area since 2012.
“I know water quality. Clams are like the canary in the coal mine. If the water quality is no good, they are not going to grow,” Sullivan said.
SJRWMD refutes Sullivan’s claim.
“All the evidence that we have is that there wouldn’t be a way for [water quality to be affected],” said Chuck Jacoby, supervising environmental scientists for the district. “We looked at a project in detail while the restoration was going on; we didn’t see a consistent pattern in any changes in water quality.”
Pinto said one reason the district didn’t see measurable changes in water quality around the Mosquito Lagoon project is because they were testing in the wrong place.
“We took samples at the mouths of the ditches it was a lot higher than the normal organic load,” Pinto said.
The long-term result, Pinto said, is fisherman are not catching what they used to and the area is at a higher risk for brown tide and other types of algae blooms.
Brockmeyer calls Pinto and Sullivan’s assessment a “misunderstanding.”
“It’s not like what we are doing is going to mobilize a huge amount of organic carbon and send it sloshing off into the water,” Brockmeyer said.
But that’s exactly what Sullivan fears with the Flagler Beach project, an area already classified as “impaired” by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in June of 2018 due to high amounts of singled-celled algae in the water.
He said that if the project moves forward the same way it did in the past, the organic carbon will make its way more than 20 miles north and affect the water quality near Devil’s Elbow where his clam farm is located. This spring, Sullivan said he was able to grow and sell about 90 million seedlings and another 2 million clams last year thanks to the current high-quality water conditions in the Matanzas River.
“This is the last area on the East Coast of Florida that the water quality will sustain clam farming,” Sullivan said. “Doing a project like [the Flagler Beach project] is going to put a heavy load on an already strained system.”
What’s next?
Two community meetings have been scheduled for residents interested in the Flagler restoration project on Oct. 4 and Nov. 7 at the Flagler Beach City Hall. The SJRWMD is expected to address some of the concerns of Sullivan and other local residents during the meetings before making a final decision on whether or not to move ahead with the project.
Although Sullivan said he doesn’t think the project is needed due to the already productive ecosystem, he added that his major concern is with the execution. Pinto agrees.
“The premise is good, but if you don’t monitor the project properly and these best management practices are removed, you are going to be doing more harm than good,” Pinto said.
Pinto said he would like to see the project done in a slower, more methodical manner to lessen environmental impact. Sullivan would like to see SJRWMD do more to re-vegetate the restored areas by replanting mangroves or cord grasses instead of letting the areas re-vegetate naturally, which is the current practice being used. Using current practices, it can take anywhere from five to 10 years for a restoration area to return to normal. And St. Johns County could be a future target.
According to Brockmeyer, a 2007 survey showed that around 240 acres of wetlands were impacted by mosquito control ditching, including 40 acres near the Guana River Wildlife Management Area.
“There are dragline ditches in Volusia, Flagler, St. Johns, some in Duval and Nassau counties,” Brockmeyer said. “We will look at projects for restoration opportunities into the future.”
If that happens, Sullivan plans to oppose those projects, too.
“Organic load, dirty river, algae blooms, low oxygen … that’s what happens. That’s what happened in New Symrna, and that’s what’s going to happen here,” Sullivan said.
Source: staugustine
