Posted on January 30, 2025
TARPON SPRINGS — City commissioners directed staff to expand a planned dredging project of the various bayous and channels around the city, in an undertaking likely to take years to complete.
On Jan. 21, Project Administration Department Director Bob Robertson presented commissioners with results of a survey encompassing 3½ miles of the city’s waterways.
The survey of eight locations revealed what many residents who live on canals already know: that many areas are very shallow and will require maintenance dredging.
Resident Jim Kolianos said he is upset that the list of places to dredge doesn’t include the whole city.
“The biggest problem, we have, is what’s not mentioned is the spoil islands that the feds put there, years and years ago; and a no-wake zone allowing all these big boats to come into the city. I’ve lived in that spot 45 years; this year at a moon low tide, I could have walked across to the main channel. So if you’re going to dredge, and I hope you do, how about doing the whole town. … It’s not a lot of money to clean it up.”
He told commissioners “Pinellas County is buying all those spoil islands that they can get, and they are doing it because they don’t want anybody to build on them, which is a great idea. But don’t they have some liability to maintain those islands?”
Former Commissioner Craig Lunt told commissioners a big mistake is the survey left the southern west end of Kreamer Bayou out of the dredging project. He noted there are 11 or 12 homes with docks and boats that “are sand bound” and no longer have water access.
Another resident Georganna Frantzis said the discussion was a good start.
“Tarpon Springs has more waterways than any other city in Pinellas County, so a project like this has to be a multi-faceted project,” she said.
Commissioner David Banther said there is no question that the canals have to be dredged. He explained he knows “from personal experience that Kreamer Bayou is very bad. Even at high tide, if you have a pontoon boat, navigating the oyster beds there, I’m not saying it’s impassable, but you have to be skilled. I also know that Sunset Lagoon is really, really, bad. This needs to be a priority for this commission.”
Commissioner Frank DiDonato said the city should take advantage of a new spoil site for river dredging. In December, commissioners agreed to finance the $5.2 million purchase after voters approved buying the site in a Nov. 5 referendum.
“Now that we have our own spoil site, I think we should use the heck out of it, as long as we can afford it,” he said. “We are a waterways community. We do have an obligation to the town to make sure these are navigable. I’d like this long-term process laid out, so hopefully one day in the near future we can continue to stay up with the river, its bayous and channels, through the long range.”
Mayor Panagiotis Koulias said his interpretation was Kraemer or Spring Bayou would be included.
“I’d like to get as much area covered as the residents asked for, that way we can try to do it right,” he said.
Commissioner Michael Eisner said the project should be extended to at least take out the sand around people’s properties in the canals.
Robertson noted “no one was left off intentionally.” He explained, a template was used from the last time a survey was completed prior to 2021, which was before his time. The cost to dredge the eight waterways surveyed could be as much as $2.5 million.
“Knowing no other information, we used that as our template, that was our target. There is some potential for change, if the board wants to give that direction, we can go out and do additional surveys and pick up some of the areas that were gaps. We can come back to the board with recalculated numbers. Give us a little more time, a little more money, and we’ll get a bigger picture of what it will look like,” he said.
Matthew Starr, project manager with engineering firm Stantec, told commissioners a dredging project would entail meetings with Army Corps and DEP, a seagrass survey, a geotechnical investigation to identify the type of sediment in the canal, and what’s in the sand to determine the presence of heavy metals like arsenic, copper, or any potential items that can make disposal a little more complicated. In addition, a survey will map any mangroves that might be in the area.
“In Florida, dredging applications are taking from 15 to 28 months to get; it is not a fast process. It is essentially due to staff shortages at Army Corps and DEP,” he explained.
Starr advised the survey might have to be updated to determine sediment shift due to recent hurricanes.
“We are seeing that in other areas of Tampa Bay when we do surveys, there’s a significant amount of material that’s accumulated since these storms,” he said.
Robertson said staff could go back and survey the hot spots, and come back with more information for the commission to make a decision.
