BY MANDY BOLEN

Citizen Staff

KEY WEST — The city's dredging project in Key West Harbor is finished.

The heavy machinery that has been prompting questions and furrowed brows as it deepened the channel in front of Ocean Key Resort during sunsets has completed its mission, which began in 2004 with a Navy-funded $36 million dredging of the ship channel.

The price tag ended up being $50 million, which the Navy paid to the Army Corps of Engineers because several hurricanes moved silt and other material back into dredged areas that had to be redone, said Jim Brooks, spokesman for Naval Air Station Key West.

The Navy paid for the main ship channel that connects Key West to the deep, open waters far off Fort Zachary Taylor. The area was dredged to a depth of 34 feet to make room for large naval vessels to dock at Truman Waterfront, a portion of which the Navy reclaimed from the city of Key West after 9/11.

The terrorist attacks prompted the federal government to reclaim a portion of the waterfront area it had deeded to the city of Key West , citing national security reasons for taking back part of the pier that may be necessary for military vessels. But the channel needed to be deepened to accommodate the larger ships.

"We have already seen an increase in the number of Navy ships coming to Key West over the past three years," Brooks said. "But we have not yet seen the ships that require the depths we've dredged to, because the dredging was ongoing."

Work began on the Navy's portion in March 2004 and was completed within the scheduled two years, despite several hurricanes.

"The original Key West Harbor dredging project was designed to go as far north as the underwater cable crossing that goes from Pier B [at the Hilton Resort and Marina] to Sunset Key," said Lauri MacLaughlin, resource manager for Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. "The Navy did not care to dredge farther than that, but then the city climbed on the bandwagon to dredge along Mallory docks while the dredge equipment was in town."

The city's portion, which was more visible because of its location in Key West Harbor , began in late 2005 and cost $779,000. It aroused concern last week when the heavy equipment was farther north than it had ever been, in an area of the harbor that may not have been surveyed for submerged cultural resources before the dredging.

A group of volunteer divers, researchers and archaeologists from the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum and RPM Nautical Foundation surveyed part of the harbor before the dredging "to identify, and alleviate any potential impact on archaeological resources," Corey Malcom, director of archaeology at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, wrote in his report subsequent to the survey that took place in 2003 and 2004.

The surveyors used sonar and metal detectors to investigate the bottom of the harbor, and located some metal debris, but did not recover it, Malcom said. He wrote that "the potential for their significance is diminished by the fact that these areas were previously dredged in the mid-1960s."

The fact that the harbor was dredged within the past 40 years makes it less likely that historic resources will be present.

Malcom also concluded that there was potential for "non-magnetic items to be found within the proposed dredge area, especially within Key West Harbor itself." Such items would not show up on magnetometer surveys or by using metal detectors.

Sandy Walters is a consultant who coordinated the city's harbor dredging with the Army Corps of Engineers and Bean Stuyvesant, which operated the dredge. She said the project was permitted to go as far as the Ocean Key Resort, and assured that her staff continually monitored the material being dredged from the harbor bottom.

"The city has a submerged land lease from the state that goes to the base of the Ocean Key pier," Walter said. "So the city did a maintenance dredge for the whole footprint of that lease."

Two of Walters' staff members were aboard the dredge vessel to monitor the material, Walters said.

"The project really went as smoothly as can be, and as of [April 8], the city's project is completely finished," she said, grateful to Capt. Jim Scholl, commander of Naval Air Station Key West, for his help in moving the project along efficiently.

With the area off Mallory Square dredged to 34 feet, there are additional docking options for smaller naval frigates. They now can dock at Mallory Pier so the Outer Mole Pier can be reserved for larger ships, including military and cruise ships.

mbolen@keysnews.com

Key West Citizen  4-17-06