A small craft advisory is in effect for Gulf Stream waters, and strong onshore winds with underlying groundswell will intensify mid-week for Southeast and East Central Florida. More fishable conditions are expected toward the weekend, but the definition of “fishable” has changed for anglers fishing out of the St. Lucie Inlet. The inlet is shoaled over so badly that a number of boats have bumped bottom and even bent props while attempting to navigate it. Meanwhile, beaches on Jupiter Island suffer because the natural beach sand—sand that should be used to re-nourish them--is clogging up the inlet.

Great Lakes Dredge & Dock, which has a $10 million contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge 600,000 cubic yards of sand from the inlet, was supposed to begin work on December 5. But Army Corps project manager Rick McMillen told the Stuart News that the Illinois-based dredging contractor’s equipment is broken. Apparently, the Corps is sending an “interim unsatisfactory performance appraisal,” which is the first step in the Corps regulatory process to make it more difficult for unreliable or nefarious contractors to win federal contracts.

There’s a fleet of more than 20,000 registered boats in the “Sailfish Capital of the World,” and fishing, diving and boating industries generate billions of dollars annually. Angry boaters, anglers and marine interests began a letter-writing campaign asking the Corps to force Great Lakes to begin the work by January 1. Concerned citizens can direct firm but polite letters to Rick McMillen, (rick.i.mcmillen@usace.army.mil), encouraging the Corps to discipline the contractor.

The contract stipulates that Great Lakes must complete the work by March 6, or they face fines. And, Great Lakes’ website boasts that, “In the company’s more than one hundred years of business, Great Lakes has never failed to complete a contracted project.” But if the St. Lucie inlet isn’t dredged by April 30, the project must be shut down because of the official start of turtle nesting season. Sea turtle advocates are already very concerned by the delays, because the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge, where the sand will be placed, encompasses one of the world’s most important turtle nesting beaches. They hope the work is finished prior to March 1, because endangered leatherback turtles actually begin nesting in March, and about half the leatherbacks that nested last year in Florida nested in northern Palm Beach County or in Martin County, which encompasses the refuge.

“It would be in everyone’s best interest to get the project started as soon as possible,” said Gary Appelson, Policy Coordinator for the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, the nation’s oldest sea turtle conservation group. “We need to get this project finished soon, for boaters, for the leatherbacks, and for the green and loggerhead turtles that decide to nest early,” he said.

Great Lakes has a tarnished record on the Treasure Coast and in other communities as well, and the Corps says that if the project isn’t completed they will issue a “permanent unsatisfactory appraisal,” which would make it much more difficult for the company to bid on federal projects.

In 2002, Great Lakes was fined $28,000 for spilling oil and plastic foam when it dredged the St. Lucie Inlet. And in 2000, the company attempted to illegally dump hundreds of thousands of yards of dredge spoil from Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Bay onto a coral reef. Local surfers, with help from one brave blow-up doll, intervened by sitting in the emitter pipe. (To see the documentary, visit http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/08/samurai_surfers.html.)