FORT LAUDERDALE — The mangrove trees and pines that shielded the River Oaks neighborhood from a nearby shipyard are gone forever.
The city-hired drainage contractor that chopped them down also dumped gravel into a canal that runs through River Oaks and discharged water into both the canal and a nearby wetland preserve last year, increasing turbidity above allowable limits, county officials say.
For that, Broward County has fined Ric-Man Construction and Fort Lauderdale $175,450.
The city and contractor are splitting the fine, with Fort Lauderdale paying $78,808 and Ric-Man paying $96,642.
Ric-Man was tapped to oversee a $50 million drainage project in River Oaks and nearby Edgewood. The neighborhoods are among 25 low-lying areas in Fort Lauderdale slated to get drainage upgrades to help protect against flooding.
The missing trees are a sore spot for the residents of River Oaks, says Ted Inserra, the neighborhood’s association president.
“They were between 10 and 20 feet high,” Inserra said. “Now that they’ve been taken out, we can hear the noise coming from the shipyard. They’re doing major work over there on those superyachts. They’re not changing spark plugs. They’re painting and sanding and grinding.”
It was Inserra and his neighbors who alerted the county, saying they saw crews dumping gravel into the canal that runs parallel to Coconut Drive.
“We just knew something wasn’t right,” Inserra said. “And we were proven right.”
A Ric-Man official declined to comment Monday, referring questions to the city.
During a recent meeting, Public Works Director Alan Dodd said the city thought Ric-Man made the right move on certain actions they took. “However, the county saw it differently in terms of regulations,” Dodd said.
The county’s Environmental Permitting Division cited Fort Lauderdale after Ric-Man dumped gravel into a canal west of Coconut Drive and removed more mangroves than what county officials say was allowed under their permit.
“Mangroves are usually nursery areas for the fish,” said Carlos Adorisio, assistant director of Broward County’s Environmental Permitting Division. “They lay their eggs there.”
To make up for the mangroves they destroyed beyond what was allowed under permit, credits were paid toward wetlands restoration outside the county in the Everglades Mitigation Bank near Homestead.
The city was also cited for unauthorized discharges into the River Oaks wetland preserve at 2117 SW 19 Ave.
When water is discharged into another body of water, it can stir up large deposits of silt and sediment, giving the water a cloudy or milky appearance known as turbidity. If turbidity levels are high, both plant and aquatic life can suffer and potentially die.
“When the water is turbid, oxygen levels go down,” Adorisio said. “That could kill fish and other animals.”
Dodd told commissioners the county is requiring the city to remediate the preserve to get it back to its previous condition. The city has hired a consultant to keep an eye on the contractor’s ongoing work.
The mistakes were unfortunate, said Commissioner Warren Sturman, whose district includes River Oaks.
“My concern is that we have a robust system of checks and balances to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Sturman told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “Every time we pay a fine, that’s money that could have gone toward drainage infrastructure.”
Inserra said he thinks the fine should have been higher for destroying what was once a beautiful area of the neighborhood.
Since March, Inserra says he has planted at least 40 mangrove saplings along the canal bank.
“I’m hoping the city doesn’t rip them out,” he told the Sun Sentinel. “They should be thanking me for planting those trees. All the city did was plant some little shrubs along the rocks on the south end of the canal.”
Fort Lauderdale officials are working on a plan to plant larger trees and vegetation along the southern banks of the canal where the mangroves and exotic trees were removed, Dodd said.
But the city might end up having to remove the mangroves as they grow, Dodd warned.
Mangrove trees can stop the flow of water and increase the risk of flooding, Dodd said.
To come into compliance, Fort Lauderdale has directed Ric-Man to stop all dewatering activities. Dewatering, the process of removing ground water from a certain location, was required to install a large diameter pipe. A revised dewatering plan is being developed to prevent excessive turbidity before any future dewatering is authorized.
The city is also increasing Construction Engineering and Inspection services to provide greater on-site quality assurance and verify Ric-Man’s quality control procedures are adequate during future work.
“We have learned a lot of lessons on this,” Dodd said.
Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com. Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan