A controversial dredge at Port Everglades is on pause after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withdrew a state permit, saying it wanted to re-evaluate parts of the project.
In a letter to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Angela Dunn, the Corps planning chief in Jacksonville, asked to withdraw the permit. “Elements of the project description, including order of construction, are being reconsidered by the Corps,” Dunn wrote earlier this month, which could change the scope of the dredge.
The permit covers the Corps’ work for the port that impacts wetlands, state-owned land and environmental resources regulated by the state.
READ MORE: Study surprises scientists with its findings: millions of coral at Port Everglades
To environmental advocates opposing the six-year dredge project and its potential damage to the state’s shrinking coral reef, the move could signal relief.
“We don't know what the Army Corps will do next,” said Miami Waterkeeper Director Rachel Silverstein. “We're treating this as a really meaningful pause and the letter that was sent from the Corps to the state says that they're rescoping this project. Time will tell what the Army Corps ends up doing.”
In response to WLRN, Army Corps Public Affairs Officer JP Rebello said the Corps is in talks with other government agencies on how to carry out the work.
"Since any changes would require us to amend our application USACE leadership chose to withdraw our WQC permit application for the moment," Rebell wrote, saying the project remained authorized.
The dredge, approved by Congress in 2016, would deepen, widen and re-align channels that the Corps says no longer serve bigger Panamax ships coming to one of the world’s busiest ports and the main entry port for fuel in South Florida. As part of the project, the Corps would need to blast and hammer ocean bottom to deepen the channel by 10 feet and nearly double its length. It’s expected to cost at least $1.35 billion and take six years to complete.
Coming on the heels of a PortMiami dredge that killed at least 278 acres of coral, the plan quickly drew criticism that the Corps would again underestimate the potential damage.
Miami Waterkeeper sued in 2017 to stop the work until more comprehensive studies could be conducted on the potential impact on coral to the fragile reef, which has been hammered by warming oceans and disease. In response, the Corps paused work to conduct additional environmental reviews. But in July 2024, the regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote a scathing review of the Corps’ assessment of impacted wildlife. Its most serious offense was finding that the work would not likely damage habitat for fragile coral, wrote Andy Strelcheck, who called parts of the study "unintelligible."
Then last year, a study last year by Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and the National Marine Fisheries Service also found millions of staghorn coral live in or near the channel, amounting to what might be the largest remaining wild stand of the endangered coral.
