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March 2011 Public comment to City Commission
Hello Commissioners, and City staff, We would like go on record to thank the commissioners for their support throughout this project process and the City Manager, City Engineer and their staffs for their diligent work on the Coral Waterways Dredging project, that is now almost a reality.... We appreciate the efforts taken in the selection of a contractor to to do the dredging work on the Coral Lakes Waterway. And heartened to see that staff has recognized the imperative to "do it right" from start to finish. The margin for error on this project will be small and we won't have the luxury of second chances. In these tough economic times, it takes courage to recognize that the lowest bid isn't necessarily the best value. While we don't claim to have the expertise to evaluate the competence of dredging contractors, and haven't conducted a thorough investigation, we are pleased with the feedback we have received on Gator Dredging, the recommended "Responsive and Responsible" bidder. Our correspondents/naturalists have told us that Gator Dredging appears to possess the expertise and experience to do precise and delicate work and they understand the requirement to work to high standards in environmentally sensitive areas. We urge you to adopt the resolution before you tonight, choosing the "Responsive and Responsible" vendor as recommended by city staff. The City Engineer has pledged to work closely with residents to hold the contractor to the highest standards of environmental diligence as the work is performed and we look forward to working with him and his staff to do just that. Thank you for your continued support, Bonnie Lallky-Seibert for The Friends of Cherry Creek February 2009 
Our creek is tidal. Its level is controlled by the level of the river, which is connected at one end to the ocean and at the other to the Water Management District's canal system for western Broward. There is a gate just west of our fire station on 21st Ave that allows the District to pass surplus water (if there is any) from the west Broward canals to the river. As it happens, data collected by the instruments at that gate are publicly available. Thus, we can see water levels and tides as they appear on "our side" of that gate - In the river, in other words. It's not as good as an instrument on our waterway or right at the confluence of our creek and the river, but the data give us a pretty good idea of what's going on. There is a seasonal pattern to water levels, and levels this January have been lower than usual. This January saw average water levels (the average at any given moment, not just low tides) just over 3 inches (-3.15") lower than January of 2006 and just under 10 inches lower than July of last year. (-9.78"). The January average level was alomst ten inches lower than the average level for all of 2008. (-9.94"). It's safe to say the water has been unusually low, even for January 
Here you can see the rise and fall of the tide, last July and this January February 2009 - After a year on hold while the City worked on underlying issues, things are happening on our creek again. Now we're happy to report that everyone involved - the City Commission, City administration and citizens' groups are in agreement on the most fundamental issue: There will be no dredging within the natural creek! The City has appointed a new environmental consultant under a newly implemented working arrangement that significantly reduces the risk of conflict of interest. The new consultant has met with the City and a Citizens Advisory Group composed of representatives of Friends of Cherry Creek and the Corals of Oakland Park Home Owner's Association. All parties have agreed upon a plan to engage the consultant to perform an environmental study that will tell us whether it's safe to dredge the so-called "choke points" that lie outside of the natural creek area, and the City Commission has approved the plan. After this study is completed, the Commission will decide what work is to be done and applications for the work can be prepared and submitted to regulatory authorities. The issue that now faces us is that the environmental study just approved does not provide for collection of water quality or wildlife data. Friends of Cherry Creek, COPHA and citizens attending public meetings in the fall of 2007 all expressed a desire for a study featuring fresh data on the health of our creek and lakes system. However, there's no money in the budget for such a study. Now we must appeal to the Commission to find some money for us in these very hard economic times. At the same time, we need to be as creative as possible to find ways to accomplish what we need inexpensively and to look for alternative sources of money. This winter we are experiencing extraordinarily low water levels in the creek and lakes. On our Updates page, we've posted some data from the South Florida Water Management District that shows just how low levels are. Some residents are upset about it. Water levels will rise and fall again before any physical work can take place. But the good news is that more people are getting involved. Some of them Will take up the cause and help us preserve and enhance the treasure that we have. Summary of meeting with City officials and representatives of environmental consultant - Dec. 11, 2008 The Cherry Creek Citizens Advisory Group, which is made up of representatives from two groups: Friends of Cherry Creek and COPHA (the Corals of Oakland Park Homeowners’ Association) was formed to work with the City on the proposed Cherry Creek dredging project. On Dec. 11, 2008, the C.A.G. met with members of City staff under the direction of Harris Hamid, including Harris, Harvey Rambrath, Marie Elianor from John Stunson’s office, and others, and also several members of the environmental consulting group Kimley-Horn Associates (KHA). We thank all involved, it was a productive meeting. We all spoke openly and candidly, and Harris and Harvey could not have been more gracious in making sure they understood what we were suggesting and responding to us. We were very impressed with Kimley-Horn, and the professionalism of their subsequent proposed Statement of Work, and how fully it included the various concerns and suggestions we had made to them. K.H.A. want to look at the whole system, with hydraulic assumptions based both on dredging the so-called "choke points" or not to assess potential impacts, as well as looking at all the past data to try to see if they can assess changes or deterioration up to now. They understood our desire for baseline measurements and an economically sustainable monitoring program going forward. Overall, they seemed to ask the right questions. The Engineering Dept. acknowledged the most important precondition, which is that the City Commission has decided the matter of not dredging in the natural creek area south of 38th Street, by a 5-0 vote. Previous fears of conflict-of-interest were alleviated by the plan that K.H.A.was not to be involved in any way with a permit filing and the dredge contract itself, so they will not have a financial stake in the extent of dredge work done. The Citizens Advisory Group offers our support for this Proposal, and we thank the City staff and John Stunson for his support of including citizens in this process. We also deeply thank each of the Commissioners for all you steady support you’ve shown our protecting the environment and wildlife in our waterways, creek and lakes. We encourage the Commission to support this Statement of Work as submitted for a study of the potential environmental impact of various proposed degrees of dredging in the Corals Lakes/Cherry Creek Water System. The Advisory Group also feels it might be prudent to consider examining a limited number of additional issues in this water system. These would have the goal of maintaining or reestablishing, as the case may be, a healthy ecologically sound water system. Some preliminary talks regarding this have been held between our group and the City’s Engineering Department, and we are asking the Commission to simply give the City Manager and City staff, direction to explore such issues, see what’s viable, explore potential costs and how volunteers could be helpful, and come back to the Commission if any such issues are felt the the City staff to be worth some attention. We do not, though, want this to in any way impede the progress of proceeding with main Proposal from Kimley-Horn. We very much support Harris’ and Harvey’s desire to proceed expeditiously with this study and the potential subsequent Cherry Creek project. Additional environmental study points would be a parallel project. The final draft of Kimley-Horn's proposed scope of work can be found on our Documents page. |
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