Canal Island Project Fails to Gain Traction

Marco Island Police Chief Tracy Frazzano was presented an award at the last council meeting.    

Naples Elks Lodge 2010 chairperson Denise Holmes was at the council meeting on December 8th to bestow an award.  “The lodge has the Enrique Cameron Drug Awareness award. Enrique was a DEA agent killed by the Mexican cartel,” Holmes explained.   

“The Elks go into the schools and educate kids about drug awareness. As chairperson, I nominated our Marco Island police chief, Tracy Frazzano, for the award. I personally went to the chief and asked her to please get Narcan sprays into our police department. And of course she has. And in 2020, they saved the first person on Marco Island because of it. So, she is very well deserving of this award. And I would like to present it to her tonight.” Frazzano accepted the award,sharing the honor by saying,  “It's the men and women that are out there that are actually deploying it - they are making the difference. Thank you very much to Denise and to the Elks Lodge for everything that they did for this. I really appreciate it.”Holmes pointed out that of the 100 lodges in the state,the award went to Frazzano 

One of the biggest topics of the evening was the proposal by EarthworksLand Development and Endcap to dredge canals and create ‘spoil’ islands in the effort to improve water quality in the canals.  The project would be a public private partnership, “Coastal Habitat and Water Quality Initiative” or CHAWQ. 

Humiston and Moore and subcontractors,  Turrell and Hall and Associates, and Gunster Law Firm reviewed the proposal.  

Deb Madden,representing GunsterLaw,met with the CHAWQ team to discuss their questions on the project and theteam’s responses. Last month, they completed a report.  

“So, the material quality standards were evaluated from what was presented, and we found that the assurance was incomplete,” said Madden. “The project design is too conceptual at this moment for us to opine on whether this is a sustainable design and construction standards consistent with public projects. The team raised concerns about potential deepening of canals that could make the low flushing capacity worse, and the establishment of mangrove islands in the canals hasn't been studied to ensure that bioaccumulation of sediment and nutrients in the canals is not made worse. The team also laid out some other considerations or risks to consider, and we can elaborate further if you have any questions. These centered on the design concept, ensuring that the water quality objective is met. A permitting process was not provided in the proposal. Also, long term costs, which I mentioned earlier. Considering that the long-term operation maintenance would be the city's costs, aesthetics and public interests, the proposal was insufficient as to whether the mangrove islands would be accepted by the public. And then the lack of precedent was a concern. The proposal did not include similar projects of this scale or a pilot success.”  

Councilor Rene Champagne was first to point out, there were “no answers” in the presentation on the50-page initialCHAWQ proposal. “The consulting firm is indicating doing only the center dredging of a canal, leaving both the seawalls untouched,” said Champagne.“I think they were saying it's likely to fill the vacuum created in the middle of the canal. Again, to me, your concept raises more questions than answers. I'm looking for answers. I don't hear any. You're standing up here and say, trust this. It's a concept. And believe me, it'll work someday. How do you prove something like that?” 

“What it does is it ties this city up for years to go through this, proving the concept unnecessarily,” Champagne said.“It's already consuming too much time, to be perfectly honest with you, with no answers. I'mvery concerned that we're being presented material with no solutions at this moment. I mean, no, this city would be hammered for approving any kind of deal like that. And frequently, you do as a community hammer us for making better decisions than this.” 

Dan Davies of Earthworks commented, “Wecan't take the next step and invest that money unless we know there's commitment in a partnership, that you're along with us to do that. You have a very valid question. There are a lot of details and a lot of answers. We've got to do hydraulic studies of the canals. We've got to do topographical surveys. We've got to do analytical reports. There's a lot of things that are involved in the process. But once again, I can't invest that money upfront and bring all that to you and then ask you if you would like to pursue this project. At least I have a commitment that we're in a partnership to pursue an end goal.” 

“There's no topic facing this city that I have received more negativity from the community on than this project,” said Champagne.“And it's 99% against the project.”  

Council Chair Darrin Palumbo asked for a motion to approve and none were made.“All right,” said Palumbo.“(The project proposal) dies for lack of a motion.”