Chief Resilience Officer for Monroe County, Rhonda Haag, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
There are four different road elevation projects going on in Monroe County right now.
Haag said, “Finally, after years of planning and applying for grants, we’re finally moving forward, we got the grants and we’re moving forward with four really big projects. I’ll start with the granddaddy, the area in Big Coppitt Key. That’s going to be about four and a half miles of road elevation, 19 roads in all. That construction estimate is $88 million. We’re moving forward, we’re issuing solicitations to go ahead and pick the engineering firm for that so we can get that roadway under design. So we’re really excited about that one. That’ll probably be $100 million by the time we get done building it. It takes a couple of years to do the design and then the construction, but we’re really excited about that because that area gets a lot of flooding already. The next one is in Key West, Flagler Avenue. It’s a four lane road, two miles. That one, construction estimate is at $77 million. So that one’s going out for bid here to get the design underway. We didn’t get any state funds for that one yet, but we do have federal funds up to $57 million. So we’re going to be short about $20 million, so we’ll either have to get that locally somehow or try to apply for some state funds, but we’re really excited about that because I know Flagler Avenue also experiences heavy flooding during the king tide season.”
The next one is Winston Waterways in Key Largo.
Haag said, “About mile marker 102 and that’s two and a half miles of road elevation, about 15 different roads, and that one construction estimate is at $53 million. We have a combination of funds paying for that. We have, hopefully about $50 million in federal funds, and about $15 million in state funds. We’re really excited about that one. That’s adjacent to the John Pennekamp State Park and that also gets heavy king tide flooding also. So hopefully, all these neighborhoods, five years from now, when these projects hopefully are built will be much higher. The final one is a smaller project, that’s Conch Key, that’s mile marker 63. That’s much smaller, it’s about 2,500 linear feet, of course there’s a Monroe County Fire Station out there. That one’s estimated at about $12 million. We have about $4 million right now of that funded. We applied already last summer for some additional state funds and we’re waiting to see on that, but moving forward with design and engineering of that one, too. So those are really a lot of big couple 100 million dollars worth of road elevation projects. We’re extremely lucky to get, not on all of them, Flagler Avenue we don’t have fully funded, but the other three we’re hopefully going to get those fully funded with federal and state funds, but I have to caution, it’s not going to work this way for all of our projects. We’re lucky we got to jump out of the gate real early before all the rest of the state caught up in their vulnerability assessment grant applications. So we get these underway, and hopefully get these built in and see what happens.”
There are also some active canal projects going on.
Haag said, “We have some active canal projects on Big Pine Key in the Eden Pines area and Narcissus Avenue, we have our first injection well project. What we’re doing is we’re putting in an injection well, towards the back of that canal and that will slowly draw water in and push it underground to about 120 feet. Then as that draws that water in, it brings in the water from the mouth of the canal to the back. So that will turn over that canal. So that canal should turn over about four times a week, I think, so you’ll see a lot more turnover in that canal and that will definitely increase the water quality in terms of levels of dissolved oxygen, and you should see more increased marine life in there. That’s a really big canal system, and we know one isn’t going to work, but we wanted to get our first one in and see how well it works. We might have to come back and install several more in that canal system to make it a truly functioning good quality canal. We have one more going in Tavernier, mile marker 90 in the Hammer Point neighborhood that’s a backfill project, about $1.5 million I think and that’s underway also right now. So we’re really excited about that one. When you backfill canals you backfill them however deep they are, anywhere from 12 to 40 feet deep. We backfill them to a depth of about seven and a half feet. What that does, again, it helps the tide turn over the entire canal and that increases the oxygen in the canal. Backfills are really popular and they work really fast. As soon as you get that backfill done you see an immediate increase in the marine life because there’s so much more oxygen in the canal waters.”
There will be two public workshops for the Harry Harris Park pavilion in Tavernier. One will be Tuesday, April 19, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the pavilion at the park and the second one will be on April 30 from 5:30 to 7 in the Murray Nelson building.
Haag said, “What we’re trying to do there is every time we get a hurricane, that storm surge just shuts that park down for long periods of time. So we’re going in there and looking at how we can make it more resilient against the storm surge so it can stay open and not get such traumatic effects after a hurricane and make it more resilient to storm surge and sea level rise. We’re adding some new features, too, we’re proposing some new pathways and maybe a boardwalk. So we’re really excited to see how the community reacts to that and that’s why we’re having these public meetings to see what they want, because it’s their neighborhood and their use of the park. I’m really looking forward to having those public meetings and learning what is going to work for the park. It’s not always what the county thinks, it’s what the neighborhood wants.”
The Twin Lakes project in Key Largo is waiting on some more information.
Haag said, “We opened bids on that one. They came in quite a bit over budget. So we’re working to see if we can find the money for that the Twin Lakes Road elevation project in Key Largo. There will probably be a discussion on that maybe an April commission to see, we’re about $10 million short on that. That should be our demonstration project. That’s supposed to be the first one. So looking forward to see how we’re going to resolve that situation.”