• Subscribe to the Magazine
  • Read the Magazine
  • The Best of Fort Lauderdale
Subscribe to our newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • Features
  • Fashion
  • City Life
    • Business
    • Community
    • Culture
    • Development
    • Profile
  • Good Life
    • Casa Chic
    • Health
    • Motors
    • Outdoors
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Guide
    • Entertainment
    • Events
    • Restaurant Guide
    • Snapshots
  • Food & Drink
    • Chef’s Corner
    • Grazings
    • Light Bites
    • Restaurant Guide
  • Around Town
  • From the Editor
  • Goods
  • Old Lauderdale
  • The List
  • Subscribe
  • Events
  • Restaurant Guide
  • Read the Magazine
0
Subscribe

Read the current issue

Fort Lauderdale Magazine
Fort Lauderdale Magazine
  • Features
  • Fashion
  • City Life
    • Business
    • Community
    • Culture
    • Development
    • Profile
  • Good Life
    • Casa Chic
    • Health
    • Motors
    • Outdoors
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Guide
    • Entertainment
    • Events
    • Restaurant Guide
    • Snapshots
  • Food & Drink
    • Chef’s Corner
    • Grazings
    • Light Bites
    • Restaurant Guide
  • Around Town
  • Goods
  • Old Lauderdale
  • The List
  • The Best of Fort Lauderdale
  • DINE Fort Lauderdale
  • City Life
  • Development

No More Sediment-al Journeys

  • October 14, 2022
  • FLMag Staff
Paddleboards once again enjoying the Tarpon River in Fort Lauderdale’s Rio Vista neighborhood. Photography: Courtesy of the City of Fort Lauderdale.
As part of an expansive ongoing public works program, the city recently celebrated completion of a project to bring one of its main waterways back to health.

The Tarpon River has received a makeover. The city recently completed a dredging project in a stretch of the river in Rio Vista that aimed to remove sediment in the river. After four months of work, the project was recently declared complete.

City Commissioner and Vice Mayor Ben Sorensen, a Rio Vista resident, praised the city and local company ATL, which did the dredging work, as a positive example of the public and private sectors working together to get things done quickly. “This is how we get good stuff done in government,” Sorensen says. “It’s the right model.”

The project was completed as the city continues with a series of improvements to its waterways and infrastructure, much of which was begun after the catastrophic sewer line breaks of 2020. Recent and current projects include everything from new sewer lines to taller and improved seawalls.

This project involved four months of hydraulic and mechanical dredging that got rid of 2,000 cubic yards of sediment along 800 feet of the river on either side of the SE Ninth Avenue Bridge in Rio Vista. Sorensen says that in order to restore the river to health as fully as possible, they took out more sediment than was actually required. “We doubled the scope of the project,” he says.

According to the city, oxygen levels have been rising and bacterial counts falling since mid-2020.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, sediment is the most common pollutant in rivers and other freshwater bodies of water. While some sediment is natural, most is the result of construction activities, according to the EPA. It affects water quality, including smell, and plant and animal life in waterways.

City of Fort Lauderdale staff with Tarpon River Restoration Project vendors: Anthony Fajardo, assistant city manager; Greg Chavarria, city manager; Vice Mayor Ben Sorenson; Justin Friedman Res Florida Consulting; Todd Hitesheu, project manager, Public Works; Clinton Hodges, Atl Diversified; and Alan Dodd, director, Public Works. Photography: Courtesy of the City of Fort Lauderdale.

The project involved crews pumping sediment into massive bags on barges where the sediment was trapped and the de-silted water disinfected before being returned to the river. It’s the sort of project that’s loud, that cuts off the river and requires boats to be moved, and that tends to smell like rotten eggs. It’s not the sort of project that happens with no disruption to a neighborhood, although ATL project manager Clinton Hodges says they tried to design the project so that there was minimal disruption. And in the end, several months of disruption is worth a cleaner river, Sorensen says.

“The lifeblood of Fort Lauderdale is our environment, our waterways,” Sorensen says.
Other ongoing or planned projects in the city include:
• The massive Seven Neighborhood Stormwater Improvements Project, which includes stormwater improvements in the Edgewood, Victoria Park, River Oaks, Durrs, Dorsey Riverbend, South East Isles and Progresso Village neighborhoods, which are the Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods most severely impacted by flooding. Improvements meant to reduce flooding in River Oaks; the project began earlier this year and is expected to be completed in 2024.
• A planned new water treatment plant to replace the city’s nearly 70-year-old Fiveash facility, which Mayor Dean Trantalis once described as “held together by spit and chewing gum.”
• Various seawall improvement and replacement projects, including the Hendricks Isle seawall replacement project that is due to be completed by the end of October. The project includes the construction of two new seawalls and stormwater infrastructure.

Previous Article
  • City Life
  • Profile

Saturday Night Dance Fever

  • October 10, 2022
  • Deb Cay
View Post
Next Article
  • Business
  • City Life
  • Motors

The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show Makes A Triumphant Return

  • October 28, 2022
  • FLMag Staff
View Post
You May Also Like
View Post
  • City Life
  • Community

JoAnn’s Oasis

  • June 7, 2023
  • FLMag Staff
View Post
  • Business
  • City Life

Our Locality

  • May 17, 2023
  • FLMag Staff
View Post
  • City Life
  • Development

Closing the LOOP

  • May 4, 2023
  • FLMag Staff
View Post
  • City Life
  • Development

New EDITION

  • April 12, 2023
  • FLMag Staff
View Post
  • City Life
  • Development

New Park for a New Downtown

  • March 28, 2023
  • FLMag Staff
View Post
  • City Life
  • Profile

Wine and Waves

  • February 28, 2023
  • FLMag Staff
View Post
  • City Life
  • Development

Gateway at the Crossroads

  • February 22, 2023
  • Erik Petersen
View Post
  • City Life
  • Development

“Needed and Not Enough”

  • January 6, 2023
  • Mike Seemuth

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter and never miss a thing!

Fort Lauderdale Magazine
  • Contact Us
  • Media Kit
  • Careers
  • Submit An Idea
© PD Strategic Media. All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of PD Strategic Media. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our privacy policy.

Input your search keywords and press Enter.

X
X