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Resident: Canal 'Was Never Here'

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By MIKE SALINERO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 12, 2008

Updated: 04/12/2008 12:23 am

TOWN 'N COUNTRY - As Frank DeAngelis steers his 17-foot skiff through the muddy waters of Rocky Creek, a dense green wall of mangroves suddenly opens onto a canal.

DeAngelis angles his boat up the waterway, which stretches more than 1,000 feet to a newly constructed boat dock and three-story mansion.

"For 35 years we've been coming out here with kids and grandkids and this was never here," DeAngelis said, gesturing at the arrow-straight canal.

DeAngelis alerted Hillsborough County environmental authorities about the canal in August. He says a homeowner without waterfront access altered what had been an old mosquito control drainage ditch to connect his property to the creek, which eventually leads to Old Tampa Bay.

Last week, the county assessed $14,548 in fines against the owner of the home, Pedro Olivera, for work he had done along his property.

A pending consent order says Olivera destroyed mangroves, a protected species, dumped fill dirt in wetlands, and built a dock and sea wall in wetlands without permits. All are violations of state law and county regulations.

In addition to the fines, Hillsborough environmental authorities say they had Olivera replant 400 mangroves and fill in a turning basin he had dredged on his property along the canal.

Construction on the home appears nearly complete, though it was unclear whether anyone was living in it. A reporter left a business card with a crew working on the dock earlier this week and asked them to have Olivera call. Several attempts to reach him on a cell phone were unsuccessful.

The penalties and corrective actions don't go far enough for longtime Rocky Creek residents like DeAngelis. If Olivera signs the consent order, the county would lose the ability to take him to court for civil or criminal charges.

And though several agencies are investigating, no one has ruled Olivera will have to fill in the canal or that he is prohibited from using it to get to the nearby creek. Also, if he now has water access to the creek and Bay, the increase in his property value could far exceed the amount of fines.

Mangroves Appear To Have Been Trimmed

DeAngelis told environmental authorities that Olivera not only altered the ditch on his property, as county officials maintain, but also altered the waterway through property he did not own, namely the county's Rocky Creek Coastal Preserve.

To prove his point, DeAngelis steered his boat into the canal, where mangroves seem to have been trimmed in a straight line leading to the bare land where county inspectors say Olivera dumped fill dirt.

"It's 4 or 5 feet deep at high tide now; in the old days it was 10 inches," said DeAngelis, who has lived on Rocky Creek for 35 years with his wife, Loretta.

Mangroves are a vital part of estuary and coastal ecosystems, protecting shoreline, providing habitat for fish and other marine life, and adding nutrients to the water. The trees are protected, with only light trimming allowed in special circumstances. Violators can be fined or prosecuted; in severe cases, they can be forced to fill in dredging that has damaged or destroyed mangroves.

Scientists with the county's Environmental Protection Commission say the section of the canal from Olivera's back property line to the creek was a pre-existing ditch dug in the 1960s as a mosquito control measure. The EPC has assessed no penalties for any work on the ditch that occurred on the county preserve.

"We're saying the violation appeared substantially, if not all, on his property," said Bill Inch, an environmental scientist for the county. "If that turns out not to be true, we will certainly look at it, but I don't know how we could miss that."

That opinion doesn't jibe, however, with observations by longtime creek fishermen Toby Stroll and Don Edmonson. The two men, who work at an auto air-conditioning shop on West Hillsborough Avenue, say the canal was just a small ditch overgrown with mangroves, barely visible from the creek.

"I lived in this county all my life," Stroll said. "That was always just one of those mosquito creeks they dug way back. Now it's a canal."

"It was very small," Edmonson said. "It wasn't even as big as a drainage ditch."

No Private Access To Preserve Allowed

An official with the county Parks, Recreation and Conservation Department said he would investigate when asked about residents' belief that the ditch had been altered.

"I definitely have to get that cleared up," said Forest Turbiville, who manages county preservation land for the parks department. "That would certainly be a major issue from our end. We don't allow private access into a preserve."

Neither the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which enforces wetlands violations and some dock permits, nor the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issues permits for all dredge and fill activities, was aware of the work on Olivera's property. Both agencies said they would investigate.

Environmental Protection Commission officials said they have no plans to make Olivera fill in the portion of the canal on his property. That could change, however, once Olivera submits drawings of the dock and sea wall he built without permits, said Deborah Sinko, general manager of the EPC Wetlands Division.

Sinko said she was concerned about reports that workers were installing pilings Wednesday for a boatlift on Olivera's dock.

Sinko said Friday that she would send inspectors to the site to check out the report.

"I am concerned about this work continuing while he's under enforcement action," Sinko said. "That's problematic."

Turbiville said he was surprised the EPC was not making Olivera fill in the canal.

"It's not like the house had access to the Bay; he created that access to the Bay," Turbiville said. "As a regulatory issue, I would think we would want to make him fill up the ditch."

If the county allows the canal to stay and Olivera to use it, DeAngelis said, landowners who built in the wetlands around the creek might create their own canals through the refuge so they can access Old Tampa Bay.

"That preserve isn't their property," DeAngelis said. "That's your property and it's my property."

Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached

at msalinero@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-8303.

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