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Shoreline Restoration Project Marks End Of Power Struggle
Tribune photo by JIM REED
Brandt Henningsen, of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, talks about the Rock Pond restoration project from an observation tower on the property.
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Published: May 20, 2008
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RUSKIN - It could have been a powerhouse, a labyrinth of ducts and pipes crowned by towering exhaust stacks, with coal-fired generators humming day and night.
Instead, the swath of land dubbed Rock Pond holds tangles of mangroves near the Tampa Bay shoreline where the footprint for a power plant once was drawn. Fiddler crabs and shorebirds scurry along the narrow beach. Ibis nest in mangroves along canals and water-filled pits. Inland, bobcats dart across grassy trails into shady hammocks of oak and pine.
Environmental experts say the 2,400-acre site that had been earmarked for a Tampa Electric Co. plant is a powerhouse of a different sort – a natural one that pumps energy into Tampa Bay by producing clean water and fish.
"All this coastal strand needs is maintenance," said Brandt Henningsen, chief environmental scientist with the state's Surface Water Improvement and Management program, as he inspected the southwest corner of the tract where the power plant would have gone.
Mother Nature has done much to heal the scars left by rock and shell mining and truck farming in the mid-1900s. But Henningsen, a 20-year veteran of coastal rehabilitation projects, figures nature can use a boost. He and a team of scientists and engineers are plotting a new footprint for the site, which stretches from the south shore of Cockroach Bay to the Hillsborough-Manatee county line.
"It's first-class bird habitat," said Ann Paul, regional coordinator for Audubon of Florida, noting that the site is one of the larger nesting colonies Audubon surveys in Tampa Bay each year. "When it gets restored or reclaimed to a better habitat, it's going to be very important to wildlife and birds."
The makeover Henningsen has in mind will cover 1,000 acres, including about 400 acres of wetlands creation and enhancement. For sheer size and its expected price – $7 million to $10 million – it easily will be the biggest project of its kind tackled by the SWIM program.
Twenty years ago, the site's prospects were quite different. TECO already had a name picked out for a facility there: MacInnes Station, after former TECO Chairman W.C. MacInnes. The Hillsborough County Planning Commission paved the way with an unheard-of land-use category that would have allowed TECO to build the facility on a former rock mine just south of the Cockroach Bay Aquatic Preserve.
But that didn't sit well with environmental activists and local residents worried about pollution and ship traffic next to the preserve. In 1990, TECO agreed to abide by the recommendation of a company-appointed committee of local business leaders and activists and build its newest power station in Polk County.
In 2003, after eradicating nuisance plants on much of the site, TECO sold Rock Pond for 3.5 million to county and state programs for environmental preservation.
The tract is sandwiched between two other large restoration projects: 500 acres at Cockroach Bay to the north and 700 acres at Terra Ceia to the south, both nearing completion.
Those parcels are part of nearly 20 miles of Tampa Bay shoreline in public ownership between McKay Bay and the Manatee River, Henningsen said. SWIM restoration projects have repaired environmental damage along the coastal strip in Tampa, Gibsonton, Apollo Beach and Ruskin. The Tampa Port Authority, TECO and Mosaic Fertilizer have restored additional coastal acreage in Tampa, Riverview and Apollo Beach.
Actual construction at Rock Pond probably is at least three years away, Henningsen said. The work likely will take two years or more to complete.
"This will be the largest ecosystem restoration of its kind that's been done in Tampa Bay and probably the last big parcel," Henningsen said. Government preservation programs have acquired most of the available coastal land suitable for habitat restoration, he said.
Planning began about a year ago, when the state installed piezometers, which tubelike measuring devices that collect information on groundwater levels. The data will be used to determine the size, depth, location and salinity of wetlands to be engineered on-site.
In late April, the restoration team started exploring the tract on foot, using Global Positioning System units to pinpoint and record their findings.
"We can GPS what's good that we want to keep and what's bad that we want to get rid of," said Tom Ries, vice president of Scheda Ecological Associates, a Tampa consulting firm working on the project.
They can keep the palms, ax the Brazilian pepper. Keep the pits, but add fill to make them shallow ponds or lagoons.
When the job is completed, the scientists said, ditches etched into the earth to drain or irrigate will become meandering creeks. Berms created when dirt was piled along the ditches will be leveled to allow stormwater to flow across the land as nature intended. Freshwater wetlands will supply foraging grounds for birds raising offspring in the mangroves. A portion of Cockroach Creek, which had been dredged and straightened, will be restored.
Henningsen and Ries said they are particularly excited about the tract's scattered patches of salt barrens, a specialized type of habitat created when tidal surges and evaporation leave land so salty it will support only certain kinds of plants and animals. Ditching and development have destroyed most of the bay's salt barrens, but Ries estimates about 360 of the Rock Pond site's original 460 acres remain.
Reporter Susan M. Green can be reached at (813) 865-1566 or sgreen@tampatrib.com.
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