November 15, 1996

To Whom It May Concern:

The attached report "Preliminary Survey of Mud Deposits on the Mid-shelf Reefs off Fort Pierce, St. Lucie County, Florida" is an independent study regarding the recent occurrence of thick layers of mud on the reefs and live bottom off Fort Pierce. This study was undertaken following numerous accounts by local divers, recreational and commercial fishermen that the fisheries had significantly declined during the past year and that mud was smothering the reefs.

This report is the compilation of scientific analyses on the sediment that I collected from several of the reefs by scuba diving this past September. This research was not funded nor endorsed by any agency or scientific institution; all the scientists who were involved with the analyses volunteered their time and services. I am submitting this report as a private citizen who has 20 years of scientific experience studying the live bottom benthic communities and coral reefs that occur in this region.

This report concludes that thick layers of mud are present on some of the reefs surveyed. It is my 'hope that funding will be made available by some agency or institution in order to initiate further studies to determine the extent of the mud and possible environmental damage caused by the mud, to determine the cause or source of the mud, and to develop a recommended remedial course of action.

You may contact me at the address or phone listed below if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

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PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF MUD DEPOSITS ON THE MID-SHELF REEFS
OFF FORT PIERCE, ST. LUCIE COUNTY, FLORIDA

                                        Submitted to:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
U.S. Army Corp of Engineers
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
National Marine Fisheries Service
St. Lucie County Port and Airport Authority

by
John K. Reed
239 Bermuda Beach Drive
Ft. Pierce, Florida 34949
Home Phone- 561-465-6327

November 8, 1996
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ken Taylor is especially thanked for offering his personal boat at no cost and ships's dive log for this research. Dr. Randy Parkinson and George Wiegman, Department of Oceanography, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida, kindly provided sediment analyses on samples S-1, 9-2, S-3, S-4, S-5, S-6, S-7, and S-8, including visual description of the samples, percent organics and percent carbonates. Sherry Reed, Smithsonian Institutionls Marine Station at Link Port, Ft. Pierce, Florida, is thanked for the dry weight sediment analysis of all samples (S-1 to S-9), Loss-on-ignition analysis for sample S-9, and for the foraminifers extractions. Dr. Martin Buzas, Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian institution, Washington D.C., is gratefully acknowledged for preliminary analysis of the foraminifers samples. Dr. Shirley Pomponi, Director, Division of Biomedical Marine Research; and Dr. Dennis H&nisak, Director, Division of Marine Science, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, reviewed this manuscript.
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Inlet dredging blamed for muck on reefs
Lawmakers clash about funds for deepening study

Valerie Bauerlein, Tribune Staff Writer

ST. LUCIE COUNTY -
The mysterious muck covering the reefs off county beaches is so thick even the bait fish aren't biting.

Glenn Manchester questions why he's bothering to build a $26,000 boat when soon there may be no fish to catch. Fishermen along the South Jetty say they can't even catch the little ones they need to reel in the grouper and snapper once plentiful along the coast.

Kass Taylor, a diver off Fort Pierce's coast for 25 years, laments the "serious and vastly destructive" silt that's obscuring visibility, killing marine life and ruining the livelihoods of the area's dive companies.

And John Reed, a scientist with 20 years experience studying local reefs, describes the muck as unnatural, frightening and probably deadly to the plankton and small species at the bottom of the food chain - with those at the bottom supporting the fish in the middle and ultimately, the people at the top.

These people have no doubt about what's behind the collection of as much as a foot of brown, silty muck collecting on the reefs and ocean floor off Fort Pierce.

They all blame last year's dredging of the Port of Fort Pierce, where barges dug up some 500,000 cubic yards of sand from the turning basin and channel and plopped it down four miles southeast of the Fort Pierce inlet.

"Ever since that dredging's stopped, the water's been filthy dirty every day," said David King, of Little Adam Charters.  "About a month or two after they finished everything went to hell".

Commissioner Cliff Barnes believes them, and says his own experience as a snorkeler and area native backs their claims.

Barnes blames his fellow commissioners, sitting as the Port and Airport Authority, for approving last year's dredging of the turning basin and channel to a depth of 28 feet.

At Tuesday's authority meeting, Barnes called for no more dredging - he specifically asked corninissioners to reject $100,000 Congress approved last week for a study of the pros and cons of deepening the port to 32 feet.

And although the scientific evidence does not yet point unequivocally at the dredging as the culprit, Barnes said people have been sent to the electric chair with a smaller degree of certainty."
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Above: John Reed, senior research specialist with Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, holds samples of mud collected from the Port of Fort Pierce, left, and four miles offshore. Local anglers and divers say the destructive muck turned up in the ocean after a dredging project at the port last summer.

A mud sample taken from an ocean reef offshore from the Fort Pierce Inlet.
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Though audience members applauded Barnes' idea, Commissioner Havert "Coach" Fenn opposed it pointing out Reed, a scientist at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, could not say absolutely the dredging is responsible. Besides, Fenn said he has heard reports of silt spotted in other Florida locales.

"It must be something else," he said.

In an increasingly vocal exchange, Barnes said he was ashamed of the Commission's failure to take responsibility for the possible destruction of the county's most important environmental - and therefore, economic - assets.

"We know exactly what's causing it," Barnes said. "This (board), you've done irreparable damage and you don't care ... you don't care, Mr. Fenn."

Fenn bit back, saying he would not be blamed.

"Let's not get personal here," Fenn said. "Because I can get mean bear-nasty."

Joining the fray was Robert March, a local diver, concerned citizen and also challenger for Barnes' commission seat in the Nov. 5 general election.

March attacked Barnes for his "irrational and sensationalistic" response, saying the commissioner wanted to throw away the chance to even study further dredging and risk offending the Congressional leaders who allocated the money for it.

"What an insult it would be to these legislators to reject (this money)," March said.

March described himself as one "blessed with the facility of logical thinking," and as such encouraged the commission to accept the money.

In his defense, Barnes said he would risk "hurting grown men's feelings" if it meant preserving the environment."

Ultimately the commissioners did not endorse Barnes' suggestion, postponing further discussion until Oct. 22, when Commissioner Gary Charles comes back from vacation and when the board plans to hear an update on the muck.

In the meantime, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is beginning an investigation into the muck. The Corps wants to prove the dredging it did last summer is not culpable, said project manager Jerry Scarborough.

"My thoughts are it's not associated with dredging, but let's get down there and find out," Scarborough said.

Commissioner Ken Satfler said the only thing that's clear is the muck poses a major problem.

"If anything we're doing is causing it, we need to stop," Sattler said.

Commissioner Denny Green said while he voted originally to apply for the federal money, the board "is talking about something different now." Until the county knows what's causing the muck, he said he could not vote to accept the federal study money.

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Indian River County, Press Journal, "DEP Divers Find Muck on Reefs," A9, 7/18/97

DEP Divers Find Muck On Reefs

by TYLER TREADWAY
Special to the Press Journal

FORT PIERCE -- Divers from the state Department of Environmental Protection apparently found this week what a federal Environmental Protection Agency research ship couldn't find earlier this year: Large patches of gray-black muck in reefs off the Fort Pierce Inlet.

A University of Georgia research lab should begin analyzing samples of the muck today to determine if - as many divers and fishermen in the area suspect - it is part of the material dredged from the Port of Fort Pierce channel in 1995 and dumped at an EPA-approved site at sea.

In late January, the EPA sent the Peter W. Anderson, a 168-foot vessel equipped with a gamma isotope mapping system, out to track the muck. But the ship didn't find any muck on the reefs, and a preliminary EPA report said the dredged material was staying in place at its dumpsite four miles east-southeast of the inlet.

Since then, local divers have said they could show officials what the EPA'S, equipment couldn't. In fact, they said, they .come across the muck all the time. On Wednesday, Jeff Beal and Brian Proctor, environmental specialists with the DEP, took up the offer and went diving for muck with Fort Pierce divers Kass Taylor, Dan Nelson and Dwight Blackwelder.

Taylor said the group found patches of the sediment at several sites from 3 to 12 miles from the Fort Pierce Inlet and from 2 to 5 miles from the dumpsite.

Taylor said the patches of muck have "a surface that's like an orange-rusty crust that rolls a bit. You can slice into it like a pie with your (swim) fin. Inside, it's in layers that are soft on the top and get denser as you go down.

Taylor said tidal movements make the muck "boil up like that stuff in a lava light."

The largest concentration of the muck that Taylor found was 3 to 4 miles east of the inlet, about 2 miles north of the durnpsite.

Taylor gave Beal and Proctor a personal tour of the patch. "I told them I wanted to be there and see their reaction," she said. 'When they got to it, they just stopped and looked around. It was a real emotional experience for them."


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Stuck with muck
Source of coastal sludge still unknown

Scott Hovanyetz
Tribune Staff Writer

ST. LUCIE COUNTY - To diver Kass Taylor, the mysterious muck -that she and other divers say covers reefs off the
Fort Pierce coast has almost tangible, living qualities.

It moves with the tides and currents. It comes in different consistencies, from muddy liquid to soft clay.

The muck stinks like oysters left out in the sun too long. And Taylor says it kills sponges and crustaceans that make their homes in the offshore reefs.

"It looks like a desert," says Taylor, describing some reefs that are covered in as much as a foot of the stuff. "Everything is choking. It can't breathe."

For the past two years, divers have reported finding the muck from Bethel Shoals, halfway to Sebastian, to the St. Lucie Inlet near Stuart. The muck is still there, and scientists say the answer to where the muck comes from still eludes them.

Taylor and other divers say they know the answer. They say the muck comes from an offshore dump site for material dug up from the bottom of the Fort Pierce Inlet when it was last dredged in 1995.
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Diver Dan Nelson pours a sample of muck taken from the Fort Pierce inlet into a bottle. While some locals believe the sludge smothering offshore reefs is a result of past dredging of the inlet, scientists with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency aren't so sure.

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But studies by the federal Environmental Protection Agency have proven inconclusive. In November, a team of EPA scientists came to Fort Pierce aboard the Peter W. Anderson to get, samples of the muck but inclement weather. prevented them from finding any.

Two weeks ago, Taylor and divers Dan Nelson and Dwight Blackwelder took environmental specialists Jeff Beal and Brian Proctor from the state Department of Environmental Protection on a dive to get samples for the EPA.

Those samples are now at a lab in Athens, Ga., where an analysis will be conducted in August. Clues that may provide answers should be available in September.

The EPA analysis will compare the muck with samples of material found elsewhere, including material from the bottom of the Fort Pierce Inlet. A match could provide proof of the mucks' source.

An alternative theory supported by former Port Director Morris, Adger says the muck is the result of stormwater runoff washing out of the inlet from Taylor Creek. The creek is notorious for carrying agricultural waste and fertilizer into the Indian River Lagoon.

In that case, the muck would have a high content of organic material, Nelson says.