Florida’s Big Dig

LWDD history Part 9  (short 5 minute video, Click to start program)

Water, Water, Everywhere.  As devoted readers of over 260 postings at this website, you must know by now that my central focus began with my book, “Florida’s Big Dig,” the story of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

Along the way, my interest branched out to the crisis of severe drought in California, canals in America and throughout Europe, Africa, and Latin America, both today and in the past, to water control and management, canals, dams, aqueducts, and canal aqueducts for transportation, to the law in America when rivers and waterways and their tributaries run through two or more States of the United States.

A few months ago, I was invited to give the keynote speech at the Centennial Celebration of the Lake Worth Drainage District.  Incorporated in 1915, the District historically has played an important role in managing water in one of the largest drainage districts in Florida.  The District insures that there is sufficient water in drought and protection against flooding during the rainy season.

This short tape chronicles a decade of rapid growth in population while agriculture’s pressing needs continue to require the greatest amount of water for the growth of fruits and vegetables, including sugar cane and peppers that in many ways make Palm Beach County the ‘bread basket’ of the Sunshine State.  Click the link above for “LWDD history Part 9.”

This all-concrete stadium with wooden seating for 6,566 opened on December 27, 1963, on Virginia Key, Miami, Fla., on land donated by the prominent Mattheson family.  The design by a young and precocious architect for viewing speed boat racing was a unique, modern concrete structure with a concrete canopy the length of a football field, folded and cantilevered. Seating was wooden.

Total costs incurred in building the stadium amounted to approximately $2 million, with $1 million for construction of the structure and $900,000 for dredging the already shallow raceway by legendary marine and heavy construction firm J.B. Fraser and Sons. J.Ben Fraser had served as the critical director of procurement for the Florida Inland Navigation District of the right-of-way needed by the Army Corps of Engineers in the widening of the three-county strip of the Intracoastal Waterway needed by the federal government beginning in 1929.

From opening until closure on September 18, 1992, the stadium played host to speed boat races, music concerts, and even boxing matches.  The wind damage from Hurricane Andrew rendered the structure unsafe; city officials officially closed Candela’s masterpiece in architecture.  A non-profit organization of community leaders has assembled to raise the money needed to restore this masterpiece.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been studying a plan to remove sand from the beaches of Martin and St. Lucie counties to renourish the beaches of Miami-Dade County.

Assuming that all logistical problems  are solvable, are you in favor of or against implementing such a plan?  Of course, ultimately, Congress will have the ‘final say’ in appropriating sufficient funds for any such program.  The Constitution outlines a limited government.  The Founders stated in at least three places that all powers not expressly granted to Congress are reserved to the States or to the People.

Any reader owning beachfront property should have an opinion on the issue of taking beach sand from one county’s beaches and using it to renourish the beaches of another county.  But for readers in America owning land that is not beachfront land, the second question still remains: should federal money be spent on a project tha affects properties in one state.

What are your thoughts?