The feds may help build new park in Palmetto. But it could take a while
Commissioners, legislators and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are finally ready to make a move on filling the Washington Park borrow pit with fill from Port Manatee, but it’s not likely to be done until 2035.
About 88 acres of that land was used more than 60 years ago to provide fill for the U.S. Business 41 overpass. Now, Charlie Hunsicker, the county’s director of parks and natural resources, says it’s time to fulfill the county’s IOU.
Hunsicker came before the Board of County Commissioners Tuesday morning to request their support for the Army Corps project that would place fill dredged from Manatee Harbor into the Washington Park pit.
“The effect of that dredging will be to generate a large amount of fill material. As you’ve been briefed before, this fill material will be surplus to the project and will be made available through funding by the Corps to be placed in the earthen pit borrow site in the Washington Park community,” Hunsicker explained. “In an effort to restore and reclaim that site, fill is needed to raise up return it to the ground elevation.”
Commissioners say a 19-acre portion of Washington Park is still slated to open in 2020, but the rest will be filled later.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has supported this project (and dozens of similar ones in the state) to be factored into the federal budget in the upcoming fiscal year.
For nearly 20 years, the county has planned to convert the Washington Park area into a fully restored and redeveloped park with a “rolling hills” trail system, a recreation area and retail opportunities. One of the primary benefits listed in the Army Corps project description is to “improve environmentally sensitive areas in the vicinity of the federal project through beneficial uses of dredged material.”
It won’t happen overnight, though.
Hunsicker said the Army Corps is budgeting to begin the “first phase of a multi-year operation’” that could take 15 to 20 years. The hold up is the time it will take to de-water the material at the port and transport it to the Washington Park. Trucking the fill back and forth would take as many as 62,000 truckloads.
“I want to thank you for any progress made on the Washington Park,” Commissioner Reggie Bellamy told Hunsicker.
To alleviate concerns raised during public comment about the potential of the dredged material containing toxic material, Hunsicker said there has been federal testing, and while the fill does contain residual levels of arsenic, they don’t rise to the level of being disqualified for recreational uses.
The material, made of fine silt and clay, also isn’t ideal to support buildings or structures, so “its use at Washington Park will be to provide a surface for recreational trails, boardwalks and observation, but we don’t plan to build structures on this material,” Hunsicker said.
A full report on federal funding that Manatee County government will pursue will be given at the board’s next meeting on March 26.
This story was originally published March 12, 2019 at 5:11 PM.