A critical but costly project to manually claw out vegetation overgrowth from a 2,700-foot canal shared between Satellite Beach and Indian Harbour Beach shows the impact of lagoon-friendly bans on spraying herbicides on canal bank overgrowth.
A total of $70,000 is expected to be spent soon to unclog the canal south of Satellite Avenue and near Indian Harbour Beach’s Algonquin Sports Complex to prevent flooding and property damage from a major storm event this season.
The same ditch became clogged by several large trees after Hurricane Matthew last October, requiring Satellite Beach crews to remove the trunks and branches. Now, after several years without spraying, the canal has become overgrown with not only trees but brush and fast-growing exotic species, prompting the cooperation on the current project.
The cost is being split based on old drainage basin maps, with Indian Harbour Beach shouldering 75 percent for its share of the area and Satellite Beach picking up the other 25 percent.
The key canal drains about 20 percent to 25 percent of each city, meaning it would be critical to keep clear during a storm, said Indian Harbour Beach City Manager Mark Ryan.
“Ditches and canals play a big role in both rain events and hurricane events, because they act as a natural filtration and assimilation of pollutants and dampening for freshwater surges prior to discharges into the lagoon system,’’ he said.
It used to be cheaper and less labor-intensive to spray the canals but the practice is thankfully no longer allowed, he said.
“Certainly our community has changed the maintenance in recognition of the impact herbicides have on the environment and the lagoon and being good stewards. We are very careful and aware of what type of herbicides we can use and not use on city grounds and during certain times of the year. If you don’t clean out the overgrowth it will eventually choke the flow,’’ he said.
Cooperation has been ongoing as access was granted from the Indian Harbour Beach side for the earlier work on the trees, said Satellite Beach Public Works Director Allen Potter.
“It’s been a shared responsibility for a long time but in this situation it got to be where we needed to get a hard answer to it (the percentages) for a big clean. We used to spray it but we don’t do that anymore because of all the issues with the lagoon so now we have to find a better way to do it without spraying poison into the water,’’ Potter said.