North Cortez project aiding south
By Jim Hanson islander Reporter
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A sharing of fill between North Cortez and South Cortez from a dredge project is under way. islander Photo: Joe Curley |
Adversaries a few months ago, residents of Cortez village and those
north of Cortez Road apparently have buried the hatchet
with a project that’s helpful to everyone.
It is the dredging of
Harbour Landings Estates boat basin and moorage, whose
spoil is being donated to help with the Cortez waterfront channel job
just to the south.
Involved are some 320 truckloads of “pretty
clean sand,” said Joseph Curley of Harbour Landings. It is being stockpiled
and trucked across Cortez Road to the FISH Preserve, where it will go into the
berm being built to contain the less-than-clean spoil from the channel.
That
channel dredging is expected to begin soon, delayed
by the need to clean up the awesome layers of trash piled up over the
years in the Preserve, said Charles Listowski, executive director of
the West Coast Inland Navigation District, which is handling the project.
That canal runs along the waterfront from about Bell Fish Co. east to
the edge of the Preserve which lines the eastern end of the village.
To the north, Harbour Landings homeowners
are paying for their own dredging, said Debbie Lansing,
president of the homeowners association.
The Harbour Landings sand would be worth
about $60,000 on the current market, and Allen Garner,
president of the Florida
Institute
for Saltwater Heritage, which owns and maintains the
Preserve for public use, said “It is clean and conveniently located and very welcome.”
This
is the first dredging since 1983 of the Harbour Landings
basin, said Lansing. It covers somewhat less than seven acres. Contractor
is Energy Resources Inc.
Over the past year or more FISH, a
public service volunteer organization based in Cortez,
had been trying to buy the Seafood Shack as a home for the Florida
Maritime Museum, until Harbour Landings residents
rose up against the proposal. Too costly and too much
traffic, they said through the organization they formed, Concerned Citizens
of Cortez Coalition.
They fought
hard and skillfully, ultimately prevailing when the
Manatee County Commission turned down the FISH proposal.
Curley,
a sparkplug of the CCCC, said its working with FISH “demonstrates good
community cooperation, that there can be differences but we can work together
for the good of the neighborhood.” |