Alexander Cook – In April of 2006, the President of Panama, Martín Torrijos, announced an audacious five billion dollar plan to expand and improve the aging Panama Canal. Torrijos analogized the Canal to other nations’ oil reserves and recognized that the century-old canal needed to grow to keep pace with the ever-increasing growth and importance of global freight transportation. Following the announced expansion, politicians, business leaders, and port directors around the world began to push for similar port expansions to accommodate the new “Panamax” vessels. These “Panamax” ships are massive freighters, so named because they are specifically designed to be the maximum size allowable, while still able to squeeze through the Panama Canal. Because of this pattern, the new watercraft outgrow their other berths—unable to utilize older ports of insufficient depth. Thus, whenever the Panama Canal expands, numerous large ports in competition with each other are thrown into a flurry of expansion and construction. One such competitor, PortMiami, has taken this opportunity to expand its port operations and size beyond its challengers to become the premier port in the Southern United States. However, with such rapid growth comes economic and environmental costs, along with inevitable legal maneuvering and posturing in the courtroom.
For years, the largest cargo vessels traversing the Pacific Ocean, often traveling with products being transported from Asia to the United States, were forced to use only ports on the west coast of the United States. These vessels were too large to negotiate the Panama Canal, which forced their cargos to be offloaded in California and transported in a more costly manner via rail or truck. The expansion of the Panama Canal means that these Pacific freighters are now free to avoid that expensive, cross-country land transit alternative. Miami’s $1.3 billion dollar expansion places the city in a key position to capture this new trade, as PortMiami will be by far the closest “Post-Panamax port” to the Panama Canal itself and the only port dredged to fifty feet south of Norfolk, Virginia. However, as with any large construction project, the PortMiami expansion is not without detractors and opponents. One such group is the Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper watchdog group, which has launched (and continues to threaten additional) lawsuits to require the Army Corps of Engineers and other project managers to abide by state environmental permits.
The two main components of the PortMiami expansion project are the widening of Government Cut and the dredging of the pass from forty-two feet to fifty feet. As with any dredging project, especially one located in the tropics, the threat to marine and coral life is significant. Even before the initiation of dredging, opponents of the project filed a lawsuit in 2011, Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper et al v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, to stop the work in order to preserve the sea life and coral reefs in the Miami area. Citing the significant reduction in coral reef populations in Florida over the past twenty-five years, the environmental watchdog groups who first filed that lawsuit sought to halt the project altogether. While the 2011 suit failed to completely stop the dredging, PortMiami directors and the Army Corps of Engineers revised their plan for sea life protection and agreed to more substantial environmental impact mitigation ventures.
Yet, while the expansion planners’ mitigation strategies—such as moving vast coral beds and transplanting seagrass were successful in many regards—a follow-up lawsuit, Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper et al v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, has been filed in federal court against the project’s manager, the Army Corps of Engineers. The suit was launched after the Corps of Engineers received a warning letter from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection regarding “possible violations and non-compliance issues” during the summer of 2014 in regards to the environmental protection agreements arranged during the initial lawsuit and concerning claims that the Corps had violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing endangered coral to be suffocated by displaced sediment. The suit, complete with a request for an emergency injunction, was only filed following confirmation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that coral had been damaged. While both advocates and critics of the project acknowledge that the safeguards implemented will reduce overall the environmental impact of the project, neither side can sufficiently and accurately demonstrate the total environmental impact of the dredging on the area, even with safeguards in place. For instance, the project’s planners agreed to use sea curtains to contain the sediment and silt thrown aloft by the dredging to only the project’s immediate area. Yet, just as dust and wind manage to find their way through the screen of an open window, the silt dislodged by the project could very easily act as an underwater dust storm, blocking out vital sunlight from coral reefs all over the Miami seabed.
The 2014 lawsuit is much more limited in scope, seeking a judicial order of protection for the immediate surrounding coral, but still has the potential to delay the project beyond the summer of 2015. The executive director of Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper, Rachel Silverstein, stated that “[o]ur goal is not to stop the dredging but to ensure that the environment is protected and that everyone follows the rules set out when the project was started, and that’s not happening.” Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper, along with other local environmental interest groups, allege that the expansion project, no matter the precautions taken, will result in irreversible damage to Florida’s coral reefs and sea life. Silverstein explained, “[s]o far, it seems the agencies are focused on trying to remedy the damage that’s been caused rather than prevent future damage.” Even judicially mandated protections cannot guarantee future positive environmental outcomes.
Finally, while the project appears at first glance to set Miami up for an economic and trade boom, some critics of the plan opine that the proponents have been too optimistic in their economic estimates. While it is true that Miami will soon be the only Panamax port south of Norfolk, Virginia, this new arrangement also means that shippers will have to bear significant overland transit costs. While Miami is positioned fortuitously close to Panama, it also suffers from its location at the tip of a massive peninsula, far from other large population centers. Further, while the expansion project will undoubtedly benefit shippers, heavy industry, and even consumers in the Miami area, other more narrowly focused industries, such as fishing and diving, fear unintended economic repercussions. While the Port of Miami expansion has few absolutely certain outcomes, one thing is clear—the project, though shielded by legal protections, will put significant strain on ancient coral in an attempt to achieve an uncertain economic outcome for the city of Miami.
