Comment EI-20822
Received or sent (printed as 12/19/2014)
I am writing to express my concerns about the plans for Canaveral Port Authority's Rail extension project. 1. I am concerned first of all about the effect this project will have on the Banana River and the rest of the Indian River Lagoon. The Lagoon is impaired and needs all the help we can give it. The plans call for concrete pilings to extend 70-90 feet beneath the Banana River (BR), and for filling in a few hundred feet of the BR to create a causeway to support the rail going across that waterway. This will cut down on the natural flow that helps keep the area north of Rt 528 one of the best seagrass areas in the Lagoon. This will adversely affect water quality in that area, which the lagoon does not need. Besides being a bad thing in itself, will also adversely affect the number of fish that come to that area. Some of the folks who make their living off the Lagoon are fishing for a livelihood, that will also be adversely affected. Also, algae can clump up and decay near causeways, which is toxic to marine life, to say nothing of the terrible rotten-eggs smell it causes. 2. Then the rail project will go through the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge (MINWR), and no matter how slowly the trains go, they will still disturb threatened Florida wildlife, including scrub jays and and gopher tortoises. MINWR has 17,000 acres of contiguous scrub habitat, and supports the second-largest populations of scrub jays, second only to the Ocala National Forest. The rail will be going through part of that," said Layne Hamilton, manager of MINWR. These two concerns about this project are enough to make me ask you to please consider using an alternate route to get from the Port to the FEC rail lines. Rail tracks to be built alongside Rt 528, an important transportation corridor now, and even more so in the future, leaps to mind. This would be a shorter route, slightly south and straight west across the two Lagoon rivers to the tracks. It would not necessitate a long, rambling journey north and west from the Port, through M iNWR and the Kennedy Space Center, to the existing FEC tracks. Thank you for your consideration of these thoughts. Linda Behret"
Submitted by: Linda Behret
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
Permanent address docketyard.org/d/FD-35852/comment/EI-20822 · back to the docket sheet