WaPo: “Fifteen feet beneath the surface, divers drifted through one of the last thriving coral reefs in Florida, spotting juvenile parrotfish and grunts darting between branches of staghorn coral that survived the catastrophic heat waves and disease outbreaks that have rendered their species all but extinct in the continental United States.
But soon, this refuge could also be wiped out — not by hot-tub water temperatures or the mysterious plague of stony coral tissue loss disease, but by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Less than a mile away, the corps is planning to deepen and widen the shipping channel leading into Port Everglades, blasting through the reef line and dredging up sediment that could smother acres of surrounding coral, according to federal scientists.
If approved, “the project would result in the largest impact to coral reefs permitted in U.S. history,” Andy Strelcheck, the southeast regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries division, wrote in a letter to Army Corps officials last year.
A separate analysis from scientists at NOAA and the Shedd Aquarium found that authorizing the project “would constitute the largest impact in U.S. history to populations and critical habitat of Endangered Species Act (ESA) listed species.””