Hurricane debris removal has some waterfront property owners concerned. Pictured is a portion of the bank of a canal off of Embers Parkway West where most all vegetation has been removed. PHOTO PROVIDED

With debris clean-up following Hurricane Ian still in full-swing around Lee County and Cape Coral, some residents are concerned with work along city canals.

According to officials, who say the city has been getting calls, canal debris removal operations began on Nov. 7 of 2022 with land-based operations.

The city explained the process.

Land-based debris removal crews access the canal from the street, travel the length of an easement to the back of the property, and remove both vegetative and construction and demolition debris accessible along the canal within the easement itself or in the canal within reach from the easement, according to Cape Coral Solid Waste Manager Terry Schweitzer.

“Debris removal crews remove and track out debris along the easement back to the street,” Schweitzer said via email sent through the city’s Communications Office. “Debris removal crews stage debris at the street (right of way) for collection by self-loading knuckle boom trucks or other suitable hauling units.”

The debris is then collected and hauled to the closest disaster debris management site accepting vegetation while construction and demolition debris goes directly to the landfill. Schweitzer said per the Section 404 permit issued by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, debris removal crews cut downed trees along the canal and flip the stump back into the stump hole.

“Debris removal crews then flush cut trees to the best of their abilities given all safety concerns present onsite,” he said. “This may result in stump stems up to 2 feet from an expected flush cut. This represents a mitigation measure to prevent additional soil loss from the property entering the canal system by allowing the resulting stump and its roots to hold soil in place.”

It is the extent of vegetation removal that has some residents concerned.

Rob Hudson de Tarnowsky lives along Southwest 2nd Terrace with their backyard looking out at a canal and was shocked when their tree line disappeared after crews seemingly cut all vegetation away. A buffer of beautiful greenery, that they say was minimally damaged after the storm, is now a view of traffic across the way which he says has allowed for an increase in noise and light pollution. Their neighbor a few houses away on Southwest 2nd Lane and also looked across the way at greenery now looks at traffic moving along Burnt Store Road.

“To come back and seeing the shoreline right across from us was naked and sand sitting there where birds were nesting, was just a total shock,” Hudson de Tarnowsky said. “Hurricane Ian damaged a lot of our other landscaping, but the shoreline plants were resilient. And to see them torn out was like, ‘What? Did we just get hit with another hurricane?’ Except this one, man caused.”

Hudson de Tarnowsky said he’s all in favor of hurricane clean-up around the area, but not to the point where living plants and animals would be impacted.

“We’re at this point months later where things were coming back and starting to look nice again, and then here comes these crews,” he said. “I understand that there could be a good motivation behind it — being debris in the canal that needs to be removed. It makes sense to do that. The way to get it out of the canal is not to take a claw hook and rip out all of the vegetation along the shoreline that birds depend on. And then leave the plastic behind.”

Hudson de Tarnowsky said while walking along the area by his home where crews had come in to clear debris, he found lots of non-vegetative items scattered about.

Public Works Director for Cape Coral, Mike Ilczyszyn, said during Wednesday’s City Council Meeting that for crews to get to vegetation that needed to be removed, healthy vegetation would be cleared.

“We’ve been bombarded with residents that are concerned about the process related to removing fallen vegetation that’s on the canal bank leaning into the canal,” he said. “By our Army Corps permit, (these crews) have to cut that tree at the root, and then stand it back up on the canal in order to prevent erosion. They’re not allowed to remove in its entirety… they basically chainsaw it at the waterline and then use a bucket to peel it back and fold it back into place.

“If there’s other vegetation in the way of that machinery getting to the canal bank or to that fallen debris in the canal, they’re required by the permit to get to that, to basically cut their way into it. They have to clear away to get to that.”

Ilczyszyn said there is a monitor on-site with each crew to make sure they’re not being “overly aggressive” and clearing properties, and are looking out for endangered species such as burrowing owls and gopher tortoise.

“Our environmental staff have gone out and done random but routine checks to make sure procedures are being followed. Sometimes there is healthy vegetation removed in order to get to vegetation that was damaged,” he said.

From what the Hudson de Tarnowsky has seen in his backyard, he feels the city is going about it the wrong way.

“We’re left with bare and sandy shorelines that will wash into the freshwater canal — is that the right way to clean debris up?” Hudson de Tarnowsky said. “It’s like using a hammer where a scalpel would be the best option. It’s probably cheaper to just take a claw hook and remove the vegetation. Cleaning is caring, stripping is destruction.”

The companies the city has contracted to perform the debris clearing work are Tetra Tech and Ceres Environmental. According to city officials, they were instructed to remove debris from rights-of-way and canals. They are compensated related to cubic yards of debris collected.

Hudson de Tarnowsky, who documented the effort via photo and video, contacted many departments in the city looking for answers as to why this was the way to go about clearing debris and were responded to, after some time, with minimal answers.

“We used to look at a wall of leaves and birds playing them — limpkins were just starting to nest in the area,” he said. “In fact, when I went to take video, there were a pair struggling to find a place to nest again right where they had torn up the area by Embers Parkway.

“I don’t even know how many birds may have even been grabbed by the claw, or how many animals were hurt during the process. To me, Florida equals wildlife. We have kind of a harsh environment where a lot of the land in Cape Coal has already been cleared and is basically sandy lots. Places where there are taller shrubs for animals are fewer and far between. These shoreline buffers are really where a lot of them have to nest.”

On Thursday morning, residents concerned with the closeness of machinery to an active burrowing owl burrow nest in the area of work went out to highlight where the burrow was.

They said crews told them they would call the police as they were impeding the work being performed.

Hudson de Tarnowsky said now that the shoreline vegetation has gone away “unnecessarily,” the critical nature of that strip along the shoreline will be detrimental to wildlife.

He said he was told by a crew member that if a branch was broken on a tree, they considered it hurricane damaged and take a chain saw and cut it down. He said a nearly 7-foot-tall cactus across the canal was minimally impacted by the storm — it had lost one arm, but was still standing.

“Well, they just knocked it down because they said it was damaged in the hurricane. If you go by that logic, which of our trees did not get damaged by the hurricane? Unless it’s a big limb that absolutely should be removed — when you looked across our canal, there was only one sections we could see dead vegetation — the rest of it, you couldn’t even see there was something wrong. It’s confusing and seems uncaring.”

Schweitzer said upon completion or near completion of land-based canal debris removal operations, the contractor will begin collection of all submerged and visual targets identified for removal.

“Debris removal crews shall remove targets by most appropriate means possible, generally using fast picker barge and spud barge,” he said. “Debris removal crews will barge debris to Points of Access identified by the City.”

POAs may be public boat ramp, public property used as a POA, or possible vacant properties previously used for land-based canal debris removal operations. Schweitzer said debris piles placed at public boat ramps or other public property used as POAs are either marked or flagged for debris removal collection by self-loading knuckle boom trucks or other suitable hauling units. The debris is then collected and hauled to the closest appropriate site. Additionally, sonar may be used to determine if all submerged debris has been cleared that meets FEMA eligibility.

“Once a canal is determined to be cleared, we recommend that boaters continue to use caution as they would normally navigating waterways,” Schweitzer said.

So, how did the city scope all 400 miles of canals?

Schweitzer said the contractor used a helicopter and flew the city and used the NWS Hurricane Ian Imagery App to see where the heaviest hit areas were.

“Along with these two efforts city employees also conducted a land based visual inspection of different areas of the city to put eyes on,” he said. “Also knowing that there is a heavy concentration of Australian Pines north of Veterans Parkway that would be blown over and blocking canals we decided to start north and work south. Similar to street debris clearing the canal crew numbers ramp up to approximately 20 crews clearing debris each day.”

In addition, calls to 311 that reported canal debris are mapped by the city’s monitoring firm Tetra-Tech and Ceres to check/ remove when by the address in the canal reported. These locations can be seen on the city’s canal debris removal interactive map. Lee County also put together a Sonar Reported Debris app that pinpoints debris in waterways reported by individuals, that debris crews use.

“With all of the aforementioned processes, one can see it is a complicated process to clear the canals with a lot of foresight made to determine where the debris is located,” Schweitzer said.

The Breeze reached out to Tetra Tech and Ceres Environmental for comment, but had not received a response by press time.

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