Last December, the city announced it would study canals 11 and 12 in Riviera Bay<\/a> for a dredging project. Public Works Administrator Claude Tankersley said he\u2019s hopeful the Army Corps will help with that study and include the rest of the roughly 30 miles of canals scattered throughout the city.<\/p>\n\u201cSo what we are looking to do is to work with the Army Corps of Engineers to study those canals,\u201d he said. \u201cTo see which canals could benefit from any dredging.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tankersley estimated the study would take between 3-to-5 years to complete, which would give the city guidance on which canals to dredge.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get the study back from the Army Corps saying that this canal is good to dredge, you need to do it,\u201d he said. \u201cThis canal, dredging is not going to do any good. Don’t worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tankersley pointed out that the canals were built for drainage and were not meant for navigation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were built 50 or 60 years ago to drain parts of the city that were permanently wet,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are not meant for navigation. And so therefore normally they’re not dredged to allow navigation for boats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pugliese said she\u2019s hopeful once the study is complete, Congress would authorize funds to help pay for the dredge project.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the Army Corps hopefully coming in, that once we go through this because we’re included in the Federal Resources Act, then we can go back to Congress for appropriations to help pay for this,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it’s not 100 percent needing to be funded by the City of St. Petersburg.\u201d<\/p>\n
The frequency of tidal flooding events has noticeably increased in St. Petersburg over the past few decades, according to the city. In 2005, there were only three days where tides exceeded two feet above sea level. In 2024, that number jumped to 21 days. It\u2019s expected to increase to 70 days by 2033, based on studies by the Florida Flood Hub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0The City of St. Petersburg\u2019s request for action from the Army Corps of Engineers on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[53542,274,2968,115,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,1798,835],"class_list":["post-346760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-ach-transportation","tag-app-top-stories","tag-josh-rojas","tag-news","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-transportation","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}