LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to close the Franklin and Ortona locks on the Caloosahatchee River for maintenance, which is set to last about four months.<\/p>\n
WINK News asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers if the schedule would change. Their answer was clear: the work will be moving forward as planned.<\/p>\n
Starting Jan. 4, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is closing the Franklin Lock for maintenance until March 1. After that, crews will move to perform maintenance on the Ortona Lock until the end of April.<\/p>\n
Officials say they have to do one lock at a time because each requires hands-on attention. Crews will drain the lock chambers, inspect the structures, sandblast and paint the metal gates, and make any necessary repairs.<\/p>\n
The Army Corps say the work is timed for winter to avoid hurricane season. Local boating businesses say the timing stings since it’s during their busiest season of the year.<\/p>\n
“The time of year that they’re doing it is our busiest time of the year, and that’s the major concern for us because that will almost shut our doors,” Towboat U.S. Lake Okeechobee President & Owner Ian Veltri said.<\/p>\n
The Army Corps says if this work is not done, there could be even more lock closures in the future. They provided a list of alternative routes for boaters, saying they can use boat launches to transport boats around each lock.<\/p>\n
Businesses are concerned this could stop boaters from up north from coming here this season.<\/p>\n
“We look forward to our winter crowd coming down through. You know, I mean, it’s something that people they make their plans to go this direction,” Port Labelle Marina Dock Master Drew Collier said.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said no one was available for an interview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to close the Franklin and Ortona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,325,115],"class_list":["post-428023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-lee","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428023","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=428023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}