Joe's Creek, by Jane McClanahan. Discovery Land Company's current plan has the marina's flushing channel near this sanctuary for bonefish, breeding fish, mangroves, orchids, bromeliads and lemon sharks.

Discovery Land Company's planned dredging operation is of a grand scale, and is in many ways similar, or dangerous, to the original Disney dredging operation - the only real and ecologically significant environmental impact Disney made.

Disney was just digging through sand and seagrass beds. Discovery Land Company actually intends to rip through the island itself - almost cutting the island in two and making it dangeously more susceptible to hurricane damage. Their answer? A silt curtain.

Silt curtains are flimsy floating mechanisms designed to limit the amount of sediment that escapes the area of construction. In the EIA, the developer writes, "Ideally, marina dredging would occur during months of minimum rainfall...Preventative measures need to be in place to prevent run-off to adjacent near shore (acute
sedimentation events). This can be accomplished with sediment curtains. Marina construction details in Part II include a sediment curtain used in marine dredging to minimize damage to adjacent marine environments."

I asked several experts about the ability of these devices to keep silt and sediment from entering, and thereby killing, nearby reefs. Indidentally, the subject was also covered by the NOAA sponsored coral list. Nobody could confirm that silt curtains were very effective. In fact, one coral list poster wrote, "After about 3 months (and a couple of strong blows), the silt curtain disintegrated and pieces of it were strewn over an area of approximately 2 acres."