News & Updates
Army Corps Plan prioritizes Florida projects
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 2020 Work Plan includes critically important projects for the State of Florida.
The Work Plan includes $29.1 million in funding for Broward County’s long-awaited Port Everglades Navigation Improvements Project to deepen and widen the Port’s navigational channels. The funding will be used to build a new facility for the U.S. Coast Guard Station Fort Lauderdale so the Intracoastal Waterway can be widened by 250 feet at a chokepoint where large Neo-Panamax cargo ships currently have operating restrictions that affect their ability to transit past docked cruise ships. The Coast Guard Station reconfiguration is the first phase of the larger dredging project.
The Port’s Navigation Improvements Project is anticipated to create an estimated 2,200 construction jobs and nearly 1,500 additional permanent direct jobs locally resulting from additional cargo capacity.
At JAXPORT, the federal government allocated $93 million for the next phase of deepening the Jacksonville shipping channel to 47 feet from its current depth of 40 feet. A milestone for the project and a major victory for JAXPORT, the federal government has now fully funded the government’s portion of deepening through JAXPORT’s Blount Island Marine Terminal.
Of the total $93 million investment, $57,543,000 is included in the U.S. Army Corps’ Work Plan, and an additional $35,457,000 is allocated in the A Budget for America’s Future – President’s Budget FY 2021.
Funding for these projects has enjoyed bi-partisan federal support, including from Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Rick Scott and current and former Congressional delegation members including Congresswomen Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Congressman Ted Deutsch, Congressman Alcee Hastings, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, Congresswoman Lois Frankel and Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart.