Broward
County Reefs, Florida
Coastal Systems International, Inc. performed the
design/build construction of 10 acres of artificial reefs
offshore Dania and Hollywood beaches in Broward County.
The construction was performed by Coastal Systems Development
(CSD) with engineering support from Coastal Systems International
(CSI). The mitigation was required for hard-bottom impacts
from the planned Segment III (south of Port Everglades)
beach restoration. The limerock boulders will closely
resemble natural reef substrate and will provide a good
habitat for encrusting and boring organisms as well as
fish life. Algae that will colonize the rocks are food
for grazing sea turtles. Stony corals from the potentially
impacted areas will be transplanted to the mitigation
area to protect the organisms from shifting beach sand.
CSI
provided an engineered approach towards the artificial
reef construction. CSD placed 66,000 tons of limerock
boulders utilizing a crane barge outfitted with precise
DGPS positioning equipment and software. All project
assets were monitored/tracked using web-enabled GPS
(Global Positioning Systems) positioning and project
management and reporting were facilitated using a secure
on-line system. The boulders were transported using
barges from a quarries in Freeport on Grand Bahama Island.
The crane barge was anchored in 15 - 20 feet of water
approximately 500' off of the beach utilizing special
floating lines and a pile anchor system to maintain
barge position in between the sensitive reefs in the
nearshore zone.
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