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February 1, 2001
KEVIN PORTER
The News Herald
If the Mexico Beach Municipal Canal truly is the lifeblood of the sleepy coastal town like many suggest, a dredge that keeps it open allowing water to flow in and out would have to be the heart of the city.
On Wednesday, the City of Mexico Beach got a $200,000 transplant.
"I'm not going to say this is inclement weather," said Mayor Kathy Kingsland, referring to overcast skies above Canal Park and sprinkling rain. "The angels in heaven are crying because we finally got a new dredge."
The City of Mexico Beach has maintained the passage to and from the Gulf of Mexico since 1984 with an almost half-century old, hand-me-down dredge from MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa.
But rising costs of maintenance for the antique piece of equipment prompted the City of Mexico Beach and the Mexico Beach Community Development Council to retire "Old Big Red" recently. It's replacement - yet to be named - was christened in front of a moderate crowd Wednesday with a bottle of Grandial champagne courtesy of Kingsland and then slowly lowered by a crane into the canal where it will operate.
(Photo: Donald Barfield has just finished touching up the paint on the bottom of a new dredge for the canal in Mexico Beach on Wednesday. The dredge was christened at a ceremony at the municipal park.)
"This canal is extremely important, not just to the people who live on it, but the economy all the way down to Port St. Joe," said Chuck Guilford, owner of the Blue Water Inn, owner a charter boat docked on the canal and a former mayor. "If this canal was closed, Mexico Beach would become another Lanark Village (a retirement area near Carrabelle)."
The canal provides boat owners a way into protected waters and an entrance into the Gulf of Mexico. But the mouth of the canal sits just east of a jetty and currents in the area fill the canal's opening with sand.
Depending on the weather, it may need to be dredged a couple of times a month or a couple of times a week.
The Mexico Beach CDC began assisting the City of Mexico Beach in 1998 with maintenance of the dredge and canal through the use of bed tax dollars.
The city purchased the new dredge from Innovative Material Systems Inc., of Kansas, and the CDC will reimburse the city over a 15-year period.
"It's going to be much more effective," said J. Patrick Howard, president of the CDC. "It will end up costing less annually to maintain the canal (because repair costs will be a thing of the past)."
Unlike the old dredge, the new machine can propel itself through the water. Along with a suction device, it also has a grinding mechanism to make the process smoother and faster.
Excerpted from The News Herald. The writer can be contacted at kporter@pcnh.com
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