Aerojet canal access closed???

lilwoody

I fished that canal for the last 40+ years and now all access has been blocked. Does anyone know anything or is it just another flex of SFWM arbitrary decision making process to treat anglers like surfs?

lilwoody

Never mind, found it, it's the filling of Ajet just like park Line. They supposedly shelved it but looks like it's a go now. The last canal with boat access in south Dade is toast. 

lemaymiami

Thanks for the heads up... that was one of the places I was going to use for peacock bookings... Guess I'll have to stay where we are (on days when a trip out of Flamingo or Chokoloskee isn't do-able -weather related usually...).

I'll have to go to Google Earth and do a bit of looking....

greenbone

So they have blocked the southern end of park line? We use to go to end of park line, drag or paddle our boats the last 100 yds to the lake in Areojet.  Closed or blocked off now ?

The Cat's Eye

i wonder if it has anything to do with rising sea levels? Salt water intrusion into the S. Fla water aquiafer has been an on going problem for decades. 

lemaymiami

Saltwater intrusion into our freshwater aquifer - has been an on-going problem since I first came here in 1971... They were closing well fields along the coast all the way back fifty years ago...

In short - the only thing keeping saltwater out of our groundwater supply.... has always been the positive pressure of the waters in the aquifer - and as we drew it down the saltwater intruded -and it's an on-going process... 

Here's the little I learned about it... Florida has always had a limited supply of freshwater, coming from rainwater that drains through our thin layer of topsoil then is captured by the porous limestone (locally, the Biscayne aquifer...).  The day folks began to flood down here in numbers (about one hundred years ago now) everyone of us made demands on that water supply - which has always been finite (we can't make it bigger...).  Since all of our drinking waters and the waters needed for everything else that people do... come from that basic source, we've gradually been reducing it.  Things really got going in a big way after WW II when the population of our state began to accelerate (that process is on-going today... and into the future).  Locally, we're concerned about the Biscayne aquifer - but this sort of stuff is trouble everywhere in the state... It's not an accident that the first desalination plant is located over by Tampa... Their needs are serious and there are actually places over on that side of the state where, there's properties you can buy near Tampa -where you can't get freshwater at all... making those properties not worth much at all... By the way... all a sinkhole is... is a cavern that used to be filled with water.... Most of them are on the west side of Florida... 

Along with what I've just described... when flood control came along in a big way down here in south Florida (early 1950s...) we cut off one of the major re-charge sources for our groundwater - the annual flood from Lake Okeechobee down into the Everglades.  All of our flood control efforts - are just about diverting surface waters out into the Atlantic coast (where they cause serious problems for inshore saltwater areas...).  I've talked to old-timers from the Miami area who can remember when freshwater springs could be found - in the south end of Biscayne Bay... there was that much freshwater in the ground until - flood control which was absolutely needed as people moved down here.... When those freshwater springs ended - that part of the bay became more salty - and the existing redfish population dwindled to nothing.  The occasional big redfish someone catches in that area - are only there because of a stocking program years ago... 

Back to the reason for this tale.... The only recourse when saltwater intrusion occurs is to shut off the affected well fields and hope that over time they'll revert back to freshwater... Maybe, just maybe, as we struggle to restore the freshwater flow out of Okeechobee back down towards the Everglades things will gradually change....   Climate change? Sea Level rising?  That's just one more brick on the load that we've placed on our natural resources... and for anyone wondering - 10,000 

I'll get down off of my soapbox now... Anyone reading this - please send it out to anyone that even might take an interest.  In my opinion - it's that important...  Florida Sportsman... you're welcome to publish this, although there are certainly many more qualified than I am to speak up about our situation...

lilwoody

greenbone said:

So they have blocked the southern end of park line? We use to go to end of park line, drag or paddle our boats the last 100 yds to the lake in Areojet.  Closed or blocked off now ?

They filled Park line a couple years ago. No more access to the ramp, nothing A filled 1000 foot plug then 1000 feet of the old canal. It makes me sick thinking of it. My youngest son caught his first snook and then many more over the years. He got his picture in this very magazine with the first one. It was a fantastic foul weather fishing spot and when it was hot, it was red hot. A bass on nearly every cast. One day we lost count at about 70. I took my hunting buddy from north Carolina  there and he caught the largest snook we put in any of my boats. He also caught the 5 largest bass he ever caught that day.