By Scott Streater
News Journal staff writer
Federal and state investigators are conducting a criminal probe into whether the contractors who built the Garcon Point Bridge damaged East Bay by dumping tons of concrete and debris over the bridge's side.
A federal grand jury has subpoenaed records from the Santa Rosa Bay Bridge Authority, the bridge owner, requesting work orders, invoices and payment records to Odebrecht-Metric, the joint venture contractor that built the $95 million toll bridge. It also requested similar records for Figg Engineering Inc., the firm that designed the bridge and oversaw its construction, according to the Sept. 3 subpoena.
State officials confirm they are investigating ``allegations of illegal dumping related to the bridge construction,'' said Capt. Brad Williams with the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's division of law enforcement.
As many as 50 acres of the bay floor near and around the bridge are covered with concrete pour, according to sidescan sonar and divers provided by a Milton- based conservation group to Florida Department of Environmental Protection investigators, officials say.
Divers reported to the DEP that an average of 50 to 60 feet of concrete is visible around an estimated 112 of the cement pilings that support the 3.5-mile bridge. But officials suspect that at least 10 acres of concrete on the bay floor are now covered with sediment.
In addition to the concrete, sonar revealed numerous exposed cables and welded lengths of iron rebar throughout the span of the bridge, which unites Garcon Point and the Gulf Breeze peninsula.
The debris could dramatically alter the chemical composition of the water, endangering marine life and the overall ecological balance of East Bay.
As it rusts, iron oxidizes and depletes oxygen in the water that's needed by marine life, said Joe Lepo, a microbiologist at the University of West Florida's Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation.
In addition, large amounts of concrete could alter the acid- based balance of the water, Lepo said. This will almost certainly kill worms, minnows and various microorganisms that help maintain the ecological balance of the bay. The piles of debris will also block the flow of the water in the bay, keeping pollutants that enter it from quickly diluting, he said.
``I can say personally that I saw a lot of debris on the bottom,'' said Ward Brewer, founder of the non-profit Pensacola Bay Ecosystem Management Advisory Council, the Milton group that supplied the sidescan sonar for the DEP and videotaped damage for investigators.
Odebrecht-Metric built the bridge in two years and four months and set a segmental bridge-building record in April 1998 by completing seven spans - 980 feet - in seven days.
But the bridge, which took 13 years to plan, design and permit, is safe, said Mahlon McCall, executive director of the Santa Rosa Bay Bridge Authority.
``I have no concern about that at all,'' McCall said.
The criminal probe is the latest problem associated with the bridge, which some sarcastically refer to as ``Bo's Bridge'' because of former House Speaker Bo Johnson's legislative efforts to make the bridge a reality. Johnson's family owned land on the Garcon Point peninsula along the path of the bridge, and Johnson eventually sold that property for more than $600,000.
Johnson, 48, is at the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base. He's serving a two-year sentence for tax evasion for failing to report $503,861 in consulting fees from gambling, road-building, health-care and other businesses trying to curry favor with the powerful politician.
There have been suspicions about debris being thrown over the side of the bridge - a felony punishable by significant fines and jail time - since last year, when two commercial fishermen told state regulators that they witnessed workers on the southern span use a large hose to dump a mixture of water and cement into the bay.
As a result, state regulators conducted surveillance on the project for a month, but no violations were found and no charges were filed. However, divers weren't used to investigate whether cement had been poured into the bay.
Buried deep inside a 120-page Escambia County environmental grand jury report released in June is a paragraph that discusses the ``long-term degradation of East Bay'' caused by the bridge construction.
The reason: ``Contractors dumped large amounts of construction debris into the water rather than disposing of it properly,'' the grand jury concluded, without further elaboration.
The Bay Bridge Authority already has run into trouble because some of the debris removed from East Bay's floor during construction of bridge pilings was thrown onto the beach at Garcon Point and abandoned. DEP inspectors found hunks of steel partially covered by blowing sand.
Federal and state officials remain tight-lipped about the investigation.
Williams, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission captain, said his office is assisting the DEP on the case.
Bob Deimer, chief of the DEP's bureau of environmental investigations in Tallahassee, wouldn't acknowledge that an investigation is under way, and he referred all inquiries to Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Swaim in Pensacola. Mike Patterson, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, declined to confirm a criminal investigation.
But officials with the Santa Rosa Bay Bridge Authority, Odebrecht-Metric and Figg Engineering say the U.S. Department of Justice has informed them of the probe.
Odebrecht-Metric appears to be the focus of the investigation, according to Roy Andrews, the Bay Bridge Authority's attorney, and McCall. Jeff Walters, an engineer at Figg Engineering in Tallahassee who worked on the project, said federal authorities have said that Odebrecht-Metric is the target of the investigation.
``I know there is an investigation, but that's all I know,'' said Bates Burnell, the Garcon Point Bridge project coordinator at Odebrecht-Metric's Orlando office. ``They haven't told me much of anything at all. They have not told me what it's about.''