Picayune Strand Restoration Project Road Removal

open for bidding

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is seeking bidders to carry out road removal for the Picayune Strand Restoration Project, a component of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. Picayune Strand State Forest, in southwestern Collier County, consists of cypress swamps, wet pine flatwoods and wet prairies, and was logged for cypress in the 1940s and 1950s. A 55,000-acre residential subdivision was planned there, with roads and four large drainage canals constructed in the 1960s and 1970s, but failed. The system of roads and canals has over-drained the area, resulting in a reduction of aquifer recharge, increased freshwater shock load discharges to estuaries to the south, invasion by upland vegetation, loss of ecological connectivity and associated habitat, and increased frequency of forest fires. The project consists of returning the graded roadways and logging trams (narrow-gauge logging railway embankments) to a natural topographic profile based on the adjacent undisturbed ground, which would reestablish sheet flow. High spots that are not historic uplands, such as berms or spoil piles that obstruct or channelize flow, are not acceptable. Contractor is to remove and re-grade all east-west roads to level undisturbed ground logging trams and existing roads and adjacent ditches, swales and spoil for the base contract in the area bounded by Miller Canal to the east, the Tie-Back Levee to the north, 90th Avenue SE to the south and to the ends of the roads on the west.