SEBASTIAN — Authorities speculate more than $1 million worth of cocaine found Saturday near the Sebastian Inlet State Park may have been tossed by smugglers in an attempt to not be caught with the illegal drugs.

The Indian River County Sheriff’s Office said they responded to a call about 8:30 a.m. Saturday about a package floating near the shore, said spokesman Deputy Jeff Luther. A boater spotted the package, he said.

Deputies determined the package contained 60 pounds of cocaine, Luther said. The street value of the package is substantial, but probably not a huge loss to the smugglers, he said.
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Laurel wilt, a deadly and triumphant foe of millions of large redbay laurels, avocados and related trees, has arrived in St. Lucie and Martin counties, agricultural inspectors say.

Once a tree is infected, there is no cure and it dies in a matter of weeks, said the state’s leading expert, Bud Mayfield, an entomologist with the state Department of Agricultural and Consumer Affairs’ Division of Forestry. Prevention is considered nearly impossible, he said, because only one fungicide can treat it and the process is lengthy.

The disease, caused by a fungus carried on the ambrosia flying beetle that seeks out laurel and related species, entered the United States in 2003. It arrived from southeastern Asia at a Georgia port.

It leapfrogged its way south, reaching Indian River County in 2006.

In April, it was detected in St. Lucie County and confirmed in Martin County on June 30.

In Indian River county, Brian Combs, certified arborist and general manager of Bug Master in Vero Beach, said it took the disease about a year to kill 99 percent of the redbays and other trees susceptible to the wilt at Sebastian Inlet State Park. It has already spread to back yards. The cost to prevent it with fungicide runs about $250 and up per tree, he said. (more…)

MARTIN COUNTY — Work on the north jetty at the St. Lucie Inlet is on schedule and should be completed sometime around Aug. 1, Martin County coastal engineer Kathy Fitzpatrick said Wednesday.

“It’s going great,” Fitzpatrick said, adding the project is about 75 percent finished.

Work began in April, but high seas and rough weather that month delayed the $7.3 million project and no real progress was made until May. The $1.2 million local share of the cost is being split between Martin County and the Florida Bureau of Beaches and Coastal Systems.

The base of the stone jetty is being expanded by 14 feet and the jetty is being raised to 8 feet above the average low-tide depth. Almost 13,000 tons of rock is being laid in three layers and concrete pilings are being installed at the end of the new jetty and the end of the detached breakwater nearby.

The pilings will support lights to mark the navigation channel, which runs between the north jetty and the breakwater.

It will be the first time the channel through the broad inlet will be marked for boaters returning from sea.

“We’re very happy,” Fitzpatrick said. “I imagine there are people who avoid this inlet if they are coming in after dark and before dawn.”

With the new jetty to reduce storm waves and lights to guide boaters in, the inlet will be a much safer place, she said. Boaters will have a clear indication of where they need to be to stay in the channel and out of trouble.

Martin County ran into federal permitting hurdles when it tried to light the channel, Fitzpatrick said, so when the Army Corps of Engineers was contracting out the jetty work, the county asked to have the light pilings included in the contract. The corps, a federal agency, did not have the permitting problems the county ran into, she said, and the pilings are going in.
By Jan Lindsey, TCPalm.com