PORT ST. LUCIE — Put a kid on a bike on a race track sprinkled with jumps, lumps and bumps, and you’re likely to have one happy kid. Or teenager. Or adult, for that matter.

A new bicycle track for riders who love speeding through 1,000 feet of tricky obstacles is expected to open near Crosstown Parkway and Interstate 95 in Port St. Lucie in October. (more…)

MARTIN COUNTY — A $4 million federal grant announced Tuesday should mean restored oyster beds, cleaner water and about 100 jobs in Martin County.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has allocated $4,024,969 to the Martin County Commission. At their meeting Tuesday, commissioners are scheduled to award a contract to build about 200 acres of oyster bed reefs in the St. Lucie River between the Roosevelt and Evans Crary bridges and in the Northwest Fork of the Loxahatchee River near Tequesta.

The money for the project comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, part President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. More than 800 applications for grants were made and 50 approved. Of the four projects funded in Florida, Martin County’s was the largest.

To qualify for the stimulus money, said Kathy FitzPatrick, a Martin County coastal engineer, the project had to be “shovel-ready.”

FitzPatrick said bids from contractors are expected Wednesday.

“If the commissioners award the bid on July 7,” she, “we’ll be out on July 7, 8 or 9 doing surveys on the St. Lucie and Loxahatchee rivers to see exactly where to put the oyster beds.”

Work could be completed in about a year.

FitzPatrick said “seven or eight” sites in the St. Lucie have already been permitted for beds. Patch reefs 30 feet in diameter and made of old oyster shells will be placed in the water near Martin Memorial Medical Center and Rio.

Closer to the Crary bridge, smaller reefs made of oyster shells in mesh bags will be placed in the water both as oyster habitat and to protect shorelines from erosion by boat wakes. Several landowners have signed on for mangrove plantings along their shorelines, FitzPatrick said.

County officials have identified 106 jobs that will be involved in the project, “everybody from marine contractors, barge operators, quarrymen for the huge amount of shells we’ll need, to nurserymen, scientists and ecologists,” FitzPatrick said. “There will be a lot of people employed by this over the course of the year, and almost all of them local.”

Oysters once thrived in the St. Lucie River, said Vincent Encomio, an oyster research specialist at the Stuart-based Florida Oceanographic Society.

“But over the years the St. Lucie has lost about 75 percent of its living oyster bed acreage,” Encomio said. “Creating more habitat for oysters will improve the habitat for all the other organisms that depend on the reefs to live.”

Oysters filter water at a rate of 40 gallons per oyster per day. With about 600,000 oysters per acre of reef, that’s 24 million gallons of water a day.

FitzPatrick said the bivalves will be able “to filter the entire volume of the river every month. That improvement to the water quality is very substantial.”

By Tyler Treadway

Seven Treasure Coast high schools made Newsweek’s Best High Schools list this year, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report recognizes the top 1,300 high schools across the country for offering challenging courses to its advanced students in Newsweek’s annual study of “America’s Best High Schools.” Only the top 100 schools are listed in the magazine, but the entire list of schools is available on the magazine’s Web site, www.newsweek.com.
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VERO BEACH — Local amateur fossil collector James Kennedy appears to have made an unprecedented archaeological discovery that might help confirm a human presence here up to 13,000 years ago.

A prehistoric bone fragment found near Vero Beach contains a crude engraving of a mammoth or mastodon on it.

“It is humbling to realize that we are seeing what the hunter saw more than 13,000 years ago,” Purdy said.
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PORT ST. LUCIE — One year ago, a 6-year-old autistic boy was brought to the front of his classroom. He left moments later feeling like an outcast.

For many, he became a symbol of how children with autism are mistreated and misunderstood.

Some experts say the case of Alex Barton, who was voted out of his kindergarten classroom 14-to-2, brought about change and awareness of how autistic children are educated. Others say there still is a long way to go. (more…)

INDIANTOWN — Wildfires had consumed more than 2,000 acres in Martin County by Tuesday morning, and firefighters were working to contain the fires that were burning for a third day, officials said.

There were as many as 10 fires that firefighters had to contend with late Monday and overnight, according to Melissa Yunas, spokeswoman for the state Division of Forestry.

Three single-engine air tankers were called in late Monday to battle the main fire that threatened the Indianwood mobile home community, according to Melissa Yunas, spokeswoman for the state Division of Forestry.
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By JASON SCHULTZ

INDIANTOWN— Fires that broke out near Indiantown in western Martin County over the weekend continued to burn last night and have charred more than 1,400 acres while crews tackled another large fire near Palm City, according to fire officials.

Residents from the Indianwood Mobile Home Park were evacuated and the American Red Cross has opened its shelter on Kanner Highway in Stuart for fire evacuees, according to a Martin County press release last night.

Three of the four brush fires that burned hundreds of acres near Indiantown, closed roads and prompted authorities to cut power in the Treasure Coast Sunday continued to burn overnight.

Two flare-ups occurred this afternoon.

The one between the Booker Park fire and the Lincoln Park fire was about 3 acres, said Melissa Yunas, a wildfire specialist with the state Division of Forestry.

The second flare-up, near the Indian Trail fire, jumped over a canal and headed toward three homes in the Little Ranch Estates neighborhood.

Firefighters took up positions around the homes.

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WASHINGTON — Former Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce police chief Gil Kerlikowske received Senate approval Thursday as the national drug czar.

Kerlikowske, a 36-year law enforcement veteran who has been the chief of Seattle Police since 2000, has said he will take a balanced, science-based approach to the job of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The position is commonly known as the drug czar.

The Senate approved his nomination, 9-1-1.
Fort Pierce Police Chief Sean Baldwin, who joined the local force a month after the city hired Kerlikowske in 1990, was pleased to hear of the confirmation.

“It’s nice to see a chief who has dealt with local problems, local drug problems, local issues in a community, now in charge in Washington, D.C,” Baldwin said. “It’s reassuring to know that the man who is serving as the drug czar has real experience with the problems that local law enforcement officers go through on the street.”

Kerlikowske could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Baldwin called Kerlikowske, who has a record of alternative-policing strategies and youth intervention programs, “an extremely progressive guy.”

The 59-year-old Kerlikowske said he will help develop a strategy to address drug-related violence along the Mexican border. While he and other officials would work to reduce the international drug supply, the biggest contribution the United States can make is to reduce demand for illicit drugs, Kerlikowske said. (more…)