New River mystery

First a giant blob of mud, then an oil slick. Why?

An oily sheen shimmered on the New River on Wednesday, a day after a construction site marred the waterway with a discharge of murky, muddy water. City officials say the sheen is linked to the same incident and wasn’t hazardous.

But some Fort Lauderdale residents who live along the river question whether the two incidents were one and the same, whether groundwater was truly the underlying cause and whether it was hazardous.

Greg Gignac, who lives on the 10th floor of Esplanade on the New River condos, across the river from the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, said the oil slick appeared to begin before the Seventh Street Bridge, touched both banks, meandered down the river toward downtown and reeked of diesel fumes. He snapped pictures of the discolored water.

“This was gross,” Gignac said. “That was diesel mixing with water.”

The city shut down DP Development’s construction site near Southeast Second Street and Southeast Fourth Avenue in downtown Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday afternoon after receiv-

ing numerous complaints about the cloudy, chocolate-milk color of the river.

“It was basically dirt from the construction site” that caused the discoloration, said Sermin Turegun, Broward County’s environmental licensing director.

The contractor was working on a street-improvement project for the city and didn’t have a proper permit to discharge the groundwater it was pumping into a catch basin and on through to city storm drains, county officials said.

The contractor was given a notice to appear and may face fines, a city spokesman said.

Randel Sands, who lives in a downtown apartment next to the river, phoned 911 to report the spill on Tuesday.

“I would like to see people accountable for this. I don’t believe that stuff was non-toxic,” said Sands, suspecting it was some sort of fuel. “Manatees are there. They’re going to be ingesting that fuel as they’re coming up for air. And that’s a great concern for me. Not to mention all the other wildlife in the water.”

Sands said he phoned 911 but it took several tries to get someone to treat the issue with urgency. He said he on Tuesday finally reached the Fort Lauderdale city manager’s office, which assured him a marine unit would be sent to inspect the water.

The oily sheen lingered Wednesday, Gignac said.

“To me it looked like whatever caused the problem yesterday was happening again today,” he said.

City spokesman Chaz Adams disclosed little on Wednesday.

The preliminary findings were based on the city’s initial investigation and the incident continues to be monitored by the city’s Environmental Services Division, the city police department’s environmental crimes unit and Broward County’s environmental protection and growth management department, he said.

“No further information will be released until the investigation is concluded,” Adams said.

Investigators from the county’s environmental engineering permitting division went to the scene Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and “did not see any evidence of turbidity discharge into the river,” Turegun, the department’s director, said. “We will continue to monitor that area.”

Broward County’s 24-hour hotline to report complaints is 954-519-1499.