Picayune Strand Restoration Project

Overview

In the 1960s, more than 85 square miles of wetlands in western Collier County were drained for a failed real estate development called Southern Golden Gate Estates. Road construction and new canals negatively impacted the area, reducing aquifer storage, increasing beneficial freshwater flows, disrupting native plant communities, and increasing wildfires. The drainage dramatically altered the natural landscape, changing a once healthy wetland ecosystem into a distressed environment.

The Southwest Protection Feature levee that QE has been contracted for is a key part of the Picayune Strand Restoration Project (PSRP), a project that will restore over 55,000 acres of native wetlands and uplands in Southwest Florida. The restoration involves plugging 48 miles of canals, removing 260 miles of crumbling roads, and constructing three major pump stations.

During this project, QE is constructing 7 miles of levee and associated conveyance canal, installing a triple barrel culvert in the existing Lipman canal and another in the conveyance canal, installing a double barrel culvert through the levee, constructing an access road to the levee, and resurfacing an existing road to be used for access. The Southwest Protection Feature levee will provide continued flood risk reduction for the agricultural lands southwest of the PSRP.

Work is expected to be completed in 2025.