VOL 21 No. 44
- Named Best Florida Newspaper In Its Class -
August 11, 2021
City of Bradenton Beach not joining Cortez Bridge lawsuit The lawsuit plaintiffs and FDOT will participate in a mediation session on Aug. 25. BY JOE HENDRICKS SUN CORRESPONDENT | jhendricks@amisun.com
BRADENTON BEACH – The city is not joining a federal lawsuit that opposes the replacement of the Cortez Bridge drawbridge
with a higher fixed-span bridge. The city commission reached this 3-2 decision on Thursday, Aug. 5 in response to plaintiffs Joe McClash and Jane von Hahmann’s final pleas for the city to join the lawsuit filed in March 2020 with the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division. The lawsuit originally named the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT),
the Federal Transportation Authority and the U.S. Department of Transportation as defendants. The federal agencies were later dismissed from the lawsuit and FDOT is the lone remaining defendant. McClash and von Hahmann are former Manatee County commissioners and von Hahmann is a longtime Cortez resident. SEE LAWSUIT, PAGE 18
FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION | SUBMITTED
This rendering of the proposed fixed-span Cortez Bridge was one of many presented to FDOT’s bridge aesthetics committee earlier this year.
Florida DEP sues Piney Point owner Piney Point owners must now defend two lawsuits filed to ensure the safe disposal of polluted water at the former phosphate plant. BY CINDY LANE SUN STAFF WRITER | clane@amisun.com
PALMETTO - The owners of Piney Point have been sued a second time in six weeks, this time by their co-defendant, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The closed phosphate processing plant was the site of an FDEP-approved discharge of 215 million gallons of contaminated water into Tampa Bay in March and
INSIDE NEWS CALENDAR OUTDOORS RESTAURANTS REAL ESTATE SPORTS CROSSWORD
4 7 16 19 20 24 25
AMI photo brings inspiration at the worst of times
April. The dumping was intended to prevent a compromised and leaking gypsum stack containing more than 450 million gallons of wastewater from failing and flooding nearby homes and businesses. Since then, a bloom of red tide in Tampa Bay has emerged and spread to the Gulf of Mexico off Manatee and Pinellas counties. Scientists and bay managers note a connection between nitrogen in the wastewater and the proliferation of toxic red tide algae, which processes the substance as a nutrient. Five conservation groups, including ManaSota-88 and Sarasota-based Suncoast Waterkeeper, filed a lawsuit on June 24 SEE DEP, PAGE 18
Facing the scariest day of her life, a picture of happier times with her family on Anna Maria Island helps a 39-year-old woman stay strong for brain surgery. BY JASON SCHAFFER SUN CORRESPONDENT | jschaffer@amisun.com
ANNA MARIA ISLAND - At the age of 39, a Jacksonville, Fla., mother of two didn’t expect to ring in the new year at the Mayo Clinic undergoing surgery for a brain aneurysm, but Lauren Lewe says a picture of her two young daughters on an Anna Maria Island beach helped her get through the ordeal.
Lewe began having worsening symptoms that continued to be misdiagnosed by doctors months before tests showed she had a 17mm unruptured brain aneurysm. She was admitted to the Mayo Clinic on Dec. 30, 2020, with surgery scheduled for the next day. “When I was admitted to the hospital, my husband Jon went home to get some things for our stay,” she said. “Our oldest daughter, Finley, sent him back with a picture of her and her little sister, Emery, from our trip to Anna Maria Island in 2020. With pure innocence, she told him it would make me happy. That was an understatement. After seeing the picture, SEE PHOTO, PAGE 6
THIS week’s recipe is
CITY issues warning of possible
for a mushroom galette. In Food & Wine. 10
structural failures in homes. 3
Anna Maria Island, Florida
FISH kills, respiratory problems
continue as red tide persists. 4 The Island’s award-winning weekly newspaper www.amisun.com