BUUHWEEERRR! BUHWEEERR!

A leaf blower. So much for tranquility this August morning on the last pristine reach of the Gordon River. The distant cacophony drowns out the hum of cicadas, not unlike the way concrete has crowded out nature elsewhere along the river and in Naples Bay.

With the blaring exception of the yard equipment, all is the way it was and ever has been.

“This is the old Gordon River here,” Naples Natural Resources Manager Mike Bauer says as he paddles through a canyon of red mangroves and bromeliad-draped cabbage palms.

“It hasn’t been channelized. It still looks like it did 100 years ago and probably 1,000 years before that,” he says, his kayak leaving a trail of bubbles in the beer bottle-brown water.

A few bends downstream, the scene changes. The narrow river gives way to a wide, steep-banked channel. From this point to the U.S. 41 East bridge, the waterway is the Gordon River in name only.

Below the bridge, the river widens even more to form Naples Bay, where the tale of destruction continues. Over the past half-century, the bay has lost 82 percent of its oyster beds, 70 percent of its mangrove fringe and all but a small clump of sea grasses, researchers estimate.

The ill-conceived transformation of the Gordon River and Naples Bay led to an economic boom and an ecological bust. As megamansions replaced marshes, Naples prospered into one of the most affluent enclaves in the country — No. 142 as ranked by Worth magazine in 2001.

Now, state, federal and local officials are trying to restore the altered landscape.

Plans call for turning the northeast corner of Golden Gate Parkway and Goodlette-Frank Road into a filter marsh to trap pollutants before they reach the river. Another pollution-cleaning park is planned along Broad Avenue South. Several more projects are in the pipeline.

Bauer is one of the primary architects of the restoration effort. This is his first time paddling the bay.

The six-mile trip from The Conservancy of Southwest Florida’s headquarters on the Gordon River to Gordon Pass, where the bay meets the Gulf of Mexico, offers an intimate view of a watershed in distress and underscores the need for restoration.

“There are better, more natural places” to paddle around Southwest Florida, Bauer says at the beginning of the trip. “I’m not into urban paddling.”

From the point of view of a few feet above its surface at a speed just short of walking, Naples Bay appears much more alive than when glimpsed on a passing motor boat, Bauer observes later.

The battered ecosystem survives, but it is a long way from thriving.

- - -

Friday morning, Aug. 18.

Mangrove branches press in from both banks. A green heron darts low across the water. The river is narrow and full of sharp bends.

It is barely wide enough to accommodate The Conservancy’s electric pontoon boat, which ferries sightseers from the nonprofit’s Merrihue Drive headquarters a short distance down the river and back again.

Bauer dips a cupped hand into the cool water and takes a sip. Not a hint of salt.

Despite its untouched appearance, the river is far from it. A small weir on the south side of Golden Gate Parkway regulates how much water the river gets from the golf courses and subdivisions to the north. Brazilian pepper trees and Australian pines elbow their way into the mangroves here and there.

To the west, unseen but not far away, Goodlette-Frank Road cuts a path through a bland, suburban landscape of utility poles, office buildings and Levittown, N.Y.-inspired ranch houses.

- - -

In the 1960s, an era of then-unprecedented expansion and damn-the-consequences development in Southwest Florida, the Golden Gate main canal was connected to the Gordon River.

Naples Bay’s drainage area instantly expanded from 10 square miles to 120 square miles — the difference between land masses the size of Marco Island and Cape Coral.

The canal dumps an average of 214 million gallons of water a day into the eastern fork of the Gordon River. That’s 20 to 40 times greater than the amount of freshwater entering the bay naturally.

“This is one of the major problems with Naples Bay right here, this freshwater influx,” Bauer says as he rounds the last bend on the more natural western fork. “It changes the estuarine environment into a lake.”

The convergence of the creek-like western fork and the broad, fast-moving eastern fork resembles a meeting between a residential street and an interstate.

In the summer wet season, the deluge of freshwater lies on top of the heavier saltwater in the river and bay. The barrier between the two layers prevents dissolved oxygen from circulating through the water column. Lacking oxygen, marine life suffocates.

In a landmark 1979 study, researchers with the Conservancy said of the bay: “Based upon the concept that the bay is a depository for everything and that it will be carried out to sea, much of the public sees it as a cheap disposal system. Out of sight, but not out of the bay ...”

The powerful current whisks Bauer’s kayak ahead. Clumps of leafy hydrilla, a freshwater plant that doesn’t belong in an estuary, slink along the surface.

A few hundred yards downstream, another threat to the bay’s health pokes into view: the Naples sewage treatment plant. The state Department of Environmental Protection allows the city to release up to 2.42 million gallons a day — enough to fill about 50,000 big bathtubs — of treated wastewater into the river.

There is no dramatic sight of a pipe spewing questionable-looking water into the river. In fact, the pipe is hidden beneath the surface of the river. A “caution” sign with the helpful suggestion “Do Not Anchor” is the only indication of the pipe’s existence.

On what would otherwise be a handsome riverfront property, a collection of gray buildings sits like books on a shelf not far from the treatment plant. The monochromatic color scheme and 6-foot-tall chain-link fence signal that this, the Gordon River Apartment complex, is one of Naples’ poorest enclaves.

Bauer stops in the middle of the river as a look of disbelief spreads over his face.

“Now they’re shoveling crap into the water. That’s a big violation,” he says.

On the eastern bank, construction workers are hurling chunks of concrete into the river next to a dock they are building. Bauer had spotted the concrete in the river a week earlier and reported it to the DEP and the city’s code enforcement department.

At 55, Bauer’s career spans the spectrum of environmental involvement: a doctorate in environmental policy from Virginia Tech, an assistant refuge manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an environmental law attorney for the Yakama Indian Nation in Washington, the Southwest Florida policy director for Audubon of Florida, a project manager with the South Florida Water Management District, an adjunct professor at Florida Gulf Coast University and International College.

A couple weeks ago, a code enforcement officer re-examined the property at 1514 Port Ave. and declared that the mess had been sufficiently cleaned up.

A red-shouldered hawk soars above the river as Bauer approaches the U.S. 41 East bridge. A mullet takes a much lower flight pattern. The river is flanked by mangroves where Rock Creek joins the river from the east.

Naples Bay is just ahead.

- - -

At a time when Jesus Christ was making a name for himself half a world away, a tribe of American Indians was giving Naples Bay its first manmade makeover. Most likely cousins of the powerful Calusas, the tribe dug a canal a little more than a mile over the peninsula between the bay and the Gulf.

An 1887 town plat described the canal as being 50 feet wide, 3 feet deep. Before the canal was filled in, a bridge was constructed on 12th Avenue South to cross it.

By 1979, Naples Bay and the Gordon River contained 117 canals and subcanals. For a homeowner, the canals offer a waterfront view where none existed before. For a kayak, the canals offer nothing more than uninviting dead-ends.

Keeping the Bayfront development and its loud colors to the right and Joe’s Crab Shack to the left, Bauer’s kayak drifts beneath the U.S. 41 bridge. Passing by the Riverwalk restaurant on the south side of the bridge, it is possible to order a plate of fried Gulf shrimp and have it delivered without leaving a sitting position on a kayak, but no one ever does that.

Suddenly, the bay opens up to private marinas and yacht clubs brimming with large boats. It is a vast watery parking lot. A woman is chatting with a man as she pumps gas into a boat named “Compromise.”

“You have to compromise everything to buy gas,” the man jokes.

A jet bound for Naples Municipal Airport’s runway cruises overhead. A brown pelican watches the aircraft from a wooden piling. It is impossible to tell whether the bird is jealous.

Some people dream about winning the lottery or retiring somewhere tropical and remote.

“My dream,” Bauer muses as he sloshes his paddle through the water, “is to have Naples fall in love with mangroves and everyone to plant mangroves.”

In most places along the bay, the water meets a concrete cliff: sea walls.

Channel Marker 33 begins, like any other marker, as a dot on the horizon. But it is unlike other markers in the bay because it signals that from here downstream, boaters can throttle up to 30 mph in the channel. With a heightened sense of trepidation, Bauer plies on.

- - -

The shores of Naples Bay are a museum of 21st century upscale Florida living.

Exhibits on the tour include floor-to-ceiling windows, dipping pools, Bermuda grass lawns, cupolas, automatic boat lifts, pool cages, yachts, coconut palms, snook lamps, bougainvillea, widow’s walks, columns, fountains, hurricane shutters, winding porches, red barrel tile roofs, gazebos.

These are the postcard-ready communities of Windstar, Port Royal and Aqualane Shores. The people who inhabit these fortresses are venture capitalists, dot-com survivors, retired business executives, old money, new money, money, money, money.

Port Royal was launched by Glen Sample, a Chicago advertising mogul who made millions by introducing soap operas to radio. Between 1938 and 1950, he purchased the swampy lots that would become Port Royal. The land cost a total of $54,000, according to Doris Reynolds’ book “When Peacocks were Roasted and Mullet was Fried.”

Sample sold off the lots with slogans like “Money Alone Won’t Buy a Lot in Port Royal” and “There Will Never Be Another Port Royal.”

There also will never be another Naples Bay.

Bauer rests his kayak in the southeast corner of Naples Bay just off Bayview Park.

“This is an important spot,” he says.

Beneath the gentle waves is the last patch of sea grass in the bay. A city study led by Bauer’s department is tracking the size and thickness of the sea grass. The goal is to see whether a decrease in the bay’s muddiness will lead to new sea grass growth.

Just south of Bayview Park, bulldozers have cleared away a stand of mangroves. It is the future site of the Hamilton Harbor marina, a development 20 years in the making.

Once a Goliath, the development called for 200 storage spaces for boats and 610 wet slips, destroying 31 acres of wetlands in the process. Legal fights with environmental advocates reduced the project to a David — with 325 storage spaces and 36 wet slips, putting only five acres of wetlands in the way.

To get the development it wanted, Collier Enterprises agreed to preserve 150 acres around the development, including 1½ miles of mangrove shoreline along the bay. Bauer envisions carving a public walking trail along the property.

- - -

With the midday sun beating down, Bauer rounds the last corner of Naples Bay toward Gordon Pass. On the southern bank, a white ibis noses for food among a red mangrove’s roots. Here, Bauer explains, is a small bay formerly called the Cowpens, a name derived from the out-of-fashion practice of driving manatees into the shallow area and waiting for low tide to seize upon them.

The water gets rougher near Gordon Pass. Mud flats and mangroves are replaced by a sandy shore. Pelicans and terns swirl over a meal near Keewaydin Island.

On the north side of the pass, there used to be a shell mound that was 10 or 12 feet high and covered approximately three acres. Apparently unaware of its archaeological value, the growing city used the shells to fill in potholes and ruts in sand roads in the 1940s.

Beyond the turbulent pass, the Gulf of Mexico reaches lazily toward the horizon. It is going on three hours since Bauer shoved off from the Gordon River’s mucky shore.

He turns back and beats on, kayak against the current, keeping as close to the mangroves as possible.

Naples Daily News
Naples Sun Times
The Banner

Collier Citizen
Vista Semanal
PrepZone

Coastalbeat
Set Anchor
SWFLMoms