News: Reason for dangerous canals near roads? The canals came first

Palm Beach Post
By Jason Schultz
07/27/10


State Road 80 in western Palm Beach County has become notorious among residents, rescuers and government leaders as the scene of car crashes and drownings in the canal that runs along it.

But it's not alone: Many roads in the county run parallel to canals.

Historians and drainage managers say that's because, in many cases, the canals came first.

Besides State Road 80, the western portions of Atlantic Avenue, Boynton Beach Boulevard, Hypoluxo Road and Lake Worth Road also have canals running next to them. Several major north-south routes, such as Florida's Turnpike, State Road 7 and U.S. 27, also have canals running alongside.

In many cases, the canals were dug long before the roads were built. In fact, for the early part of the 20th century, the canals essentially were the roads of swampy central and western Palm Beach County.

"There were no roads," said Ronald Crone, district manager for the Lake Worth Drainage District, which maintains hundreds of miles of canals from suburban West Palm Beach to suburban Boca Raton.

The South Florida Water Management District maintains the region's largest canals. But many of those canals existed for decades before the district was founded in 1949.

Debi Murray, director of research and archives for the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, said some canals predate the first road out to the Glades by at least 10 years.

Murray said farmers used the canals to bring crops to a farmer's market near what is now Howard Park in West Palm Beach. Crone said that where State Road 80 now sits was a path where farmers used mules to pull the barges down the canal.

Rick Mitinger, the assistant district traffic operations engineer with the state Department of Transportation, said that when the roads were built years later, engineers often needed the fill from the digging of the canal to raise up the road base. They also needed nearby drainage to take the water running off the pavement. The nearby canals often provided a solution to both problems.

Although other roads with canals have also had car crashes leading to drownings, State Road 80 appears to have the most notoriety.

Sheriff's Sgt. John Churchill, who heads the county's traffic homicide unit, said the 65 mph speed limit on that stretch of State Road 80 is higher than that of many other east-west roads with canals. He said State Road 80 also has a higher traffic volume than those roads because it is the main route between the Glades region and the coast.