This year they believe they've found a better way to stop the incoming sand.

They hope to capture it in a sump -- 300 feet long, 50 feet wide and 10 feet deep -- that workers dug this past spring at the junction of Jersey Waterway and Turkey Creek.

Simply put, it's a hole.

But the implications of this experiment could reach much wider than their sometimes narrow creek, which flows to the Indian River Lagoon.

If a Florida Tech study proves the sump effective, state officials say similar dredged holes could one day catch sand from shoaling in boating routes throughout Florida, including the mouths of chronically shallow residential canals. Networks of sumps could help avoid seagrass destruction and the high cost of bringing in dredges.

Sumps are common practice near ocean inlets. Port Canaveral wants one to prevent hurricanes from shoaling in the channel. But sumps dug to catch sand and silt are more controversial and difficult to permit in estuaries and their tributaries.

"Dredging is still a four-letter word," said David Roach, executive director of the Florida Inland Navigation District, which maintains boating channels along the state's east coast. "The environmental permitting agencies still have difficulty getting their minds around the fact that dredging is a necessary activity. The first reaction to a dredging proposal is always 'no.' "

Not this time.

Mongioi helped city officials convince the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and ultimately the governor and the Cabinet, to allow the project. It had to go before the governor and the Cabinet because Turkey Creek sits within a state-designated Indian River Aquatic Preserve, which affords the water body special protections.

Environmental agencies historically frowned upon the idea of sumps in inland waterways because the dredging can kill seagrass habitat.

Mongioi said the sump idea came to him when he noticed, from his boat, a deep dredge hole at Turkey Creek's mouth near U.S. 1. He thought 'why not dig a similar one upstream.'

A dredging company dug the sump in March, when they completed a $240,000 dredging project that removed about 15,000 cubic yards, including 4,000 cubic yards for the sump.

The state allowed Palm Bay to maintain the sump for five years as maintenance for the larger dredging project. By then, a planned project to divert stormwater from the C-1 drainage canal to the St. Johns River should keep sand from washing back into the creek.

The C-1 canal, dug for farm irrigation, drains about 100 square miles into Turkey Creek, and ultimately the lagoon.

The previous Turkey Creek dredging cost about $2.5 million, and was completed in two phases, one in 1999, and the second in 2001.

The city of Palm Bay could use a backhoe or drag-line dredge to empty the sump when needed, Mongioi said, a much cheaper option than bringing in a larger dredge to deepen the creek again.

Last month, he persuaded the St. Johns River Water Management District to chip in $15,000 toward an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 yearlong study of the sump's performance. The rest of funding would come from the city of Palm Bay.

Ashok Pandit and Howell Heck, civil engineering professors at Florida Tech, would conduct the study.

"One of the goals of the study would be to determine what percentage of the sediment that is trapped remains trapped," Pandit said. "And the second goal would be to determine what type of sediment is trapped: coarse or fine."

The sand caught in the sump might be usable as fill for eroded beaches or for construction, he said.

Contact Waymer at 242-3663 or jwaymer@flatoday.net