Courtesy of Collier Enterprises

BEFORE: The Lely Main Canal before it was widened from about 50 feet to 125 feet as part of Collier County’s comprehensive project to improve drainage in East Naples and the quality of water flowing into Rookery Bay.

Courtesy of Collier Enterprises

AFTER: Collier Enterprises has expanded the 1.5-mile Lely Main Canal from about 50 feet to 125 feet in width and replaced its original straight flowway with a more natural meandering one.

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NAPLES — To say the completion of the Lely Main Canal Improvement Project was overdue would be an understatement.

“It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?” said Collier County Commissioner Donna Fiala during the canal’s brief dedication ceremony Thursday. “We are very pleased. It (the canal) is really an asset to the community.”

The project is the result of a partnership between Collier Enterprises and Collier County Government, which expanded the 1.5 mile-long canal’s width from 50 to 125 feet to improve drainage throughout East Naples and the quality of water flowing into Rookery Bay.

The improvements are part of the county’s nine-year Lely Area Storm Water Improvement Project, a $61 million plan that includes drainage improvements throughout a 17-square-mile watershed, which will rely on the widened Lely Canal to work.

The overall improvement project has been in the planning stages for 16 years.

According to county officials, the Lely Main Canal is the largest of the project’s three canals and one of the most important parts of the overall improvements.

Complications for the project arose after luxury community builder WCI opted out of building Sabal Bay in 2006, because the company had been tapped to take care of the widening. However, Collier Enterprises, which owns the proposed Sabal Bay site, stepped in to complete the project with the county.

“We’re thrilled that it’s turned into an amenity that we weren’t expecting,” said Pat Utter, Collier Enterprises vice president of real estate, after the ceremony.

“We’re confident that this is going to be a great enhancement for East Naples.”

The project also took so long because on top of county permits, the Lely canal project also needed approval from the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The fact a major part of the project has gone from conceptual to complete made Thursday’s dedication much sweeter, said Jerry Kurtz, principal project manager with Collier County’s Storm Water Management.

“(The canal’s completion) feels huge,” said Kurtz. “This wasn’t the first segment, but it was the largest... this is catapulting us in to the big fields.”

More than 15 people attended Thursday’s dedication ceremony, including Collier Enterprises president Tom Flood, County Commissioner Frank Halas, Big Cypress Basin director Clarence Tears and Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve director Gary Lytton.

The Lely Canal runs to the southwest, underneath U.S. 41, carrying water toward the intracoastal waterway south of Naples Bay, at the northern end of the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.

The canal project is at the receiving end of a 17-square-mile watershed that extends as far north as Radio Road and as far east as Collier Boulevard.

For Lytton, Thursday’s event was both the end and the beginning of an evolving partnership.

Collier Enterprises is set to restore 1,200 acres of wetlands within Sabal Bay and will donate 780 acres to Rookery Bay.

“I’m thrilled that we’re here celebrating the vision becoming a reality,” said Lytton, who started with Rookery Bay around the same time the project was in its infancy.

According to Lytton the widened canal would not only handle more water, but the lake would also hold back the water before it flows into the estuary.

The water sheetflow across the natural flow way would help treat the water and allow it to spread more naturally across the landscape, said Lytton.