In the past, dredging was primarily for creating canals or opening navigable channels back up. Dredging had a bad reputation environmentally because of the impact it had on habitat. Recently, dredging has been considered a Stormwater Best Management Practice because of its ability to improve water quality by removing nuisance muck sediment. Muck sediment is very light and is easily stirred up into the water column. Once in the water column, it does not settle easily and makes the water "turbid" or unclear. Unclear water doesn't allow sunlight through and so seagrass can't grow. Seagrass is considered the primary production resource in the Indian River Lagoon system and all other lagoon habitat depends on it. Most important is to reduce the muck by reducing pollution to the canals. Even after we have reduced most of our upstream loading, we will still have to dredge the nuisance muck in order to have cleaner water.