By DOTTY NIST
“It ain’t a restoration project, and it ain’t on hold,” Blue Mountain Beach resident and property owner Emmett Hildreth told a reporter in reference to the Walton County Hurricane and Storm Damage Reduction Project (WCH&SDR Project).
Hildreth’s statement took place at the Walton County Tourist Development Council’s (TDC) Feb. 3 bimonthly workshop on the federal damage reduction
project, where Hildreth had earlier protested to the gathering, waving a photocopy of a Jan. 22 Beach Breeze article bearing the headline, “Officials put a hold on large-scale beach restoration project.”
The South Walton Annex was the workshop location. Attendees included beachfront property owners and other interested citizens.
The official project name, Walton County Hurricane and Storm Damage Reduction Project, had appeared in the first paragraph of the article in question. However, the slightly-more-concise term “large-scale beach restoration project” had been used in the headline, for brevity and due to the planned method of construction for the project being beach nourishment/beach restoration, terms that are similar in meaning.
During public comment at the workshop, Hildreth spoke of “mumbling” that the project was now on hold. “Somehow the word got out that the project was on hold,” he said.
Disputing this, Hildreth pointed out that TDC Executive Director Jim Bagby had gone before the Walton County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) at its Jan. 13 meeting, and that the commissioners had approved “everything he [Bagby] wanted,” including easement language for the WCH&SDR Project, approval to send the easement language out to beachfront property owners, and approval to “finish title work” for the project.
The latter had involved having American Government Services Corporation provide an update and reports on ownership and encumbrances on parcels in the project area to ensure that property owners in the project area receive the easement language and information to be sent out by the county.
A six-month time period had been agreed to by the BCC for the property owners to consider the easements and to sign and return them if they decide to consent to the easements.
Hildreth observed that the BCC had added another approval to what Bagby had requested, an letter about the project that would be sent out with the easement language.
“This thing is not on hold,” he repeated concerning the WCH&SDR Project. He strenuously told the crowd that he hoped the press would “get it right” from now on in reporting on the project.
Hildreth continued that the message he had gotten at workshops on the project was “Why don’t these beachfront property owners just swallow this hook, line and sinker?”
“Rest assured that the owners are not going to swallow this hook, line, and sinker,” he emphasized.
Bagby countered that this had not been the message and that the TDC had encouraged the owners to consult with their attorney for counsel about the construction easements associated with the project.
Signed easements will be required in order for project contractors to come onto corresponding beachfront properties for construction of the project. The owners will have the choice whether to agree to the easements or not.
The Beach Breeze report indicating that the project was on hold was based on a motion made by District 5 Commissioner Cindy Meadows that was approved at the Jan. 13 BCC meeting. This was in response to a request from Bagby for BCC direction on “a way forward” with the WCH&SD Project. This had been prior to Bagby requesting and being approved for the list of items referenced by Hildreth.
Meadows had said, “Can I make just a recommendation on that, is that we, you know, put it in abeyance, we send out the easements, the official, you know, easements, send out the easements to the folks, let them decide, let them make their decision whether they’re going to sign them or not for a date certain, like I don’t know, June, July, August, whatever, for them to all be back and give a deadline, and then we know if we have a project on a certain leg or month.”
“Based on what I’m seeing,” Meadows continued, “all the comments, you know, it appears as if, you know, 90 percent of the people are not going to sign the easements, but I think that we need to put it to rest, we need to know for sure and then we can move on. But if we keep this, you know, keep kicking the can, so that would be my (recommendation), and I would say that we establish no ECL (Erosion Control Line), we don’t request an ECL be established in this time period, we don’t do a resurvey of the Mean High Water Line, we don’t spend any of that kind of money, because we don’t know what the final tally will be. We think we know, but we don’t.”
At that point, Walton County Attorney Mark Davis had suggested that Meadows include with her motion authorization for the chairman to sign anything needed to let state and federal authorities know of the BCC’s decision “to quote/unquote…pause the process.”
Meadows responded, “We’d have to give them official notification to them that, yeah, this is what the board has voted on and this is how we want to proceed. That would be my suggestion, because I think that there are an awful lot of people against it. Let’s get that, let’s get that, you know, in writing from them. If there’s anybody for it, if it makes for a project anywhere along this stretch, it probably will not, but if it does, we have the agreements from those people.”
In response to BCC Chairman Bill Imfeld’s question whether this was a motion, Meadows responded, “I’ll make that motion.” The motion received a second for discussion from District 4 Commissioner Sara Comander.
As discussion proceeded, Imfeld asked for some clarification on Meadows’ motion, inquiring, “So effectively then, we would be doing nothing else, no ECLs, no nothing else…but getting the easement letters out, which is the next item on the agenda, I believe, and waiting for what comes back so that we wouldn’t be causing any interference with anyone’s rights or their property.”
“Right,” Meadows responded. She added that along with the easements, she would propose that contact data be included for property owners’ use in getting information on the project and having their questions answered.
Following some additional BCC discussion interspersed with public comment, Meadows’ motion was amended to include the sending of informational letters to property owners along with the easements.
The amended motion was approved unanimously.
At the Jan. 13 meeting, Hildreth had spoken in opposition to the county sending out the easements, calling the documents “a horror.”
Also related to a “hold” on the beach project, in January state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller had told the Herald/Breeze that Walton County had been due a decision by Feb. 18 from DEP as to the agency’s intent to issue a permit for the WCH&SR Project, barring the project applicants opting to request a waiver of a 90-day deadline or “time lock.” On Feb. 4, in response to a request for information, Miller provided the Herald/Breeze with a copy of a waiver issued by DEP in connection with the WCH&SR Project at the request of project co-sponsor the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The document states, “This waiver of the 90-day time period shall expire on the 18th day of August.”
Among announcements at the workshop was that this would be Walton County beach management consultant Brad Pickel’s last time to be present at one of the workshops, as he would be ending his consultant contract with the county effective March 31. However, Pickel stated that until then he was available to help and provide information to county residents. “This is not my project, it is your project,” he told attendees.
Bagby explained that over the six-month period after the easements and letters were sent out, that the BCC would wait for the property owners to consider the easements and sign and return them if they opted to do so. Failure to return a signed easement would not be considered consent, he detailed.
In the meantime, TDC staff, Bagby noted, would continue to answer questions from the public and “do all the things that staff do.” He said he would be taking a TDC recommendation before the BCC on Feb. 10 to seek requests for qualifications (RFQs) for a beach management consultant, in view of Pickel’s upcoming departure.
At the end of the six-month period, Bagby continued, the BCC would be making a decision as to whether to “scrap” the WCH&SD Project or “do segments” of the 19+-mile proposed project area, depending on how many property owners signed construction easements. The BCC would not pass a resolution to proceed with one of those options until August, he told the group.
“Everybody, I think, believes that people who need help ought to get help,” Bagby commented.
Other workshop discussion included the recent announcement by Gov. Rick Scott that the governor was recommending $10,520,990 for the WCH&SDR Project in the state budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year.
Pickel noted that this would be “cost-shared money” that would be dependent on the amount of shoreline nourished in the WCH&SDR Project. The $10,520,990 amount, he explained, would be for the full 19-plus miles proposed for inclusion in project.
Miramar Beach resident Suzanne Harris commented that she had spoken with Matt Gaetz. Gaetz represents the 4th District in the Florida House of Representatives.
Harris said she had learned from Gaetz that the legislature would be voting on this budget recommendation from the governor, and that it would be the legislature’s decision whether to agree to the $10.5 million and on whether to hold the funds for Walton County until next year once the legislators became aware that the Walton County project was “not shovel ready.”
She clarified that in talking about her conversation with Gaetz at the TDC meeting earlier in the day, she had not said that Gaetz had indicated that he opposed Walton County receiving these funds.
“There are people who are going to want that money,” Pickel stated. He said he had gotten word of legislators representing other areas intending to attack this money going to Walton County and try to obtain the money for their areas.
Bagby spoke of a coalition of local governments in northwest Florida that was organizing to seek approval and funding for a “regional federal project” for the beaches.
“They’re trying to get where this county is,” Pickel commented. He explained that this type of regional approach was taken in the North Atlantic in areas hit by Hurricane Sandy and had quickly resulted in a number of projects.
In response to a question, Bagby clarified that the northwest Florida coalition that he had referenced would not be going for state funds in the current year.
As at previous workshops, there was considerable discussion about the Erosion Control Line (ECL) , a fixed line which per Florida Statute is established in the approximate area of the Mean High Water Line in connection with large-scale beach nourishment projects, in order to set the upland boundary for formerly-submerged state sovereignty land that is reclaimed through the addition of sand in these projects.
An ECL was previously established on approximately five miles of the western Walton County coastline in the area where Walton County’s first large-scale beach nourishment project was completed in 2007.
Beachfront property owner Gary Drake asked whether an ECL would be established on an owner’s property if they did not sign a project easement.
Bagby responded that the answer he had gotten from the commissioners was that it would not. He continued that, however, in the previous beach nourishment project several property owners had not signed easements but did have the ECL established on their property. Later Bagby said that in Bay County’s federal beach project, two beachfront areas, Pinnacle Port and Carillon Beach, had declined signing easements and that the ECL was not established in those areas.
Pinnacle Port and Carillon Beach had initially decided not to participate in the Bay County project, which began in 1996, but had later decided to take part and receive sand in a repeat nourishment effort.
Other discussion included TDC maintenance vehicles and Walton County Sheriff’s Office vehicles on the beach, with Fort Panic beachfront property owner Ed Goodwin calling for these vehicles to not be allowed on the beach south of his home.
“I think you all would go a long way if you’d stop trying to control everybody’s beach,” Suzanne Harris suggested. She called for a halt to Walton County’s Leave No Trace program.
The program, which restricts items that can be left on the beach at night, is primarily aimed at eliminating obstacles to the nesting of threatened sea turtles on the beach.
Harris charged that people’s possessions that they had left temporarily on the beach, among those cell phones, were being removed by Walton County Code Enforcement personnel as part of that program. She also mentioned an instance in which a beachfront owner was cited for having signs marking his property on the beach.
“I just think it’s got to be like Hitler here,” she complained.
Bagby revealed that among changes being proposed to Leave No Trace, as part of revisions to the Walton County Beach Activities Ordinance, would be that code enforcement officers would no longer be charged with enforcement of Leave No Trace with regard to articles left on the beach at night—and that the current practice of initially placing warning tags on such articles was being proposed to be discontinued.
Instead, Bagby explained, TDC beach maintenance crews would drive the whole beach at approximately 3 a. m. to 4 a.m. in the morning daily and would remove prohibited items from the beach at that time.
Information on a public hearing for those proposed ordinance revisions will be forthcoming.
Information on the Walton County Hurricane and Storm Damage Reduction Project is available on the web site www.protectwaltoncountybeaches.com or by calling the project hotline, (855) 745-6402.
