Archive for the 'Governance' Category

Sea walls do more harm than good

Published on December 24, 2006 in Community, Environment, Governance, Mysteries, Science and Sustainability. 1 Comment

Glynn’s Folly, as the Summerplace Sea Wall Atrocity is commonly called, has already cost the public a fortune in legal fees, ongoing sand pumping, damages to adjacent property, and lost recreation value.

Additional actual costs must include the catastrophic erosional impacts on the adjacent public Wabasso Beach, immediately down-current from Summerplace. Lawsuits from Disney’s Vero Beach Resort loom as a potential future liability of the sea wall. And, then, there are the environmental impacts…

Recently the Vero Beach Press-Journal noted that the beach in front of Glynn’s sea wall is non-existent at high tide, having been washed away because of inevitable changes in beach dynamics resulting from the armoring.

All Summerplace residents have deeded beach access, and the right to use this beach. Now, their beach has been destroyed by the actions of a few, selfish property owners. These folks live in an unsustainable location: on top of the primary dune in a State-designated area of a critically eroding shoreline. How long will we have to wait for a rational, science-based solution to the current mess we call our County’s beach management policy?

Gopher tortoise extinction is up to us

Published on December 12, 2006 in Environment, Governance, Mysteries, Science and Sustainability. 0 Comments

The plight of Florida’s gopher tortoise is largely in the hands of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Recently, they have “uplisted” the tortoise from Species of Special Concern, which allows killing tortoises as long as certain rules are followed, to Threatened status, which will more tightly limit killing tortoises during land development. The new management plan and rules are not likely to be completed until June, 2007, however.

Dr. Jennifer Hobgood of the Humane Society of the U.S., is participating in drafting the new management plan for the gopher tortoise. She says that the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is likely to honor all Incidental Take Permits issued under the current management plan, and may continue to issue Incidental Take Permits even under the new plan. Note that “incidental take” means “killing incidental to development.” It is not incidental to the tortoises, or to those concerned by the dramatic decline in gopher tortoise numbers incidental to our explosive growth.

Gopher tortoises are not alone. Turtles everywhere face the threat of extinction by habitat destruction and automobile predation. Humans are their problem in almost every case, as documented in Natalie Angier’s excellent article on the extinction crisis facing turtles, in today’s New York Times. The threats to turtles are global, yet protective actions in thousands of localities can help assure their survival.

Here in Indian River County, Florida, a concerned group of citizens has formed the Gopher Tortoise Coalition to protect and conserve our reptilian neighbors. Working together we are conducting our county’s first “emergency humane relocation” of tortoises, fully permitted by the FWC. Next, we need to address the Incidental Take issue through our county ordinances. Gopher tortoises will continue to be killed, and killed by entombment, for the foreseeable future, perhaps even under the new statewide management plan. We must prohibit take by entombment county by county if we are to stop state sanctioned animal cruelty and ensure tortoise survival.

“Conservation Lands” of the Upper St. Johns River, Florida

Published on December 3, 2006 in Environment, Governance, Growth, Mysteries and Sustainability. 0 Comments

Under Florida Statutes, the St. Johns River Water Management District may sell or exchange lands to which the district has acquired title according to conditions set forth in 373.089 F.S.

For lands designated as conservation lands, all it takes for the district to dispose of them is a two-thirds vote by their Governing Board. For other lands, a simple majority vote by the Governing Board is all that is required to dispose of lands no longer determined to be needed by the District. As the current Fellsmere Joint Ventures – St. Johns River Water Management District land swap demonstrates, the District is perfectly willing to dispose of conservation designated land in our county. Furthermore, the District appears to have no legal responsibility to consider our county’s comprehensive plan, or to coordinate or communicate with our county government.

So much for the presumption by citizens of Indian River County that nearly a third of our county is protected by virtue of it being designated as conservation land owned by SJRWMD. Such designation, and the protection it brings, is momentary, fleeting, and entirely at the discretion, or some might say whim, of the District’s Governing Board.

It would appear that the only true conservation lands we have in our county are those owned wholly or jointly by Indian River County and the State (either SJRWMD, DEP, or other agency), or by the US Government (Pelican Island NWR, Archie Carr NWR, and several islands). I don’t have the total acreage of these conservation holdings at hand, but I imagine they would fall into the range of 5% – 10% of our county’s area, not the 30% or so we are accustomed to imagining as protected “in perpetuity” for conservation.

It is worth remembering that our county has also shown a ready willingness to abandon its own “perpetual conservation easements,” whenever staff determines that it meets some current need (e.g., Barber Street road widening plan within the footprint of the Sebastian Area-Wide Scrub Jay HCP).

Maybe the lesson is that our “conservation” lands will be protected only as long as people are willing to fight for them.

Shadow Government

Published on November 28, 2006 in Community, Governance and Mysteries. 0 Comments

Voters in Indian River County, Florida may think that their elected representatives, the County Commissioners, call the policy shots at the County, but that’s not so. Most of the time, and in most really important policy areas, it’s the long-established, hired senior staff – especially the various “department directors” who really set policy.

Most of the public, and even most of the elected officials, suppose that the bureaucrats just implement policy set by the Commissioners at public meetings. Perhaps in theory that’s the way it’s supposed to work. In practice, nothing could be further from the truth.

Rolling Over for Developers

Published on November 25, 2006 in Community, Governance, Growth and Mysteries. 1 Comment

Our local Scripps newspaper, the Press Journal, has repeatedly asserted in editorials that our County’s elected and appointed representatives, along with County government staff, “roll over” for developers. Today, they level the following:

“If there’s a culprit beyond the vicissitudes of the almighty “free market,” it’s our compliant public officials who have skewed that market. Green-lighting sprawling new housing tracts all over the county, they rolled over for developers, opened the door to speculators, inflated residential inventories and set the stage for the hundreds of empty houses we see today.”

It’s true the Treasure Coast is now experiencing the worst kind of growing pains. But this editorial posturing is such obvious crap it hardly needs comment. Still, I can’t resist two simple ones. First, who rolled over? Be specific and back up the charges, if they are really meant to be taken seriously. Are there certain elected or appointed individuals, or staffers who are “rolling over” for developers? And if so, are they doing tricks for all developers, are just certain ones? Names, please. If not, something else is going on, and the editors have missed the point. Again. Too bad, because what’s really happening is very, very important, and still a mystery to the Scrippsmen.

And second, what if all these folks who were supposed to have “rolled over” instead mandated a moratorium on development across the county? Would the editors then herald this action as a triumph for controlled growth? Or would the public officials get slammed for messing with the “free market.” Hmmm.