I got this a couple days ago...
Here is a copy of an e-mail a neighbor sent the commissioners.
Commissioners,
I am writing you so as you cannot say you were unaware of the following report. I have attached Dr. Harvey H. Harper, Ph.D. report that Walton County commissioned. It has been almost 10 years since I first brought this issue to the BCC and still we are at the same point. I’ll save you the technical lingo and you can skip to the conclusion if you like, but it states verbatim…
“The Engineer agrees that the 3-year, 24-hour retention standard is an extraordinarily high standard, particularly for the period in time, but the 3-year, 24-hour retention standard is consistent with the stated objectives by the applicant of maintaining water quality within Choctawhatchee Bay. Therefore, the Engineer concludes that the Sandestin DRI storm water standard is a retention standard which is equivalent to approximately 5.1 inches over the contributing drainage basin area for Interior portions of Driftwood Estates and 4.8 inches over the contributing drainage basin area for Exterior areas.”
Walton County has ignored this fact for over 2 decades when it comes to enforcing the DRI drainage standards for both Driftwood Estates and all of Sandestin. In fact it means all projects including Baytowne and every project submitted by Intrawest and other developers have not been meeting the required standards of the development order and all their runoff is being dumped untreated and unretained into the bay.
Even today, the county still takes the position given by county engineer Greg Graham that the comp plan standards are more stringent and meet or exceed the DRI standards. That is simply untrue, if fact on that issue Dr. Harper states…..
“The transcript from the Special Magistrate Hearing discusses testimony by Walton County that land development regulations require a storm water Level of Service (LOS) of a 25-year storm, 24-hour duration with a total of 10.2 inches of rainfall in a 24-hour period. The County contends that the 25-year, 24-hour standard is a stricter standard than the 3-year, 24-hour standard for the Sandestin DRI, and maintains that systems designed to meet the County LOS will automatically meet the Sandestin DRI storm water standard since the 25-year, 24-hour standard is a stricter standard. However, the Sandestin 3-year, 24-hour standard and Walton County 25-year, 24-hour standard refer to different components of a storm water system that are not comparable.”
What this means in layman’s terms is that Walton County has not only permitted development activity in Driftwood to occur without the proper notice and land use change hearings, it has approved drainage systems that only meet 20 to 25% of the drainage requirements of the development order. In the case of the exterior section of Driftwood Estates it means the county adopted an MSBU proposed by the developer that didn’t meet the drainage requirements and the charged residents around 3.5 million in MSBU taxes to install a non-compliant, non-working system.
It also means that current projects given the “green light” by Mr. Graham as meeting drainage standards for the county and the DRI, do not meet required standards and haven’t been engineered or reviewed to those standards. Both the projects submitted by SDI in Burnt Pine and the Osprey Point project should be rejected as they currently sit.
What should happen now is as follows.
- Greg Graham should be removed as reviewing engineer for Walton County on all Sandestin projects as he is clearly conflicted as the developers former engineer. According to Dr. Harpers report he doesn’t understand how to compare the correct standards to county standards and is confused.
- Wayne Dyess and Renee Bradley should be directed to immediately apply the correct standards to all new and existing projects within the Sandestin DRI. The issuing of permits and the revocation of DO’s for projects that haven’t been started yet should occur immediately. Plans for Burnt Pine and Osprey Point should be returned to the developer for resubmittal as major projects with the proper drainage standards being met.
- Suspension of further building permits in Driftwood Estates until a solution can be approved and implemented.
- A notice sent out to all developers, SDI, Howard group and the SOA of what the required drainage standards are.
This gets to the heart of things, I know we have had a lot of rain lately and every neighborhood is saturated. I drove from Driftwood today and our neighborhood laid in water from ditch to ditch with some ditches not draining even though they laid as close as 600 feet from outfalls. I could not go outside on Christmas day as the mosquitos would carry you off. I then drove though some other neighborhoods from Carson Oaks, Sacred Oaks and main Sandestin. The vast majority of those had zero standing water in the swells and rights –of –way. Why then are the almost 800 lot owners in Driftwood not entitled to the same level of service our neighbors are? We are in the same development order.
Like it or not, if it happened on your watch or not, the Sandestin development order has been running with scissors for the last 25 years without any real oversight or enforcement except for the actions of Renee Bradley who is desperately trying to communicate to the county commission that it just isn’t open space, there are many things that are non-compliant. You just won’t seem to listen. You are shooting the messenger, as these problems are hurting the property value’s you collect taxes off of. Most of all, you are destroying or allowing the water quality in Choctawhatchee to be destroyed. I can tell you we have been taking water samples along Sandestin at the outflow drainage pipes locations and some of the pollutant levels are just a point or two from being considered toxic. As you recall in order to get a DRI approved, the developer had to mitigate the impacts and agree to stricter standards to ensure regional assets like the Bay and traffic on US98 aren’t negatively impacted because the density of the development was so intense it required state approval. In this case for over 2 decades the developers have reaped the benefits of the DRI while ignoring the requirements. It’s time for you to enforce it. I’ll address more item’s at the NOPC, but the time to act is now. We can continue to ignore it, but one way or another, no matter if it’s at the NOPC or at the witness booth in court, we are going to get some answers as to why all of this has occurred. Most importantly why you are continuing to allow it to occur by turning a blind eye to a problem you can see and touch.
Again the state has told you what to standards are in multiple letters since 2007, so have our experts and now you have spent another 65K for an independent expert that you commissioned and picked to read you the plain English of the development order. What will you tell the jury?
- You didn’t Know?
- Your own expert was biased?
- The state was lying and had an agenda?
If you believe either a jury or your constituents will believe these or other answers, I think you need to step back and relook your position. As one of you have said many times. “We need to either fish or cut bait” Well you already admitted it’s non-compliant. Why do selective enforcement now? Enforce all the rules of the DRI and send a notice to developers that says either play by the established rules or take your money and go do damage somewhere else. Developers who know it's a level playing field will bring new money to the county when the market demand dictates it.
I am planning on sending this to all the Homeowners in the DRI that I can get it forwarded to so they know they are investing their life savings into property the county is not currently willing to enforce the rules on. I think they will soon realize that something nefarious was going on for years in Sandestin and there was money and political influence that made it happen. Why don’t you do the right thing? We’ll see if you even mention it at the next BCC meeting……..More to follow.
I think they are about to throw down.