Emergency BCC Meeting - 8/1/05

[For The Health Of It]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

As to the experiment offered by marinebiologist, we have a group who are conducting this for presentation on Monday. Thank you for the idea and explaination. lets hammer them on monday.

 

[Paula]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

If you go to http://www.drbeach.org you may get information about Dr. Beach's (Dr. Stephen B. Leatherman writes from his laboratory at Florida International University) "national healthy beach campaign" (SoWal beaches are recognized among his list). You may find some data that supports the concern about the dark sand here.

"Beach material" is one of the criteria used for judging the beaches... the categories are "Fine sand Medium sand Coarse sand Cobbles Rocky/Muddy" -- this may be useful information.

For those of you who are more familiar with beach standards, you may want to go to his website to see all of the 60 criteria. It certainly serves SoWal to continue to be on his list of recognized beaches. He's the one who selects the top 10 beaches every year (Grayton was one of them several years ago).

Can't be at the meeting but certainly support the efforts of people who will be there to preserve the beauty and uniqueness of our beaches.

 

[DBOldford]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

Write letters to your County Commissioners and use your local address, for those of us who reside elsewhere. Their names are listed in one of Kurt's posts to this Board. I recently wrote to Cindy Meadows and received a very well thought out response within a week. I understand that she does not approve of this one, however. I am really sad that the County does not seem to be asking the experts (read: professional biologists and geologists) at our State Parks what should be done about this. When I asked a County official why the County had not hired experts to advise on this important matter, I was told that solution was what "the experts" advised. After a couple of questions, I realized that their idea of "the experts" was contracting companies that would haul the sand-dirt in.

Keep your eye on the ball, follow the money, and never forget how to count to three in the political arena! I am writing five letters today.

 

[Rita]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

I posted this in another thread, but am posting it here also in case everyone doesn't read all the threads.

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My wife (Rita) keeps close tabs on this message board, and she showed me this thread today. Unfortunately, it no longer amazes me what some people think they can get away with. However, we need more than moral outrage to help fight this. So, I'm sharing some information with you that I hope will help you that are close enough fight a better battle (we live in Arlington, TX, but have a house in the Dune Allen area), one based more on science than emotion.

First, a little about myself. I am an agronomist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We are the agency that helped develop the Munsell Color Chart used to classify soil color (in an earlier post, someone referred to the Soil Conservation Service - that was us before a reorganization and name change about 10 years ago). My B.S. was in Soil Science, so I am familiar with how soil and soil materials are described and classified. That's not my area of expertise now, but I can point you toward links and resources that may be useful.

For more information on the Munsell Color classification scheme for soils, go to:

http://soils.usda.gov/technical/manual/contents/chapter3f.html

Here is a brief explanation, but you really need to follow the link to see some illustrations of the system.

The Munsell color system uses three elements of color?hue, value, and chroma?to make up a color notation. The notation is recorded in the form: hue, value/chroma?for example, 5Y 6/3.

Hue is a measure of the chromatic composition of light that reaches the eye. The Munsell system is based on five principal hues: red (R), yellow (Y), green (G), blue (B), and purple (P). Five intermediate hues representing midpoints between each pair of principal hues complete the 10 major hue names used to describe the notation. The intermediate hues are yellow-red (YR), green-yellow (GY), blue-green (BG), purple-blue (PB), and red-purple (RP).

Value indicates the degree of lightness or darkness of a color in relation to a neutral gray scale. On a neutral gray (achromatic) scale, value extends from pure black (0/) to pure white (10/). Gray is perceived as about halfway between black and white and has a value notation of 5/.

Chroma is the relative purity or strength of the spectral color. Chroma indicates the degree of saturation of neutral gray by the spectral color. The scales of chroma for soils extend from /0 for neutral colors to a chroma of /8 as the strongest expression of color used for soils.

One of the posts mentioned that a Munsell color of 6.2 was the lowest value that was considered acceptable for sand added to the beach. However, the "6.2", which I assume is a Munsell "value", is meaningless without knowing what hue (the basic color) range this value is in.

The NRCS has offices in almost every county in the country, and our employees are always available to help you with questions about our soil resources. Here is contact information for three people who should be able to answer some or all of your questions. I suggest contacting them in the order they are listed:

Terry Smith
USDA-NRCS
239 John Baldwin Road, Suite 2
DeFuniak springs, FL 32433
850-892-3712 EXT. 3
Terry.Smith@fl.usda.gov

Terry is the District Conservationist in Walton Co., and if he can't answer your questions, he can contact:

Jeff Allen
USDA-NRCS
4155 Hollis Drive
Marianna, FL 32448-2708
850-482-2002 EXT. 111
Jeff.Allen@fl.usda.gov

or

Andrew Williams
USDA-NRCS
c/o Santa Rosa Co. Health Department
Environmental Health Services
5840 Gulf Breeze Parkway
Gulf Breeze, FL 32563
850-932-9824
Andrew.Williams@fl.usda.gov

This is probably way too much information for many of you, but for those of you who will be carrying the fight for our beaches, I hope this is helpful.

 

[Miss Kitty]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

Fellow sand savers: Please help me understand how this happened. Did the gulf front homeowners request this or was this the county solution? Where do the gulf front homeowners stand on this travesty? Are there any gulf front homeowners on this board? Please speak up and let me know your reaction to this. Someone posted earlier that as sad as it is that these homes are in peril, they are enjoyed by a few. How can anyone save a house over miles of nature's beauty? I would like to think if it was my house in jeopardy, I would do the best thing for the community as a whole and not permanently damage the beaches. This is such a disaster...what will be the damage score at the end of....Hurricanes vs. Man?

 

[CastlesOfSand]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

Just sent my 2 cents worth via email. Good luck! Keep us posted!

 

[Paula]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

I just send my email to the commissioner list posted elsewhere expressing my strong disagreement with using the dark sand they are using in Blue Mountain Beach. Even though I can't be at the meeting, I hope my email helps prevent the use of this dark sand in SoWal.

One thing I mentioned is that gulf front property owners may or may not have a long-term investment in this area (in fact, if the dark sand damages the beauty of our beaches, perhaps some gulf front owners will leave and go to prettier beaches). Gulf front property owners will come and go, but the beaches will be here for a long, long time (ideally long after we're all gone), and we need to preserve the beauty of the beaches for the long term.

 

[seaforever]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

I attended the emergency meeting that took place immediately after Dennis. Gulf front homes are on the edge of collapse and many were concerned that with even a rain storm their homes would be lost.
I am a beach front owner and I am as concerned as anyone with the color and quality of our beaches but the problem is THERE IS NOT ENOUGH WHITE SAND TO TAKE CARE OF THE NEEDS OF THE BEACH. The decision was made as an emergency measure to allow gulf front home owners (at their expense) to bring in a darker sand to reinforce their homes, rebuild a portion of the dunes and then to cover the darker sand with three feet of white sand.
I know of many gulf front owners that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on approved white sand after Ivan only to see it taken by Dennis. We are one of them. We have depleted the reserves of white sand and we are left with little alternative.
Before giving our commissoners "hell" recognize that we have no viable options. Please help us with soulutions to this problem but remember there is not enough approved white sand available.
Please recognize that as gulf front owners we love this beach enough to endure the repetitive storms and still keep hangin" in there!

 

[sarawind]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

I believe it was a hurricane that damaged the beach and the sand dunes. Not houses. The beach belongs to everyone, whether you are a Gulf front homeowner or not. Everyone uses the beach whether they live on it or not. I live on the Gulf . It is my home and I cherish it, respect it, love it. I want white sand if possible and am in favor of dredging over scraping.

 

[Kim Smith]

Re: Emergency BCC Meeting

I don't believe this color of sand should have ever been considered as a viable option. My home is further down the beach but I can tell you one thing, I will fight tooth and nail to get them to stop and to get them to clean up their mess. I have been watching other areas further down the beach that have been bringing in sand, it is not pure white but it looks holy compared to the stuff.