Hey Sarah,
Thank you for taking the time to post. I myself am a life long Walton County resident and have seen this county grow exponential over the last 20 years. Of course I miss the days of a 2 lane highway 98 and a lot more dirt roads in SoWal but I also understand that South Walton is a beautiful place and that people spend a lot of money to live/stay here.
I guess my question to you is if you become a commissioner what gives you the (ethical) right to put a moratorium on building when you said yourself you just built your forever home in Walton County. It just seems like to me everybody in South Walton is anti-development until it's time to build their house.
Also as far as protecting state owned and preserved land, has the county done anything to harm said land.
Thank you in advance for your responses.
My parents are in Glendale/ DeFuniak off hwy 192.
I’m glad you pointed that out; my developing, but being alarmed by the development of others. This is one of my motivators for running, after feeling as though I’ve trained my entire life for this job! I feel I would have the ethical right to request a moratorium based on public safety. There becomes a point that continuing to add to the population without regard to required facilities including safe streets, storm water, parks, restaurants and other population- supporting businesses, is just plain irresponsible and dangerous. How do I know this? Because I have walked the streets with zero sidewalks/ shoulders, dodging both vehicles and puddles. We are adding hundreds of nearby residents on top of these already dangerous conditions!
I don’t believe that landowners should ever be put in a position to experience a reduction in quality of life, safety, or financial loss due to actions upon neighboring properties. But if things continue the way they are we will as we will experience increased flooding and poorer water quality. Our land values will go down with the continued pollution of our beach and bay. Accelerating this process is the continued filling of wetlands and reduction of canopy trees that absorb hundreds of gallons of water daily before releasing it back into the atmosphere via their leaves, as well as serving home to our native birds and wildlife, and providing much needed shade.
Alternatively, we could just cut it all down, pave it, and funnel all water into the Bay, which if we continue, would probably start looking like green-algae Southern Florida, based on what I see in the standing water on our streets.
We actually lived in an HOA here in Miramar and couldn’t get anyone to drain our street; including the HOA, Walton County, even DEP. It took 18 months to get something done and even then the result was expensive (imo), and not forward-looking. The professional HOA team hired a professional to install the drainage but he used no underlayment so within a few months weeds began to grow through. A landscaper was then hired who sprayed the weeds with some type of herbicide; polluting our stormwater system!
Shortly after we built a much smaller, super-efficient, and higher-elevated, ICF hurricane home by O’Shea, thanks to the recommendation on this website!!! It was a fun and educational process, complimenting my early-years exposure to geo-tech reporting when my parent’s had sold some of their lands. The stormwater permit for our home required all these fancy calculations and we had stay under certain pervious percentage as well as put ponds in so that our post-construction runoff was less then pre-construction. Our system is designed with gutters that feed into the pond which holds water up to a certain flood level, then there’s an overflow where the top water flows from our pond to the public storm system (aka Choctawhatchee Bay). This is important because most of the water volume never leaves our property, it percolates through the soil on our land within 3 days or so. By going through the soil it helps the impurities from fertilizers, herbicides, car washes, etc from polluting the water. Wetlands are considered “the kidneys” of the earth for this reason. We need wetlands, we need areas where water can filtrate. The very top of the water carries the least pollutants which is why it must overflow into State waters, not drain from the bottom.
Walton County acknowledged 16 years ago that the developer built my neighborhood without an engineered stormwater plan, and 16 years later they still haven’t had one, and it took over a year to get a drain cleaned! Why are developers allowed to circumvent the rules? If the Moss family can hire a stormwater engineer and properly treat our water, I think developers can too!
Fast forward some months and I've witnessed even worse outside my neighborhood in Miramar Beach:
-The vegetation at the Bayfront Haugen Park poisoned by herbicides (polluting our water).
-I’ve seen properties on which wetlands once existed, be built on (magically NO wetlands)!
-Walton County sign off on a home w/ stormwater plan that was not complete and completely flooded the neighbors.
-Witnessed a drain get installed by WC Public Works causing 100% untreated stormwater to flow into the Choctawhatchee Bay, w/o an NPDES permit which is in violation of the Federal Clean Water Act!
NPDES Permit Basics | US EPA
-Entire neighborhoods of mega-home “multi family” rental homes being built as “single family”, avoiding impact fees and over-taxing our already poor infrastructure.
-High density Miramar Beach South not only has no sidewalks, but not even shoulders to walk on in some areas, causing pedestrians to share the road with vehicles. This is downright dangerous, and a threat to public safety!
-Nearby a newer, large complex on Driftwood, neighbors use sandbags to try to re-direct flood waters. – Additional wetland and major / minor development issues will be posted as another post.
-Large acreage rezoned from residential preservation to commercial (AKA pavement), in already flood-sensitive 4 mile point area.
-Limited interconnectivity- our town was not built on a grid. Traffic gets backed up, and residents are forced into longer commutes. One single telephone pole falls, and entire communities would be cut off.
-Much new development is sleeping quarters, but we do not have enough restaurants to feed these people! We need more responsible, planned expansion and not just tourist sleeping quarters. In fact, the real estate market shows there is no shortage of the type of housing they are building!
And the development methods and growth rates are not sustainable, our bubble will burst.
New commercial developments are being allowed to “top off” to our local FL DOT ponds, but the ponds are already at a high level. I meant to get a photo the other day. Why should we allow developments to tie in-to the DOT stormwater system, when they could be made to build retention ponds like the rest of us? Why can’t these people hold onto their water like single family homes, like we were made to do?
I just want to live in a nice place, and not have others damage or negatively affect me or my enjoyment. If development can’t be done without detrimentally affecting others, than I don’t think it should be done is all. I didn’t even realize a moratorium was even possible until learning about other cities in FL doing them.
I would also be interested in public feedback of a rule to require that home-size not exceed 50% of the lot size. I think it helps keep property values to not make them too small, or disproportionate like we currently see. I’m attaching a few pics around Miramar Beach.
Any one else share these concerns and want to sit back and just watch it continue? I hope not!
Sarah
“The Clean Water Act prohibits anybody from discharging "pollutants" through a "point source" into a "water of the United States" unless they have an NPDES permit. The permit will contain limits on what you can discharge, monitoring and reporting requirements, and other provisions to ensure that the discharge does not hurt water quality or people's health. In essence, the permit translates general requirements of the Clean Water Act into specific provisions tailored to the operations of each person discharging pollutants.”
About NPDES | US EPA