Seawalls

[BlueMtnBeachVagrant]

BluMtnBchVag,

You mention that you followed DEP rules while others did not. Will you not need to apply for a permenant permit for your seawall? Also, what about the take? Will that apply to you since you followed DEP rules?

BTW, for you to be a newbie at posting, you did a great job of seperating your comments from others with the use of bold. Good job! It was easy for me to follow.

We are indeed applying for a permanent permit.

Everyone who legally expects to keep their wall must apply for a permanent permit within 60 days of the completion of the wall.

Incidental take does not appear that it's going to be that great an issue based on a conversation with the county yesterday. The original estimate for $250,000 was for a county wide take permit. This more or less would be shared by the 150 or so walls that are constructed. It's not $250,000 per owner as one poster casually suggested.

Thank you, Smiling Joe for the encouragement and feedback.

 

[John R]

Incidental take does not appear that it's going to be that great an issue based on a conversation with the county yesterday. The original estimate for $250,000 was for a county wide take permit. This more or less would be shared by the 150 or so walls that are constructed. It's not $250,000 per owner as one poster casually suggested.

Thank you, Smiling Joe for the encouragement and feedback.

From Blue Mountain Beach Community Association:

Yesterday evening Walton County held meeting that dealt with seawalls that were built under the county emergency permit, which was issued after the hurricanes last year. After the storms the commissioners said property owners needed to be allowed to do whatever they felt they needed to do to protect their property. Many beachfront property owners built walls that did not comply with state statutes and in doing so they may have created situations that will be determined to have created a ?taking? of threatened or endangered species habitat. This situation may be remedied with a Habitat Conservation Plan.

The county has said beachfront property owners have three choices.

They can put their head in the sand and do nothing. They can wait for the Feds to act, or...
They can each apply for their own Habitat Conservation Plan, something that county attorney David Hallman said could conservatively cost each of them, $250,000.00, or...
They could take part in a unified plan that the county would facilitate on behalf of the beachfront property owners who agreed to join the process. Each property would pay their fair share of the cost, which again could conservatively be $250,000.00.

there must be some wires crossed somewhere.

jr

 

[BlueMtnBeachVagrant]

From John R..... excellent post beachvagrant. thanks for taking the time to post your view with a quite level head.

- i too am concerned about the take. done legally or not, any engineering being done is bound to affect the balance of things that have been happening long before we got here. imo, the seawalls are just compounding the issue. One cannot dispute this in its most elemental form.

- i am sure many walls poorly constructed will not survive, and will end up being strewn along the coast(it would be great if they were id'd to be able to locate their origin) for taxpayer pickup. of the others that will survive, what makes me nervous is what impact they'll have on surrounding land.No disagreement here. But perhaps you're hyperbolizing the cost of clean up as compared to everything else. Believe it or not, we're all concerned about the long term effects of the retaining walls. But as I've said before, more or less, I'm much more concerned with the short term effects of the next Hurricane Dennis.

- with regards to future generations. who knows? if you sewall is constructed as well as you say it is, and your house as well as you say it isn't, maybe the only thing left standing someday will be your wall. I have truthfully suggested this scenario to several people. shelly's excerpt regarding the corps regarding the cyclic nature of give and take, seems to be proven by history, to be true. Can't argue that either. it may not be as quick as a sewall, but it apparently works just fine. unless you're a gulf front property owner we as humans are too proud to worry about what we're leaving as a legacy. Now you're showing just emotion. PIease don't include ME in your WE HUMANS.

- regarding the near vertical bluff. at least it has the ability to repair itself(re. shelly's post), i'm not sure how the sewall will assist in natural dune rebuilding, short of what will become natural; homeowners backfilling after each hurricane season. can we sit on your sand at lowtide? ;-) Again the point is if we're going to experience an "abnormally high number of hurricanes" for the next few years, the vertical bluff will not have a chance to "repair itself". Vertical bluffs are more susceptable to severe erosion than rolling dunes. At this rate, The retaining wall "battle" (just an issue) will be handed to those north of 30A in just a few years (assuming 20 feet loss per hurricane).

- regarding wall 'entitlement'. aren't all gf owners starting with the same set of factors? this is the confusing part for me. are some more entitled than others due to certain things? i'm sure many are hampered by money, but all are facing erosion issues, no? is it just those who followed the rules the ones who are entitled? As stated in my previous post, those strutures built on slabs (typically pre-1985) that are in "imminent" danger due to erosion are entitled to install retaining walls. There are other exceptions such as if you have a new home and your neighbors on each side have valid retaining walls, then you can close the gap. PLEASE take a look at http://www.dep.state.fl.us/beaches/publications/pdf/62b-33.pdf . You will find all the answers here. It is fairly clear.

- the dark sand issue. what a cluster. this argument will rage for years. 'shoring up foundations' apparently is in the eye of the interpreter. will it bleach itself? will it cloud the white forever? these people bought here when it was white, they realize what makes this place magical, and yet they are driven by their pocketbooks. this, for me, is where future generations will be paying for the selfishness of a few. if they have no concience about it now, they won't in the future either. the county yayo's share the resulting blame.The dark sand issue is ANOTHER issue and addressed by the county. The county originally screwed up and paid to have a lot of the dark sand hauled off the beach before they raised the "color requirement by a notch". The sand color issue is not an issue regarding retaining walls. People without walls can also bring in sand. So you see it's not just retaining wall owners. Let's leave the sand color out of this discussion. The title of this thread is "Seawalls". And my part of this thread has to do with "our" retaining walls in general.

- reagrding wasting of money on sand. again we're too proud. the person who built further away from the shoreline probably didn't have that expense. purely conjecture here.This comment is entirely too vague for a response.

- isn't the deadline for the dep permits 4/1? then we'll see who followed the rules and who didn't. and, didn't county already state they won't be leading the charge with this(i'm fuzzy here)? this will be playing out longer than next hurricane season, i'm sure. With this comment, it's apparent you have no handle on the DEP permitting procedure. Deadline for permits is 60 days after completion. Everyone must be off the beach by May 1st so theortically the LATEST any permit can submitted is July 1st. County provides preliminary approval. It then goes DEP and FWL. Then it comes back to the county for final approval. The county is a non-issue for the most part as long as your retaining wall doesn't cross boundaries or violate other county rules. DEP and FWL call the shots.

- i agree with you, all this will be played out within the next 6 months by the upcoming hurricane season, which i fear will be as active as last year's was. either way, there will be one group who will be able to say i told you so. Let me guess...You're hoping it's you. and, the county will be forced into action, and stop sitting on their hands. i for one would welcome some state and federal intervention here. at least the law would be made clear. The law is already clear. Perhaps you're referring to enforcement.

thanks again for your level headed response to the rants. we just have a different opinion.
I don't dispute we're in a "predicament" with everything that''s happened. Again I just don't want people to assume from some of the posts, that all beach front property owners are irresponsible and don't care about our beautiful beach. I believe most of us are doing the best with situation as it is.

Oh yea, thank you!.....and please don't take any response personally as you are not the first to express some of the views that you did.
jr

 

[BlueMtnBeachVagrant]

there must be some wires crossed somewhere.

jr

Imagine that !!

 

[Cheering472]

BMBV

 

[BlueMtnBeachVagrant]

TooFarTampa
Wow, great discussion. I like the point-counterpoint. Everyone is making excellent statements here. All I can hope is show (again) that there are 2+ sides to this issue.

I have no horse in this race but in general I dislike seawalls (as do I) and fear for what they are doing to the dunes (as ecopal pointed out) and what things will look like in the event of another Dennis. However, BMBV made a point that is truer than just about anything in here:

Originally Posted by BlueMtnBeachVagrant
Should a gulf front owner do nothing to protect their property (when authorized to do so)? That makes no sense no matter how hard one would try to argue this otherwise.


The problem is there is no solution here, other than perhaps moving these pre-1985 structures farther back when possible. That is of course impossible to do with the larger condo-type structures. If I were a gulf front owner of a smaller house, I would like to think that I would explore that possibility first. (And some homeowners do this in other areas prone to erosion.) But then I am not so I don't know. BMBV is right in pointing out that the zoning of the beach property by county officials way back then can be blamed for all of this, though at that point the building area was likely a significant distance from the dune line. Hindsight is 20/20.

Actually, in my opinion, the feds and especially the state are to blame for this more so than the county. With all the "historical" information and scientific tools at their disposal, if only 30 years ago, they moved the CCCL line back a couple of hundred feet and then bought out any property owner that was deprived of building a structure on their propery as a result of this, then we would not be where we are today. This concept could have been fine tuned. I persoanlly would have liked to see the entire coast a state or national park. It's not too late if the government were to buy out everyone at "fair market value" via eminent domain. Let's be honest, this won't happen - just too expensive now. All of the above is a topic for another thread.



BMBV, you are as well-reasoned a poster as I can imagine. Thanks. Unfortunately I do not believe every gulf front homeowner has been as thorough as you have been in making your decisions. The bottom line is, many of these are absent homeowners, wanting to do the most expedient thing as Amp22 pointed out, and were willing to just drop their projects into the hands of someone not well-versed either just so things could get done, regulations be dam*ed. I frankly don't see a lot of people doing coastal research and calculations. That's suppose to be the job state licensed engineers (which you are required to have) and state licensed contractors (which the state is suppose to enforce quality and consistency) and other goverment officials who are suppose to enforce the field. It just doesn't happen. (But if you think that "most" are doing what you are doing, I would like to know.) Some owners that are allowed to have retaining walls, have done a crap job regarding construction. Some owners who are pobably not allowed to walls, on the other hand, have done a WONDERFUL job. I truly have mixed emotions on the concept on why certain property owners can protect their property and others can not. Again it's all in the DEP link previously posted.


Personally I would like to have seen one CONTINUOUS wall contstructed from(let's say as an example) Little Red Fish Lake all the way to Draper Lake whose construction was coordinated (and quality mandated) by the county or state and paid for by owners. Then there would be consistency in quality, looks, sand finish, etc. There would be no gaps or weak spots. But of course many of the readers on this thread would oppose this. So now, instead, the result is we have a mish-mash of walls that are of varying heights, depths, quality, material, etc. I at least tried to coordinate several adjacent property owners in one continuous project. I was somewhat successful. But, AS ALWAYS, you have that "cheap bastard" that does it his way to supposedly save a few bucks. Those are the walls that won't survive.


I applaud your efforts and hope things work out for you in the long and short term.
Again thanks!!

 

[Kurt]

Please use the quote feature instead of bold responses, otherwise it can become confusing as to who is responding to what. It also helps folks respond to your responses and keep the dialog going. ;-)

 

[ecopal]

To BMBVagrant,

What are you going to do if your seawall does erode the beach as research/history says it will--hint: saying you are unique again does not answer the question-- are you going to pay to renourish it?

What are you going to do if your seawall does get destroyed and litters the beach with debris? Are you going to pay to clean it up?

What if your wall causes your neighbor's beach and bluff to be scoured resulting in them losing their home, are you going to pay for the damage?

Is it really fair to blame the government for not putting the control line further back? I bet beachfront owners would have fought to the death to stop that from happening. We each have to take some personal responsibility too.

Also, didn't you comprehend the danger of building on the Gulf? I certainly did when I bought here.

 

[TooFarTampa]

I believe that every point ecopal makes is valid. BMBV, I know you are trying to do your best in a very difficult situation, and you seem to be putting forth a good-faith effort, but you lose me when you talk about how one continuous seawall would be ideal. That just sounds like a disaster and once again, would be solely for the benefit of the gulf front structures, because the beach itself would be in danger of disappearing.

I don't think there's anything wrong with looking into a plan where the state or county would buy out owners on an as needed basis, over time. I read in that Tampa Tribune article SJ posted awhile back where someone suggested not just paying the owners but throwing in some interior land as compensation, and that makes sense too, given that there is so much state owned property along and nearby 30-A.

 

[BlueMtnBeachVagrant]

To BMBVagrant,

What are you going to do if your seawall does erode the beach as research/history says it will--hint: saying you are unique again does not answer the question-- are you going to pay to renourish it?

What are you going to do if your seawall does get destroyed and litters the beach with debris? Are you going to pay to clean it up?

What if your wall causes your neighbor's beach and bluff to be scoured resulting in them losing their home, are you going to pay for the damage?

Is it really fair to blame the government for not putting the control line further back? I bet beachfront owners would have fought to the death to stop that from happening. We each have to take some personal responsibility too.

Also, didn't you comprehend the danger of building on the Gulf? I certainly did when I bought here.

Your questions for the most part don't deserve a response.