None of the Beach Restorations Post Ivan, Dennis, or Katrina Created any New Publicly Accessible Beaches on Perdido Key.....

According to our staff from environmental and also from our County Attorney's Office.

See the latest opinions from just this morning, below.

From the county attorney's office:

Commissioner:

 I agree with Tim’s opinion that public beach access was not created by the use of public funding to construct the emergency berm on Perdido Key following Hurricanes Ivan and Dennis.

 As you know, the boundary between private land and sovereign state land is the mean high-water line (MHWL).  It may help expand on Tim’s email to provide a brief explanation of how the MHWL is established and how it moves over time.

 The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration maintains series of water level monitoring stations off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico that measure the changes in the tides.  The tides are influenced by the moon, and the mean high-water level is calculated as the rolling average of the high tides over a 19-year period (which is one lunar cycle).  The intersection of the horizontal projection of the mean high-water level and the coastline forms the MHWL.

 As I mentioned in my earlier email, the MHWL moves as gradual imperceptible changes occur with the tidal average and the natural movement of the coastline through processes of erosion and accretion.  However, the MHWL does not change due to avulsion.  Avulsion is the sudden or perceptible loss or addition of land along the coastline; hurricanes and beach renourishment projects are considered avulsive events.  So, although the hurricanes may have perceptibly caused the beach to recede north, the MHWL remained in the same place after the hurricanes as it was the day before.  Accordingly, the renourishment projects that restored the emergency berm north of the MHWL on Perdido Key placed sand on private property, and it remained private property after the completion of the project.

 

Perdido Gate Part VII: The McCormack Files

I am told this photograph that was forwarded to me by citizen Michael McCormack was taken at Perdido Key post Hurricane Ivan when a large project was undertaken to renourish the dunes.  

Escambia County citizen and Perdido Key public beach access champion Michael McCormack has sent me a trove of additional documents and files on his research of the issues of public access of Perdido Key's beaches.  I am going to link them all here in this post.  In his emails  to me, he sends lots of different files, .pdf's and powerpoints.  In one of his emails, he asks the following interesting and compelling question:

"Jeff, I also question whether the so called “dune restoration” was not renourishment in fact. Look at the pictures in this report after Ivan, there was not a dune in sight and looks like wet sand all the way to the destroyed buildings. So how is that not renourishment when sand is dredged from the Intracoastal Canal by the ACOE, trucked to the beach then spread out in order to build a sandy beach portion back for the property owners up and down the entire Perdido Key beach line?"

I've spoken to staff on this and have been told that the renourishment was simply a dune restoration.  But if the whole beach was washed out after the storm and all the new sand reclaimed what was once there and re-established the beach--what is that called?

Check out all of his documents here.  It might be that these generate additional comments, questions, and concerns?

The McCormack Files  

Hurricane Ivan Damage Report

 

Beach Renourishment at Pensacola Beach.....Of Course it is Going to Continue!

In this evening's article in the PNJ-the issue of beach renourishment is hung out as something that is potentially on the BCC's chopping block.  This is not true.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

This is fear-mongering that is unneccessary and unproductive.

First of all, there is no movement afoot to make all leases 100 year leases.  There is a movement afoot to standardize the lease renewal language as these properties come forward to be renewed, as I discussed at multiple meetings and here.

The initiative goes like this:  When a property is brought in for a lease renewal to the SRIA we propose that the tenant decide what type of lease they want going forward, one with renewals that are automatic in perpetuity---or---leases that are 99 years in length and that require renegotiation upon expiration. 

The perpetual leases are taxable, so if that option is selected upon renewal by the lessee, the property would be subject to ad valorem taxation on both the land and the improvements. 

Conversely, if the lessee selected a lease that requires renegotiation upon expiration--the land portion of that leasehold would not be subject to ad valorem taxation going forward (But the land portion would be subject to a lease fee, which we would set at a market rate and index for inflation in the document)

One or the other--it would be at the option of the lessee.

This is to avoid another catastrophically bad renewal of a high value beach property's lease for a price that takes the taxpayers of Escambia county to the cleaners.  We had one of those recently (Beach Club) which has spurred this entire initiative in order to prevent such a poor treatment of taxpayers going forward.

Meanwhile, the SRIA is not going anywhere, and even if they did, that renourishment function would just be funded with a different pot of money.  Just like Beach Public Works and Lifeguards are funded with a different funding source now that the BCC has taken those functions over. 

This is because we value the beach, we understand the value of the beach, and we will fund important aspects of the Beach whether it comes from our authority (SRIA) or the BCC itself.

And to say otherwise is reckless speculation.