Beach permitting: what a waste

Last week’s report about the beach erosion on the southern end of Longboat Key — particularly on the beach fronting the L’Ambiance condominiums — brought into focus once again Longboat Key taxpayers’ never-ending challenge: maintaining the beach and the high cost of doing so.

This is an unavoidable fact of life here. If you want Paradise on earth, you’ll have to pay extra for it.

To be sure, it was eye-opening to read the table delineating the expected itemized costs for beach maintenance for this and the town’s next fiscal year — up to $23.8 million. 

That’s a big number. What makes that dollar amount alarming  is that it is about the same amount taxpayers have paid in previous years for an islandwide beach renourishment. And those typically last about six to seven years, or, if amortized, roughly $4 million a year. 

This time, though, about $20 million of that amount is expected only to address dredging at New Pass and Longboat Pass, completing the installation of groins on the troubled north end of the Key and renourishing hot spots at mid-Key and on the south end.

Dig a little deeper into the itemized costs, and you’ll see another cost that seems even more alarming. The town is projecting to spend $10 million hauling sand by truck if … if protests and objections to the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers delay renourishing and the installation of groins.

And that brings us to the crux of this issue: the byzantine, costly, inefficient permitting process. 

It needs dramatic change. At the state and federal levels.

Just in the past two decades, Longboat Key taxpayers have spent millions of dollars in town staff time, lawyers fees and engineering fees attempting to comply with all of the regulatory demands of the state Department of Environmental Regulation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for permits to perform beach projects that everyone knows must be done every five to eight years.

Sure, there must be a process for vetting and considering opposition to such projects. But the time the process takes is like watching a tree grow — with seemingly no one in the state or federal agencies incentivized to work with a sense of urgency.

Case in point: Two persistent opponents to Longboat Pass dredging are former Town Commissioner Gene Jaleski and former Manatee County Commissioner Joe McClash. They have filed challenges with the Army of Corps of Engineers in an attempt to stop the dredging of Longboat Pass in the past.

This likely will add months to the permitting process. In fact, no one ever really knows how long it will take the Corps of Engineers or state officials to conduct their public hearings, review testimony and evidence and render decisions. But with each passing day, the waves from the Gulf of Mexico erode the beach and increase the cost of protecting taxpayers’ property. More time equals more cost.

And in this case, to make matters worse, in the event permitting is delayed, the Town Commission is prepared to spend $10 million to haul sand by truck. That shows how serious the town staff and Town Commission regard the threat to property if permitting is delayed.

This is crazy. Longboat Key Public Works Director Juan Florensa told the Longboat Observer the town is doing everything it can to get sand as quickly as it can for the southern end of the Key. He expects it by the summer of 2016!

All of this points to two places that can change the process— the Legislature and Congress. Speeding up beach permitting for the affluent town of Longboat Key isn’t likely to register high on the agendas of our representatives, Rep. Jim Boyd in the Legislature and Congressman Vern Buchanan. But this problem isn’t isolated to Longboat Key. 

Beach erosion occurs across the entire state of Florida and along all of the U.S. coast lines. Think of the millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars that are washed away annually in the never-ending tides of government bureaucracy. Ten million dollars to haul sand by truck — what a bureaucracy-driven waste.