The existing boardwalk areas of the parks would be
expanded to provide more access to picnic areas and
the mangrove stands. Photo by Jerry Lower
By Steve Plunkett
The county plans to convert an overgrown spoil island in Lake Wyman into a seagrass restaurant for manatees and a picnic site for humans, if enough money can be found.
Rob Robbins, deputy director of the county’s Environmental Resources Management Department, said his staff is “right now in a competitive grant mode” to win $2.1 million from the Florida Inland Navigation District, the taxing body that maintains the Intracoastal Waterway and owns the spoil island.
The project would also need $419,000 in matching money from the county and $419,000 from the city, the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District or some other local source, Robbins said. The county must have state and federal permits in hand to meet FIND’s Sept. 27 application deadline.
“We’ve been moving as quickly as we can to try and qualify for funding,” Robbins told the Boca Raton City Council at its July 25 workshop.
County Commissioner Steven Abrams said residents had asked him to find a way to clean up Lake Wyman Park and neighboring Rutherford Park on the west side of the Intracoastal.
“It was a mess,” Abrams said. “The canoe trails had clogged up, the exotics were taking over, the mangroves were deteriorating. It was even a focal point for some criminal activity.”
The project would remove 11 acres of exotic vegetation, mostly Australian pine and Brazilian pepper, from FIND’s island and two smaller spoil islands created in the 1930s as the Intracoastal was dredged. Then approximately 72,000 cubic yards of spoil material would be excavated to create mangrove and seagrass habitat and maritime hammock. The excavated earth would be spread over Lake Wyman Park to elevate ball fields and reduce flooding.
The FIND island will be scooped out to create a 3.3-acre seagrass basin for manatees to munch on. A dock on the island’s east side will provide six slips for day boaters. Upland areas will have picnic tables and a crushed-rock road for emergency and maintenance vehicles.
About one mile of the canoe trail system would be restored to increase tidal flushing around mangroves and make the trail passable at low tide.
The existing boardwalk would be extended to reach the picnic areas, two beach areas and an observation platform near the shore opposite Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. Robbins tried to allay residents’ concerns that the seagrass would draw manatees too close to boat motors at the day slips.
“So far we haven’t had any negative interactions between boats and manatees at other projects — Ocean Ridge, Juno Beach, some others like it,” he said at an Aug. 16 informational meeting.
The navigation district has seagrass beds at Ocean Ridge and Juno Beach to mitigate possible damage to seagrass during routine dredging of the Intracoastal. The Lake Wyman project would become its south county sanctuary.
Robbins also said the plan had changed to accommodate residents south of the project.
The boat slips at first were planned for the south end, then moved to the eastern side.
After the City Council presentation, the seagrass lagoon and picnic areas were reconfigured to move the access road farther from the neighbors.
Neither the county nor the city has made a presentation to the Beach and Park District yet.
“We’ll hear about it when they need money,” beach-park Commissioner Dirk Smith said.
Assistant City Manager Mike Woika told residents at the Aug. 16 meeting that Boca Raton’s proposed 2012 budget does not have money for Lake Wyman, but said the City Council could change that during hearings in Septem-
ber.
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