By Rich Pollack
Highland Beach town leaders and South Florida Water Management District staff think they may have come up with a compromise that could keep plans for a dock serving the town’s police and fire departments from sinking.
Standing in the way of the efforts to build the dock was a determination by the water management district that it needed more information about the town’s effort to mitigate disruption to a small patch of seagrass on the Intracoastal Waterway that the dock would cover.
The district sent back the town’s permit application with a request to provide a plan that would require planting of new seagrass elsewhere and building a structure to pre-treat storm water runoff.
To do what the water district wanted, Town Manager Marshall Labadie said, would have required engineering studies and consultant work that could have added as much as $200,000 to the $2 million project.
Following a meeting late in March, however, the water managers and the town came to a compromise that will allow the town to resubmit its permit request complete with a plan that is more focused on educating boaters about the need to protect seagrass and advocating for that protection.
The plan would no longer require mitigation planting or building an underground stormwater runoff pre-treatment structure.
“We’ve come up with a mitigation strategy that is more reasonable for a public-purpose project,” Labadie said.
As part of its new permit application, the town is proposing putting floating signage in the Intracoastal Waterway near or adjacent to the dock, asking boaters to avoid seagrass beds and limit activities harmful to the vegetation. Those include high speeds and large wakes. In addition, the town will put an educational display in its public library about the important role seagrass has on marine life in Florida, especially federally protected manatees.
Seagrass beds serve as critical feeding grounds for manatees, which can consume up to 100 pounds a day.
Seagrass is an important part of protecting Florida’s natural resources, according to the South Florida Water Management District.
“Seagrasses provide vital habitat and food for many native species,” a spokesman for the agency said.
Labadie said the town will submit a new application that will follow the agreed-upon mitigation plan, which still must be approved. That new plan is in addition to steps the town had already taken to minimize damage to the seagrass.
Those steps, aimed at protecting the 32.6 square feet of low-quality seagrass that would be affected, include reconfiguring the dock’s alignment and using grated decking on the dock to allow light to come through.
In making his case for a less restrictive and less costly mitigation plan, Labadie pointed out that the dock will be used by the town police’s marine patrol unit and by the town’s fire rescue department.
In addition, the dock — specifically designed for public safety use — will be accessible to other law enforcement agencies, including those from Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Town leaders are hoping to receive a grant for about half of the project’s cost from the Florida Inland Navigation District but will need to have the permit from the water management district approved by June 1 to maintain eligibility.
The town is receiving an additional $250,000 from the state to help cover the project’s cost.
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