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CAC Minutes 09/06/2001 RSeptember 6, 2001 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE COASTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE Marco Island, Florida, September 6, 2001 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Coastal Advisory Committee, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 1:31 p.m. In REGULAR SESSION at Frank E. Mackle, Jr., Community Park, Marco Island, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: Gary Galleberg David Roellig William Kroeschell Robert B. Stakich James L. Snediker Anthony P. Pires, Jr. Robert Gray Ashley D. Lupo John P. Strapponi ALSO PRESENT: Roy Anderson, Public Utilities Engineering Department Harry Huber, Public Utilities Engineering Department Jon C. Staiger, Ph.D., City of Naples Natural Resources Manager Page 1 NOTICE OF PUBLIC MEETING NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN OF A REGULAR MEETING OF THE COASTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE AT FRANK E. MACKLE, JR. COMMUNITY PARK, 1361 ANDALUSIA TERRACE, MARCO ISLAND, FL 34145 AT 1:30 P.M. ON SEPTEMBER 6, 2001 followed by beach visits at South Access to Marco Beach (Swallow Ave. parking), Tigertail Beach (Tigertail Beach parking), and Hideaway Beach (Beach Drive parking). o 6. 7. 8. AGENDA Roll Call Additions to Agenda Old Business a. Approval of Minutes for August 2, 2001 b. Presentation by Bob Devlin / Storm Surge maps c. Discussion of potential TDC land purchase - J'acqueline Hubbard- Robinson d. Presentation by Ken Humiston / Hideaway Beach Offshore Sand Study e. Status of Clam Pass Dredging project New Business a. Discussion of Tigertail Beach health warnings b. Discussion of draft FL DEP Consent Order concerning rocks on the beach c. Presentation of proposals for coastal engineering services d. Presentation of sand samples from RFP for Production of Beach Sand e. Discussion of beach renourishment priorities Audience Participation Field Trip Procedures Schedule next meeting Adjournment ADDITIONALLY, THIS NOTICE ADVISED THAT, IF A PERSON DECIDES TO APPEAL ANY DECISION MADE BY THE COASTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE, WITH RESPECT TO ANY MATTER CONSIDERED AT THIS MEETING, HE WILL NEED A RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS AND THAT FOR SUCH PURPOSE, HE MAY NEED TO ENSURE THAT A VERBATIM RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS IS MADE, WHICH RECORD INCLUDES THE TESTIMONY AND EVIDENCE UPON WHICH THE APPEAL IS TO BE BASED. September 6, 2001 (The proceedings commenced with Ms. Lupo and Mr. Strapponi not present.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Welcome, everybody, to the September 6th, 2001, meeting of the Coastal Advisory Commission. Let's start by having the members of the commission introduce themselves by way of calling the roll. We'll start with Mr. Roellig. MR. ROELLIG: David Roellig, Collier County. MR. KROESCHELL: Bill Kroeschell, City of Naples. MR. STAKICH: Bob Stakich, Marco Island. MR. SNEDIKER: Jim Snediker, Marco Island. MR. PIRES: Tony Pires, Collier County. MR. GRAY: Bob Gray, City of Naples. I'm Gary Galleberg, City of CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Naples. Mr. Anderson. MR. ANDERSON: Yes. I'm Roy Anderson, director of engineering for Collier County Utilities. The first item on the agenda would be if there are any additions to the agenda this afternoon by any of the committee members. MR. SNEDIKER: I have some pictures I've passed around to most of the committee that I'd like to discuss for about a minute and a half sometime during the meeting. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. I'd like to add -- it's not an addition to the agenda, but I have a conflict. And should this meeting extend beyond four o'clock, I'll have to leave at four or a few minutes earlier than that. And in that case Mr. Roellig, of course, would take over. MR. ANDERSON: Basically what we wanted to do today is to have a meeting, and we'd like to try to keep the overall meeting to about an hour or so because we have an active field program afterwards to see several sites as part of our field process. So we -- Page 2 September 6, 2001 we are going to -- I would ask -- we have a number of items to cover on the agenda today, so I would ask for brevity on the part of the speakers if at all possible so that we can try to stay with our schedule. I think you'll find that most of the items on the meeting today are primarily for information of the -- of the committee, and I don't think we've got any actual decisions that we were pressed to -- to make other than, of course, the approval of the minutes. But there -- so I just -- you know, in terms of characterizing the meeting today, it's going to be -- you'll be getting a lot of information, and, you know, it'll be primarily for your consideration. And please feel free to, you know, make suggestions about priorities or, you know, things we're working on, and then we can incorporate that in. So without further ado, I guess the next item would be the old business, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. The first thing, Item 3-A, the approval of the minutes, do any of the members have any comments or clarifications? MR. PIRES' Tony Pires for the record. On page 8 in the eighth line down, I think the -- it talks about the phrase "natural literal processes." I think it's probably intended to be littoral, which would be 1-i-t-t-o-r-a-1. And then in the beginning of the fourth full paragraph, I think Ken Humiston reflected -- it's indicated the word "conceptionally." I think he probably meant conceptually. And those would just be my two suggestions for changes, both on page 8. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Anyone else? MR. SNEDIKER: Also on page 8 at the very bottom, it says "at Sound Point." I think that should be South Point. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. MR. SNEDIKER: And then on page 33 in the second paragraph about the middle, it says "and one at Lower Marco Point." I believe that should be Royal Marco Way. Page 3 September 6, 2001 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Mr. Roellig. MR. ROELLIG: On page 3 about midsection, we'd like to -- the phrase is -- relates to FEMA, F-E-M-A, club map. It should be flood map. It should be flood instead of club. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. And I, too, have two small changes. One is page 43 near the top, end of the second line. The phrase "political ends" should be political winds. And on page 46 there's simply a place where the computer put a period in the middle of a sentence. I suggest that we all hand our changes to the court reporter so they can be dealt with in the proper manner. So then we have a motion -- before we do a motion -- before we take the motion, one more of our members has arrived. Ashley, if you wouldn't mind stating for the record that you're here, and ihen the public will also be able to -- MS. LUPO: Ashley Lupo. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And you're from Marco Island; right? MS. LUPO: Marco Island. MR. PIRES: Mr. Chairman, I would make a motion to approve the minutes as amended to reflect the changes suggested by the committee members. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Do we have a second? MR. STAKICH: Second. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: When we vote, given the informal setup today, why don't we raise our hand as we vote. those in favor say aye. (Unanimous response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Item 3-B, Mr. Anderson. All Opposed? Passes unanimously. Page 4 September 6, 2001 MR. ANDERSON: Yes. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, at the last meeting there was an interest expressed on having Mr. Devlin from FEMA, I believe, to come here and speak with us about the flood maps. So we have been successful in arranging for him to be here so we can have a -- a brief presentation, hopefully, of the program. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And, also, I know Mr. Devlin, and he knows a lot about FEMA, but I don't think he is FEMA. MR. DEVLIN: That's correct. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Mr. Devlin's from the City of Naples. MR. DEVLIN: I work for the City of Naples. I do the community rating system, as well as all the county, city, and Marco Island too. We also do the -- the -- I'm the FEMA coordinator for the city, plus I'm in the process of doing an ordinance for property maintenance and construction site management and so forth, so there's a lot of different things I do. This is just one of the things. And just to kick things off, we started talking with FEMA in 1998 when we received the flood maps from them. Their flood insurance rate maps, and what they are used for is for determining -- they're used by contractors, and they're used by the insurance industry. They're used by Realtors. Anybody that comes into the various communities needs to look at the flood insurance rate map to determine what flood zone they're in or if they're not in a flood zone. So in 1998 FEMA proposed some drastic changes in the flood zones. We have been using the 1986 map for several years now and continue to use it while we are negotiating with FEMA. When we began looking at the maps, we found that many of the -- there were many inaccuracies with regards to streets. They had part of the county inside the city. And so -- and then we looked at the county's portion of it. We noticed that the streets weren't named Page 5 September 6, 2001 correctly and so forth. So with that in mind, we formed a committee. And the committee was comprised of contractors, engineers, architects, county workers, city workers, and representatives from Marco Island as well. With that in mind, we wanted to get-- to find out how all of our community was impacted, whether it was from the building industry side, how much folks' insurance rates would go up. So -- and I think we pretty much have an answer to most questions that come up regarding that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I just want to interrupt for a moment to say that John Strapponi, who's our ninth member has just arrived, and that means that all the committee members are present. MR. STRAPPONI: I apologize, Mr. Chairman, for being late. MR. DEVLIN: So what we did in -- because we had -- there were many issues that were not resolved with the maps, we asked FEMA to come down and to visit us in the City of Naples, and we had a joint meeting with the city and the county in May of 1999. And we met with the study contractor, met with the members of FEMA's Atlanta office, and they gave us an overview of why they made the changes that they did. After that meeting we were totally confused about -- from that study contractor and decided to proceed and get a second opinion. And we -- South Florida Water Management suggested that we use Dick Thomasello (phonetic) of Thomasello Consulting Engineers. He was the contractor that rebutted FEMA in 1984 for Lee County and Collier County as well. We thought, well, there's the man. He's one of the major experts, and we asked if he would consider being our study contractor. So then that required us to get some funding. I asked South Florida Water Management if they would consider funding that project, and that was denied. So we ended up going to the City of Page 6 September 6, 2001 Naples council, Collier County Board of County Commissioners, and Marco Island, and that was September of 1999. And at that time they agreed to form an interlocal agreement to fund our study contractor, Dick Thomasello's, review of the maps. So he was officially brought on board in November of'99, and from that time up until September of 2000, we met with FEMA with conference calls. We even made a trip to Atlanta, which was Ed Perico from the county, myself, and Ken Pineau, as well as Stan Chrzanowski, who worked for the county too. So that was -- there were some issues with -- they were including the new maps in NAVD, which is the North American Vertical Data; and we asked that that -- the maps be included in NGV, which is National Geodate Vertical Data, as well. So we did accomplish some things on our trip to Atlanta, and they realized the inaccuracies they made in the general map itself, which brings out the issues -- the technical issues that were our major concerns. So in our meetings with FEMA from November of'99 till September 2000, our study contractor would raise many issues, and it would take several weeks or months for FEMA to get back to us. So consequently, it was more or less -- it wasn't something where they could say, "Oh, gee, we'll pull it from our files, and we'll fax it over to you." That wasn't the situation. What their study contractor did was, he did the calculations that probably should have been done before. So consequently, we're very close to the appeal process, and FEMA's prepared for all the questions that our study contractor had asked over that period of time. So in September of last year, there was a meeting, and our study contractor-- we conducted a conference call with FEMA, and Dick Thomasello made an excellent presentation. And Doug Bellamo (phonetic) from FEMA Washington decided that there was a possibility that our study contractor may have some pretty good Page 7 September 6, 2001 information to provide to the methodology used on the flood maps. And at the end of the meeting he said that "I think with what I've heard today, I think we can put this in a nice little bundle for Collier County, and we could settle this issue." I have to admit that our committee was astonished to hear something like that and -- however, that was very short-lived. About a week later I got a call from Doug, and he said he had decided to get a second opinion with another one of his other study contractors. So that contractor was retained in February of this year, and they said it would take, like, six to eight weeks to complete their study. We ended up getting the results of the study in June, and his -- his results mirrored the original study contractor from FEMA. So we thought, well, that's just another nail in the casket for us. So at that point the committee had no choice but to look for other ways to -- to get FEMA's attention. And so what we did was we got ahold of Representative Goodlette. We met with him, our committee and our study contractor, and our contractor made a wonderful presentation. And Dudley went to Porter Goss in Washington. And so from that, Porter Goss is working with FEMA, and we're hoping to resolve the flood map issue. However, if that does not work, we will have to go through the appeal process and -- which is a 90-day appeal period. They had originally said -- "they," meaning FEMA, had originally said that they were going to advertise in the Naples Daily News probably, they said, the second week in August. As of this -- as of yesterday they have not advertised as yet, so that's good news. No news is good news. So, meanwhile, Thomasello's preparing for his rebuttal to FEMA, if that does occur, unless something else happens that FEMA agrees with our-- with what Thomasello wants to do. So that's pretty much where we are right now in the flood maps. Page 8 September 6, 2001 And I have the maps here from the county, what the county folks, their GIS people, put together, the existing elevations, as compared to what is proposed by FEMA. Also our GIS department in the city put a color-coded map together, and I'll be happy to -- if you want to get up and look at these maps, you're welcome to do that. Time may not provide -- you know, you may not be able to do that because of time. But if you wish to do that and discuss some of the issues, I'll be happy to do that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Any questions? MR. ROELLIG: Well, I was -- the reason I raised this, I was interested in some of the differences as far as storm surge, wave differences, that sort of thing. I don't know if you-- MR. DEVLIN: The issues that were -- MR. ROELLIG: -- want to spend a lot of time on that but -- MR. DEVLIN: Well, keep in mind, I'm not an engineer or a technical person. But the main issues were still-water elevations, wave setup magnitude, and inland penetration of wave setup, as well as the -- there's a storm -- what they were doing was they categorize -- when they do the storm analysis, they do 150-mile radius. So if there's a storm over in Miami, that's computed on -- that's used to determine -- as part of the technology that's used for the study, for our study. If it's something that's going on in the Keys, that's within 150-mile radius. That's also used. MR. ROELLIG: So would the storm surge be the same in Miami as here? Do they make a difference? MR. DEVLIN: No, not the storm -- that has -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: But the short layman's answer is, also, that they are taking East Coast data and applying it here, and it doesn't make any sense. They're more exposed on the East Coast. This is a big problem for everyone. And I've called it before a federally mandated scam, which is what I believe it is, because you Page 9 September 6, 2001 really have no -- unlike other insurance, you don't have a choice whether to take it or not. The amount of property covered, the price for covering it, and the height -- if you're near the coastline, the height your dwelling or business has to be is forever getting worse and worse. And obviously we could have a bad hurricane, but we have this tracking data that nothing is happening, and every time around it gets worse and worse and worse. It's a serious problem for Collier County in general. There's going to be much more coverage of who has to get this insurance and how much it will cost people. If you're nearer the coastline in the City of Naples, for example, or in Marco Island, you have that mandatory hit. But perhaps more importantly is as high as the houses have to be built now, they've got to be built even higher. We're going to be living like monkeys by the time they're done, and we need to try to fight and put a stop to this. MR. DEVLIN: Some of the elevations will -- in the VE zones -- and I want to -- it's important that I mention this, that we've done some very close checking and that our VE zone will increase in the city. There's currently about 50 properties in that zone now. It will increase to more than 600 properties. And what that will do, that will increase the cost of construction with the additional cost of the building itself, as well as the engineered foundations and breakaway walls. We're looking at between 50,000 and $60,000 per home in the City of Naples. Also, they're eliminating the X zones in the city -- there's more than 300 of those -- and increasing the AE zone there. MR. ROELLIG: I'm not familiar with the letters. MR. DEVLIN: The VE zone is the velocity zone right on the coast, right on the beach area. That would be -- if there was an event, the minimum would be 3-feet-high waves and so forth. The AE zone is the second zone inland as you go, the A meaning behind the -- the Page 10 September 6, 2001 AE -- E standing for elevation. MR. ROELLIG: Right. Okay. Well, I don't want to take up a lot of people's time if they -- I don't know how-- if there's reports from your consultant on this. MR. DEVLIN: Yes. What he did was -- first he made -- he more or less questioned what FEMA has done in those areas as of still-water elevations, wave setup magnitude, and propagation inland of water, those issues; plus he's in the process of coming up with his own calculations of what he thinks the elevations should be in the city and in the county, but not necessarily Marco Island. I'm not sure that Marco Island disagrees with FEMA on theirs. I think there was an area that was increased -- the VE zone was increased on Residents Beach from Cape Marco all the way up to South Seas. I'm not real familiar with that. I just got some information from Darrell March, who is on our committee, and he's very familiar with Marco Island. Also, there's some areas along the river that the elevations went down by a foot. But keep in mind the change from NGVD to NAVD is 1.3 feet. So if it went down a foot, it actually probably went up a tenth of a foot or something like that. MR. PIRES: For the record, Tony Pires. Bob, I guess from a standpoint of some of the technical data that was utilized by this -- I'll call it the local government's consortium. The fact that we have these renourished beaches as well as these additional areas, did that help assist in providing input into the data to show that there should not be an increase in the base flood elevations in the E zone and/or not increase the number of properties covered by the E zone? So I'm wondering, do those beach renourishment projects assist and help? MR. DEVLIN: We had hoped that it would, but when we spoke with our study contractor and FEMA, they said that had no influence on it at all. However, I think it does in general because if we do get hit by a storm, the fact that the beach is probably higher, it would be Page 11 September 6, 2001 better for the community. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: The game here is mandatory rules, and more people have to pay more in premiums. And then on another track they impose mandatory rules, and they don't have to pay anything out. I mean, you can't guarantee that they don't, but it's highly unlikely. It's a scam, and we need to stand up and fight. MR. DEVLIN: The entire community has spent -- has sent over $200 million to FEMA in the last 15 or 18 years, something like that. And I think there's been $2 1/2 million in loss that FEMA has paid back. So we consider that we're like a donor community to their program. MR. GRAY: If I understand this right, then, what's going on here is that you -- through your office you are fighting it, or we are fighting it through your office. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Correct. MR. GRAY: It's an ongoing thing. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: The City of Naples and Collier County, by direction of the commissioners and the city council, have instructed the staff to get together, work together, and do what's necessary to fight them in court. Anything else? I don't want to cut anyone off, but we do want to keep in mind that -- MR. SNEDIKER: Regarding Marco Island, is Marco Island not cooperating with you or-- MR. DEVLIN: Well, they've more or less taken the position that they're pretty happy with some of the elevations. I think the biggest issue is that VE zone near Residents Beach. Keep in mind that I think that was once an AE zone, will be a VE zone. And I don't know how that will impact the insurance there for those folks. What they're saying is -- FEMA says if there's a break in the insurance, then it would revert to the higher cost. So here you had -- you built a Page 12 September 6, 2001 structure in an AE; it changes to a VE, which is a higher elevation. And so then that could be -- there could be a strong chance that those folks there could pay more for insurance. MR. PIRES: Just one other question or comment on that too. It's my understanding, as Gary indicated and you sort of alluded to, Bob, that it's not just insurance premiums. It's methods and matters of construction, so that anybody in an existing AE zone, if I understand it, if there is substantial destruction to their facility or building, if they need to rebuild, if they are now in a -- or will be in a VE zone, there are completely different construction techniques and standards that will make it much more expensive, maybe even higher elevation above the existing grade. So we have a substantial number of issues. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That is correct. Anything else? DR. STAIGER: In a community like Naples where you have so much redevelopment going on in -- in the coastal -- well, all over town, if the -- if a VE zone moves inland a block or an AE goes from 12 to 13 and somebody demolishes a house, the new construction has to be at that new base flood elevation. And in some cases in Naples, that means 5 or 6 feet above present grade or higher and -- which creates stormwater runoff problems for the neighbors and all kinds of things. But in the VE zone area, it's got to be higher, and it's going to have to have different structural support underneath it because it has to be able to withstand a storm surge going, you know, under, around, and through kind of thing. And it means a lot more construction costs and, in some cases, even more disruption to the neighborhoods with these huge things sticking way up in the air next to houses that are almost at grade. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Incidentally, that was Dr. Jon Staiger. He's the director of natural resources for the City of Naples. Page 13 September 6, 2001 MR. PIRES: Mr. Chairman, I just-- I understand you have time constraints today, but is there anything that this committee can do or any projects down the road that the contractors for the city, the cou. nty, and the City of Marco Island can identify could be of some assistance to be persuasive in -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: The beach maintenance-- as Mr. Devlin said earlier, the big beach maintenance projects, you know, one of the -- there's an aesthetic or recreational benefit that's easy to see, but there also should be a benefit in that you create a buffer if you have storm surges. And you would think that that would flow through to these calculations and at least at this stage in the game, it really isn't. I think what we can do from the standpoint of this committee is to be aware of it now that it has been brought to everyone's attention and to have it in your mind. And to the extent you discuss things with your neighbors and friends concerning our coastal activities, to let people know. You know, it's not a case where we need to get out there with pitchforks necessarily, but they need to know the fight's going on. And they need to know that, in my view at least -- I'll speak personally -- we're being taken advantage of in Collier County and up north in Lee County as well. MR. DEVLIN: There were several neighborhood associations that -- that put out letters, newsletters, to their residents and so forth. And, like Mr. Galleberg mentioned, there was a formal resolution passed by city council and by the county commissioners as well. If you wanted to help, possibly a letter to Porter Goss would be helpful or Dudley Goodlette. I think that would go a long way. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think it would be helpful. We're fortunate they're both terrific representatives, I think. Porter Goss is the U.S. Congressman, of course, for all of us. It's a federal program, so a letter to either is helpful, but Mr. Goss is really in Washington, Page 14 September 6, 2001 and that's the source of the problem -- not Mr. Goss, but the FEMA agency in Washington. MR. GRAY: I'm wondering if a letter from this committee to Mr. Goss might be helpful. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think perhaps it would. MR. DEVLIN: I think so. MR. GRAY: I would propose that we have an appropriately worded letter sent to him, signed by the chairman, I suppose. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. We'll take that as a motion. Do we have a second? MR. KROESCHELL: I'll second. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: All in favor? (Unanimous response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Passes unanimously. And Mr. Anderson and staff and I will then work on developing that letter in the next couple weeks. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. Very good. MR. STRAPPONI: I have one question. We certainly appreciate your advising us and bringing us up to speed on this situation. I don't know what impact this committee can have on it other than getting a letter to Mr. Goss. My question is, what else can this committee do? Anything? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, I think, quite frankly, the letters are a good idea, and the different governmental bodies and agencies speaking out, you know, can make an impact. But clearly we don't have any direct influence in the sense that we can flip a switch somewhere. It's a case of lobbying and trying to get the facts out as we see them and having our representatives ultimately stick up for us. Page 15 September 6, 2001 MR. PIRES: Tony Pires for the record. Perhaps, possibly, I think as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, during the course of this committee's review of various projects, keep that in the back of the minds for the engineers or the consultants to the county and this committee so not only does beach renourishment play a positive aspect to the recreational perspective, but also could assist in storm surge protection and providing a greater expanse to dissipate energy. Those are some factors that should be involved in our recommendations to the county commissioners for funding for projects. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think that's true. And to the extent they help, we can be alleviating a hidden cost, which effectively makes the cost of whatever we might be trying to do less than it seems. If we're going to save, you know, in the private sector on insurance costs and things like that. Okay. Thank you. Are we going to do 3-C, Mr. Anderson? MR. ANDERSON: Yes, we are. Well, let's see. Jacqueline Robinson was scheduled to be here. MS. EICHHORN: MR. ANDERSON: She had a meeting. Okay. She had a meeting? MS. EICHHORN: She had a meeting this morning. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I didn't see her so -- MR. HOVELL: Ron Hovell with Collier County Public Utilities. I can address the issue. I know it was raised at the last meeting. I think someone had asked the question, is there some land purchase that's being considered for TDC funds? And the potential, therefore, for impact to the coastal budget, I think, was really kind of the issue. Our last meeting was on August 2nd. On August 17th there was an article in the Naples Daily News titled "Complaint Filed Over Barefoot Beach Preserve Reversal," and that is the parcel of property Page 16 September 6, 2001 in question. It's approximately 1.7 acres sort of in the middle -- or probably exactly in the middle of the Barefoot Beach Preserve that belongs to the state and the county as a -- I'm not sure if "lease" is the right word, but some type of agreement with the state to operate it. I think if you got a chance to read the article, you'll see that the current owner is suing the county for reversing their decision, and so there's a lot of details, I'm sure, in there. But the bottom line is this is the parcel of property. And regardless of the lawsuit, the second question is, can or should TDC-appropriated money be used for this purpose? I think the part that Jackie was going to address if she was here is that this issue's been around for quite some time. She was asked to develop a county attorney position and ultimately send that to the state attorney general for their opinion. The opinion back from the state attorney general was that it would be an appropriate use of TDC funds to purchase that property. And I think those are about the only facts I have at hand, other than that between parks and rec and the county's attorney's office, they're continuing to try to negotiate with the owner as well as pursue other grant funding besides the TDC funding. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And then at the prior meeting, there was some discussion, I believe, that -- response to questions came from Colonel Mudd with the county, that I think this committee will want to have clarification on let's say the purchase goes forward, let's say TDC funds are used, how that -- and there are different classifications of TDC fund money -- and how that might effect the funds at the disposal for matters that this committee considers, because if there is a material effect, while we're an advisory body, we may want to weigh in with the commissioners on our view of that purchase vis-a-vis other expenditures. MR. PIRES: Is it possible to have a copy of that for the Page 17 September 6, 2001 members of the committee just so that we can see what the -- MR. HOVELL: I can ask Jackie. MR. PIRES: I can always go on-line and find it but -- MR. ANDERSON: Would it be your pleasure to have the attorney come back next meeting for any discussion? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We'll leave it up to you as to who makes the presentation. I think the essence of what we want to fully understand is to revisit those different fund classes, the A, B, and C, if that's the moniker, and to understand where this money would potentially come from and whether that is the same pool of money that we address the use of. MS. EICHHORN: Mr. Chairman, I can answer that. Jane Eichhorn for the record. Category C -- A where the beach money comes out of, this is where the land would be acquired from. Category B is advertising, promotion, and special events. Category C is museums, and there's a D fund which is for piers, fishing pier or city pier. But the majority for acquisition of land would come from Category A. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: But then -- and correct me if I'm wrong because I don't have the sheet here, and I don't remember the details -- even within Category A, aren't there sort of subclasses where half a penny goes into -- MS. EICHHORN: One hundred percent -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: -- respective uses and another portion goes into-- MS. EICHHORN: We've changed that with the amended ordinance when we did the percentage change a few months ago. 100 percent of the 1 percent initially was for just beach renourishment and certain items. We've mirrored what the 2 percent use is to the 1 percent use, so they would be exactly the same for beach renourishment, beach park facilities, acquisition, dredging. Page 18 September 6, 2001 The 100 percent of the 1 cent and 50 percent of the 2 cents for Category A are exactly the same now. There's no difference. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. And then Category A, a purchase of this property, would, all things equal, impact the money available -- MS. EICHHORN: It would -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: -- for renourishment and dredging and so forth? MS. EICHHORN: The purchase of this land would come from the money from the date the ordinance was approved, from then forward. They could use the 2 percent money, but from the date the 1 percent became available for the uses for Category A, all the uses for Category A, then they could use that money. But prior to that -- like, the reserves, 1 percent of that could not be used. And that would be a Jackie question. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. And one final question, from me at least. If the property's purchased, would it be -- could it be mortgaged and -- or would it be paid for in cash out of the TDC money? We probably don't have the cash to pay it. MS. EICHHORN: They have -- there's a large sum in reserves. But, again, if we're using a portion of the 1 percent, it only could go forward from the date that the amended ordinance was changed, so it -- I don't know. Maybe Ron could-- MR. HOVELL: I was just going to ask you, Jackie (sic), if you don't mind me kind of putting you on the spot, what's your estimate of large reserves? Because as the new fund manager, I've been trying to get my hands around that, and I have no opinion what I think that number is. MS. EICHHORN: Well, from -- and we can get together on the number, but it's over $10 million. MR. HOVELL: I would -- I would offer that a lot of what we Page 19 September 6, 2001 think are reserves are actually earmarked for -- MS. EICHHORN: Yes. Absolutely. MR. HOVELL: -- the Vanderbilt Beach parking garage and the Lake Trafford restoration. MS. EICHHORN: Yes. We have projects out there that have been board approved but have not been started. MR. HOVELL: Right. MS. EICHHORN: And what Ron and I talked about today was going through those projects, the list that I have, and identifying what projects are not going to be completed or started, and then that will free up money in reserves. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Anything else? I would suggest, then, that we put it on a furore agenda. I don't think we should make that decision on the fly today. But see if the committee has a position and whether the committee desires to correspond to the county commissioners on how we feel about that. MR. PIRES: Mr. Chairman, I think it would be helpful for the next meeting to have more definitive numbers and have any conflict resolved as to the reserves, what parts are, quote, unquote, encumbered, what parts are really free reserves. I think that would be helpful for this committee and for the staff to have that very, very clear so we could have a better-- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Yeah. We should have that information but for the need to, you know, do this before it's a moot point. I don't know if it has to be next meeting. I want to give the staff time to gather complete information for us to decide. If the commission's about to take action, clearly we'll have to do something, if anything, before that happens. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. Very good. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. I believe that concludes the TDC item. Page 20 September 6, 2001 Next we have a presentation by Ken Humiston from Humiston & Moore. MR. HUMISTON: Ken Humiston with Humiston & Moore Engineers. We completed a feasibility study for the use of sand from the ebb tidal shoals in Big Marco and Capri Pass. This study was the first step in looking at the possible use of sand from those areas, specifically because there are some environmental jurisdictions in that area. And we wanted to find out if those jurisdictions would preclude the use of' sand from those shoals before recommending that the county go forward and spend any other money on geotechnical investigations or actually getting into the design phase. The jurisdictions I'm talking about are the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, is the title, and the recently designated critical habitat area for the piping plover, which is down on Sand Dollar Island. And exhibits identifying those boundaries are in the report that I believe has been passed out to the members of the committee. What we found out is that with Rookery Bay staff, they are more concerned with whether or not there are any specific environmental resources such as grass beds or hard bottom reef areas that would be affected by the activity than they are with where their boundary is and whether or not any of the sand source areas we're looking at would encroach on that boundary. We also mapped out the piping plover critical habitat area and consulted with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service that has jurisdiction over that. We got concurrence that the area that we've been showing in our report is consistent with their designation. We could not really get them to commit one way or another about how they would respond to a permit that would remove sand from that area. But we did focus our study area on places that we would look to for further evaluation of sand for beach nourishment at some distance from the Page 21 September 6, 2001 piping plover habitat. We believe that with the relatively small amount of sand that we're looking for in comparison to the overall size of the shoal, that that amount of sand could be taken from the inlet shoal system without adversely affecting the piping plover habitat. Complete resolution of that issue would have to be done during the permitting process. We've recommended, as the next stage in this, to answer the questions raised by the Rookery Bay people, which would be to determine if there are any grass beds or hard bottom reef areas that could be affected. It's actually pretty unlikely that there are those types of resources in the vicinity of these shoals because it's a high energy area. It's very dynamic. The sand shifts around, and it would tend to cover or not provide a stable substrate for those kind of biological communities to grow on. But in order to determine for certain that there are no such resources in there, that would require a site scan survey, some biological transects with divers, underwater photography to map out that area in detail. And that would be the next step in determining whether or not sand could be mined from this area for beach restoration. MS. LUPO: Their concerns with the sea grass beds, are those concerns with where the sand is coming from or also concerns with where the sand is going? MR. HUMISTON: It would be both. But their primary concern would be where the sand is coming from or in very close proximity to where the sand is going to be placed. MS. LUPO: My understanding is there are sea grass beds where the sand is proposed to go along Hideaway Beach. MR. HUMISTON: No. Not that have ever been mapped, that I'm aware of. I don't believe there are any grass beds there. There Page 22 September 6, 2001 are grass beds back in the bay areas in Johnson Bay, which is just past the inside of Capri Pass on the north side of the Isle of Capri; and further in the Big Marco River there are some grass beds also. During the design process, it would have to be demonstrated that any turbidity generated from the dredging operation would not cause any sedimentation in those areas, and I think that can be demonstrated. That, in fact, was done with the 1991 beach restoration project out there. MR. PIRES: Mr. Anderson or, I guess, Mr. Humiston, from the standpoint of this recommendation, a report to the county commission, is there a need, suggestion, or request that this committee make a recommendation to the county commission as to following through on the recommendations by Humiston & Moore, or is this going to be presented to the county commission separately? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, has -- I'm not up to date with whether the commission's considered it. I know the report's dated August. Have they done anything yet? MR. HOVELL: Actually, I believe this project is a precursor to a project that's going to be presented to the board on this coming Tuesday, the 1 lth, for the FY02 projects, which I think has $335,000, thereabouts, for beach renourishment. This was a feasibility study to lead into that FY02 project. So I think things are on track. You've already looked at that project. The TDC's already looked at it, and it's going to the board of commissioners on the 11 th. MR. SNEDIKER: So the $335,000 project is just basically an engineering project. This would be part of that -- roughly 10 percent of that project. The three hundred thirty-five's already been approved by this committee as well as TDC. They've approved it, and it's gone on to the commission. So this would just be a component or 10 percent of that. Is that an accurate statement? MR. HUMISTON: I think that's-- Page 23 September 6, 2001 MR. HOVELL: I think so too, yes. MR. ROELLIG: Can you give us some idea of what the total cost for the studies would be for using sand from this source versus -- you know, we know what the cost is pretty much from the land source, probably. Is there a big discrepancy? MR. HUMISTON: There is. And that's why we recommended looking at whether or not this sand could be used before looking for another source because the next nearest source would probably be the -- there have been some studies looking at the shoals south of Cape Romano, which is a long ways off, which would be easily twice as expensive to truck sand from that far off or to truck the sand in from an upland source. You could probably dredge sand out of the shoals with a hydraulic dredge for somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 a cubic yard. I think it was around $3 per cubic yard when it was done in '91. Recent costs of hauling sand from upland sources is about four times that, I think, around $20 a yard. MR. ROELLIG: Well, you have a -- what's the quantity of sand we're looking at here? MR. HUMISTON: Around 300,000 yards. MR. ROELLIG: 300,000 yards? MR. HUMISTON: Yeah. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Anything else? Okay. Thank you. Now on to new business, Item 4-A, discussion of Tiger Tail Beach health warnings. MR. ANDERSON: Mr. Chairman, the -- you may recall a few weeks ago there was -- it was announced that -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Pardon me. I skipped an item, Item 3-E, Clam Pass. MR. ANDERSON: MR. HUMISTON: Okay. Yes. That is, again, Mr. Humiston. The Clam Pass dredging is complete. Page 24 September 6, 2001 MR. HUBER: No, no. The future dredging in November, the one you're working on. MR. HUMISTON: Oh, I'm thinking of Collier Bay. Sorry. We have prepared a draft specification, given it to the Pelican Bay Services District. And I believe they're in the process of putting that project out for construction bids, and I'm not sure what the schedule on that bidding is. MR. ROELLIG: Is this -- it's my understanding you're going to be dredging in the throat and also in a possible borrow -- MR. HUMISTON: We've recommended dredging the entrance, which is the part that you see, but we've also recommended dredging some of the interior waterways that were dredged, really, for the first time when the restoration was done a couple years ago. There's some shoaling that's occurring in there, but we found that by cleaning that out, the inlet itself is much more stable because it's been cleaning out the interior area as it reduces the resistance to tidal flow with more water flowing in and out of the inlet, and that helps keep the inlet open. So we feel that if we're going to go to the expense of mobilizing the equipment down here to open the entrance to the inlet, we should also maintain those interior waterways. MR. HUBER: Do you have any -- an estimate of the volume that's going to be dredged and put on the beach? MR. HUMISTON: At the request of the Pelican Bay Services District, we have set up a bid and two alternates; one that would clean out the entrance channel and the area immediately inside, and another one that would do that as well as go further inside. And I believe the first alternate is around 8,000 cubic yards, and the second one would be around 12,000. I don't have those numbers now. I'm just-- as I recall, I think they were in those -- that order of magnitude. MR. ROELLIG: Well, that would also be much less unit cost than hauling it in from an upland source. As I recall, the construction Page 25 September 6, 2001 cost was something like 125,000. MR. HUMISTON: It was. Our estimates are higher than that this time because the dredging of the entrance can be done mechanically with a backhoe. In the past there was -- the shoals were so large inside that they actually built a road and were able to get back in there with the equipment and excavate the road as they came back out. This time there isn't that much sand there, and we're thinking part of it's going to have to be done with hydraulic dredging equipment. So it's probably going to call for mobilizing two different types of systems to do the work, which makes it a little bit more difficult to estimate the cost, but we think the cost will be higher this time than the hundred and twenty-five. Our estimates for the two bid alternates were 145,000 and 185,000. MR. ROELLIG: But even the 180,000 (sic) would be -- that would be about $9 a cubic yard, I guess, in that vicinity. MR. HUMISTON: Yeah. The purpose of this is maintaining the waterway rather than -- the beach restoration is kind of a by- product, although it's certainly a good source of sand. We believe the sand will be high quality. DR. STAIGER: When the project was done the last time, where they did all that work on the interior channels, they ended up with some fairly poor quality material from some of those areas. It was clay-like and created some problems. Presumably all this stuff that's in there now is beach sand that's been carried in by the flood tides, so it should be much higher quality material that could go on the beach without any question, I would imagine. MR. HUMISTON: That's what we believe. We actually had some sand samples collected this morning. MR. GRAY: Where would that sand be utilized? MR. HUMISTON: At the county beach park south of the inlet. It's the same place where it was placed before. Page 26 September 6, 2001 MR. GRAY: I see. MR. HUMISTON: And also, to follow up on Bob's question, we're also not going as far back in as we did the last time where most of that silty material came from. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Anything else? Okay. Now we have concluded old business, and we'll move to new business, Item 4-A, Tiger Tail Beach. MR. ANDERSON: Yes. Recently you may recall there were some elevated bacterial counts that were found in the Tiger Tail Beach area through sampling of the health department and the county, and we've looked into that. There are signs that have been put up there that show health warnings, and we don't believe that it's - - there's no evidence to indicate that it's any problem with-- we believe that it -- most likely it's because of the -- it's becoming kind of a stagnant cove where there's just very little flushing of the water in the area and -- as opposed to any kind of a problem with the sand or any other pollution sources as such. Ron, would you like to give a little brief report on our findings to date? MR. HOVELL: Sure. The -- does anybody have any questions on how they do -- how the county health department does the testing as far as frequency and getting the beach -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Why don't we just put it on the record, a brief summary of that. MR. HOVELL: Every two weeks the state department of health, which has county offices -- so the Collier County office goes out and takes samples at various beach locations, one of which is Tiger Tail. And as long as the readings are good, and they have -- on these forms they have what the definitions of good, moderate, or poor. As long as the readings are okay, then they just do that test every other week or every two weeks. If they get a poor or a moderate reading indicating that perhaps there's a problem, they go Page 27 September 6, 2001 back the following day, take another sample. They typically go ahead and put signs up on the beach providing a warning, which is what happened on approximately the 13th or 14th of August, thereabouts. In this particular case, unlike most of the times this happens, instead of the following day's sample coming back in the good range again, there were two or three samples in a row and, therefore, two or three days in a row, where the samples continued to show higher levels of these -- either fecal coliform and/or enterococcus. So when they did finally get the good readings -- I think it was on the 15th of August when they took the samples that came back good -- at that point they did go back out and remove the warning signs indicating that there was a possible health risk with swimming there. I think the thing for this committee to start to give some thought to as well as our office, which I know I've been trying to do -- but if you go down -- and we will go to Tiger Tail Beach later today. But if you go south of Tiger Tail, you'll notice a very similar sand formation process going on on a much smaller scale, and that is that portion of the island is growing. And so you continue to get small fingers of sand, for lack of a better word, that develop. And on the smaller scale, relatively quickly they build up. The next high tide or the next couple high tides, it starts to fill in behind it, and that starts to silt in. And you've now grown your beach by another foot or 2 feet or 5 feet, however wide it happens to be. And that portion of the island has undergone that history for a number of years. That's how most of it was formed. Tiger Tail on a much larger scale is going through the same thing, and barring some significant event like a major storm, now that it's become -- it's no longer Sand Dollar Island. I guess you'd have to call it Sand Dollar Peninsula at this point because that one end has filled in. Barring something that might open that up naturally, I think Page 28 September 6, 2001 that -- although it might take a lot longer than on the smaller scale, I think that whole Tiger Tail Beach is going to become less and less viable as a nice, pristine, sandy, you know, Gulf of Mexico beach. It's a lagoon. We're starting to get more and more complaints about the mucky feeling once you walk down below the high water line, the algae, some smells associated with the fact that it's not getting flushed and the algae growth and that type of thing. And so I think we're going to have to wrestle with both do we want to attempt to do something in any given direction, and then, of course, to add to that, would we be given the appropriate environmental permits to do anything to perhaps change the natural course of events there. So I'd ask you to keep that in mind, and I'll point it out again when we talk about the field trip procedures. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Any questions? MR. STRAPPONI: Yeah. I have a question. When we talk about the samples that are being taken, how many samples are taken? MR. HOVELL: It's my understanding that one sample at a given beach location. For instance, Tiger Tail Beach, one sample is taken. Somewhere in the City of Naples, one sample is taken. MR. STRAPPONI. Does that give us a real indication, though? Isn't it possible that that sample is being taken by a contaminated spot? MR. HOVELL: Absolutely. MR. STRAPPONI: And you go away from it, and it's fine? MR. HOVELL: Absolutely. MR. SNEDIKER: A bird may just have been by there. MR. STRAPPONI: That's my point. MR. HOVELL: That's why they put up a warning sign and go back and test the next day. DR. STAIGER: They've got 13 sampling sites the length of the Page 29 September 6, 2001 county from Lely Barefoot Beach down to south Marco. We've been sampling bacteria in the City of Naples for probably three, four years now, and we do it a couple days in a row about every two weeks as well. And we're testing the same sample areas that the health department takes, and our results coincide. In the City of Naples, we've had fluctuations in high bacteria on occasion that have always been linked to either the stormwater runoff or lots of birds. And we had some weird readings one time when we probably had 2,000 pelicans hanging around the pier and scattered up and down the beaches, all kinds of pelicans. You go out in the middle of something like that and take a bacteria sample, you're going to get a lot of fecal coliform bacteria, and that's probably part of it. If you're doing biological sampling, you need to sample basically six or eight times every hour for 24 hours. You need to take an awful lot of samples and kind of average it all out because you can take a bucket of water on one side of a boat and come up with 800 coliform units per hundred milliliters and on the other side have 3. It's very, very patchy. But this is a state law that was generated by a bunch of legal maneuvers that went on at the national level about unhealthy beaches, and the Florida legislature reacted by passing a law that said we have to have these beaches tested. The health department got told "Thou shalt test." And the law says how often and whatever. And I don't know that there's a lot of science behind the law. I mean, from the biological standpoint, I think there's very little. But I don't think the legislature asked anybody in the scientific community what they thought about it. But it's -- you know, we had a similar scare at Horizon Way Beach in Naples earlier this year. And these things tend to be pretty ephemeral, but I think you're right. The lagoon at Hideaway is becoming more and more of a -- I wouldn't say stagnant -- I mean Page 30 September 6, 2001 Tiger Tail -- not stagnant, but it's turning into a lagoon rather than a pass. And the previous beach committee wrestled with what to do with that when they were putting -- there were a couple of drownings on Marco, what, three, four years ago, maybe. And there was a lot of pressure to fill the whole thing in, which is -- I mean, it's never going to happen because nobody's ever going to get the permit to do that. The corps won't and the state won't. So the question then was, well, how do you get access to people? And one of the suggestions was, you know, you build a boardwalk that goes across part of the lagoon to the beach on the other side, and it makes it hard on the concessionaire who rents sailboats. But, you know, the issue of how to deal with it is -- I don't think it's going to go away, but I think the feasibility of ever getting a permit to do anything with it is almost nil. Opening it back up along the south end on the beach would ensure some flushing, but that's pretty ephemeral. MS. LUPO: I take it, then, there have been some reports on the feasibility of Tiger Tail and that problem? DR. STAIGER: Well, I think that -- I think that Coastal Engineering Consultants was looking at it back some years ago. I don't remember for sure, but I know that the last beach committee at the city level discussed this at some length and that was -- that was -- the beach committee's refusal to endorse the concept of filling the lagoon was the reason that Frank Blanchard quit the committee. He no longer wanted to be associated with these committee members that didn't do what he wanted them to do. MS. LUPO: If the problem's essentially the same, then is it possible for us to get a copy of that old report? DR. STAIGER: We can find out what the minutes said. I don't remember if anybody actually did a report or if it was just a matter of kind of brainstorming some ideas on what to do with it. But it's a Page 31 September 6, 2001 problem that's not going to go away. MS. LUPO: Tiger Tail's one of the few publicly accessible beaches on Marco, and if we're making Hideaway Beach pristine for people who can't access it, only private individuals who live there, I have a problem with not making Tiger Tail, one of the public accessible beaches, usable by-- MR. SNEDIKER: Tiger Tail, I think, is the most active beach park within the county itself, and a private beach and a private lagoon is very questionable as far as usage. When we go out there this afternoon if we don't get rained out -- but it's going to be very high tide, so we're really not going to see Tiger Tail in its normal position. It's going to be very high tide when we get out there later this afternoon. But if you walk out to Sand Dollar Island, which is a little walk out there, it's absolutely beautiful. It's gorgeous out there, and you can go for-- I don't know how far out can you go, Al? It's about a mile trip. You can go all the way to the end of it. MR. MADSEN: You can go all the way to the end. MR. SNEDIKER: And it's just beautiful out there, so Tiger Tail itself, I think, is still a viable beach. It's just the lagoon itself is getting less and less desirable. You just have to get out to the Sand Dollar Island portion of it, which is at the -- MR. HOVELL: For the record, A1 Madsen is the public utilities beach inspector. MR. GRAY: Is there any reason to believe that the problem that was uncovered -- this must have been about three weeks ago -- may have just been an isolated thing even though that area is -- shall we say is a little bit stagnant, or is this an ongoing thing, or should there be more monitoring of it to see if it is an ongoing thing or an isolated thing? MR. SNEDIKER: Does the Tiger Tail park ranger do any monitoring? Does anyone know? Page 32 September 6, 2001 DR. STAIGER: The health department's the only one that-- the easiest solution to kind of helping a lot of that stuff along is aeration, but that's -- it's kind of hard to open -- you know, put an aerator system in a lagoon that's basically across an open beach. You got to run 220 volt wires out there, and it's -- so it's a logistics problem. But that aerator system would probably keep it from -- from getting too stagnant. I don't know that it would do anything with the bacteria, but it would cut the odor issue down. MR. GRAY: I would suggest that this committee just continue to monitor the situation, and if we feel like in the future that we need to take some more proactive steps, then we, you know, look at it then. I don't see any reason for us to get real excited about it now, but I think it's something we could keep our eye on. MR. STAKICH: We've had an article in the Eagle the last -- two weeks ago or three weeks ago on the editorial page about this committee actually doing something positive rather than negative. Instead of sitting by and waiting for something to happen or see what's going to happen, with all due respect to everybody -- and I personally, since I do live here and I'm concerned about that area and the area being open to the people that want to use it, which is sometime yes and sometime no -- we spent so much money down there in upgrading the facilities and everything, and really you don't have the ability to use those facilities properly. I would like to see a more positive, more direct approach by this committee suggesting to our engineers to come back here and tell us what we can do. The article said -- and I have no idea whether it's possible -- as Jon says just now, that it may be impossible to get it permitted to open up the north end of the thing. You remember one time back about 10, 15 years ago you could take a boat and come back through the north end up there. That was wide open. That's closed up pretty much now. The question is can you open it again? Page 33 September 6, 2001 Can you do some flushing action in there? Now, with all due respect to the gentleman that just said -- he was a beach man for years. He and I served on the original beach committee, and his idea was not far-fetched, but a possibility. I'd like to say let's see if we can do certain things. Filling in the lagoon makes sense; maybe not environmentally, but it does make sense practically. Opening up the north end. Maybe, if it's possible, to do some type of flushing action there. I just don't think we can sit by -- or I'm not happy with just sitting by and doing nothing. I don't want to just sit here and say let's wait another year or two or five because the people that want to use it want to use it this winter. That's when we have -- Tiger Tail is our beach outside of the Residents Beach. So I would like to recommend to this committee that we tell our engineers to come back with a study to see what we can do positively. And there is no easy thing. Certainly the environmentalists and the state and other groups will most likely say this isn't possible. But if we don't try and we don't push for it, we're not going to have it happen. Thank you. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That's a good statement of principle. Part of the function, a big part of the function that we should be providing to the commissioners is to highlight some of these topics and stay ahead of the curve, so to speak. I think we should discuss more exactly what we should do, if anything, on Tiger Tail. But certainly as a function of what this committee should do, let's try to be active on some of this stuff and not simply react to proposals or incidents that are put before us. MR. PIRES: Mr. Chairman, in light of that, recognizing that it seems like our discussion's going a bit beyond the initial scope of the discussion of the Tiger Tail Beach health warnings, perhaps it could be a focus of a big discussion at the next meeting or the meeting Page 34 September 6, 2001 thereafter to have this committee make a recommendation to the board or ask staff to explore other -- give directions to retained engineers, if it's within the scope of their agreement, to look at alternatives and bring them back so we can be more proactive. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, at a future meeting, just using this as an example -- if you want to, for example, use Tiger Tail, to come back -- we're not all -- committee-wise I don't think any of us are engineers or anything like -- well, you're an engineer. What I'm leading up to saying -- bad example, perhaps. What I'm leading up to saying is that if someone on the committee, you know, spots a problem or something where they think potential good can be done, is to bring it to the committee's attention on the agenda, and we can brainstorm a bit. For example, if filling in the lagoon seems like something to think about, at least from a layman's perspective, let's discuss it. And then the experts can tell us, well, you can't get a permit, or it won't work because of this, or maybe it will work. I think that would be a good future use of committee time. MR. GRAY: I guess my only point is that just as we had -- in Naples at Horizon Way, we had some warnings there. There were, I think, more than one; maybe twice. DR. STAIGER: Yeah, a couple times. MR. GRAY: And I think maybe that was isolated. And it seems to me that just because we've had one here, maybe it's an isolated thing too. And I'm sure the health department's keeping their eye on it very close. And if this continues to be a problem, then I think we -- at that time we should become more proactive. To spend money now, I think, would be a little premature. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: It's not -- at least what I was commenting on isn't with the intent of necessarily spending money. I don't think we have the power to fund a project. We can suggest to the commission -- I was speaking more broadly in using Tiger Tail. Page 35 September 6, 2001 And not really the health warning, but just that, as a concept, if somebody on the committee says I think we can, you know, do some positive work here or we can alleviate a problem here, you know, take a first step from this committee in taking a look at it, rather than simply having it directed down from the commission or the staff. MS. LUPO: Is it possible to get a review of the previous findings about the problem at Tiger Tail? This has been ongoing for several years. There has to have been some documentation or some type of a report. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, staff would know that. We certainly can get presentations and copies of reports and so forth. What we can't do, we can't direct staff to conduct a study. We can ask staff to gather information for us, of course. MR. HUMISTON: As Jon had said earlier, I think Coastal Engineering Consultants did some kind of a study there, so there may be some existing information. But both the state and the federal government have designated that as a critical area because it's a very unique biological resource. I would tend to agree with Jon that it would probably be impossible to get a permit to fill it in. But I think I would agree with Bob Stakich that something could probably be done to improve the flushing in that area. It may even be possible to demonstrate that flushing would improve water quality and improve it as a biological resource. And if you can do that, then you get the agencies that are in favor of what you want to do also. It may not get all the way to where you would like to get as a recreational beach, but it could possibly substantially improve it. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Right. And keep it at the level of brainstorming in the whole county, you know, up and down, within the City of Naples, within Marco Island, in county areas proper, you know, up and down. If we have ideas, let's use our committee time to discuss it. Page 36 September 6, 2001 MR. SNEDIKER: I agree with Bob that as far as the one-shot health warning, you know, that's a very minor point. But I think what might be very helpful is if Roy and Ron and Ken could maybe give us an idea of what the future of that looks like. It's a very dynamic area, as you've mentioned. We've got, you know, pictures back to 1952 of Sand Dollar Island and so on. And what's the forecast for the next three years, five years for Sand Dollar Island and that lagoon? And I realize that could be a very, very guesstimate type situation, but maybe that would be a first step to get some idea of what we can look forward to. MR. PIRES: Mr. Chairman, possibly that could be an item for, you know, a meeting down the road, to have that kind of discussion. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That's what I'm saying. It's not just Tiger Tail. When something like this comes up, the committee member ought to contact Mr. Anderson or someone on the staff and say I'd like to get this on the agenda. And that committee member can kind of take the lead and say here are -- here's the situation. These are brainstorming ideas I've had. And we discuss it, and we get the feedback from people who know in detail what's feasible and what's not and so forth. And that can result in some productive activity, I think. MR. ROELLIG: I'm kind of surprised that these actions were taken on the basis of a single sample. I think you might want to investigate whether the health department would be interested in -- did they limit it to a single sample because of monetary considerations? It would seem to me that something like this should really have -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Do you mean the actual -- are you referring to the action of putting up a sign once -- MR. ROELLIG: Right. If they only do one -- as I understand it, one sample for the entire beach, that doesn't seem like a very good Page 37 September 6, 2001 process. I think there should be -- MR. STAKICH' Being new on this committee, all I'm doing is asking for either an ongoing discussion on this or if, as you suggest, somebody, for example, myself, wanted to find the answers to it and bring it back here -- because I think the answers are complex. We're talking about public health. We're talking usage o£Tiger Tail area. We're talking, of course, the environmental concerns of the state and federal governments. Now, somebody's got to package that thing all together before you can make a decision on what's happening to that lagoon and to Tiger Tail Beach. Now the question is, who do we go to to get all that packaged into one so we can understand fully what's going to happen, as Bill -- as Jim said, you know, what's going to happen today, what's happening tomorrow, and five years from now. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think we're mixing -- I want to separate -- I think we're mixing a couple topics. One is -- and they're related in a sense, but they're quite distinct. One is what we have on the agenda, the sample at Tiger Tail Beach. Okay. We had a vial with bacteria. I mean, if it happens repeatedly, it's a problem. That's the department of health. Frankly, we don't do anything about that. That is informational. Then we have the proposal of-- it's not only Tiger Tail, and in my view, it's not a reaction to that one sample. It's, you know, how will this committee function and what can it do? And that is, if we spotlight things, maybe we're the first to spotlight it, in other words. If we're acting instead of reacting, I think that's a good thing. And to do that, a committee member brings it to the committee's attention, of course we discuss it. Going farther, we have staff available to us to gather information and assemble it and present it to us. But we don't have the power to say go off and -- get information, yes, if it's in the files. Page 38 September 6, 2001 But we don't have the power to say go off and gather this data that doesn't exist, but go get it for us. MR. GRAY: I would like to suggest that -- maybe to put this to bed, that at our next meeting that we have staff give us some indication of any problems. Let's say not only look forward, but let's look back. What have been the problems in this area in the past insofar as bad water is concerned? MR. PIRES: I would just suggest after we've had all these field trip meetings, maybe the first meeting after that, we could have that kind of discussion. That puts us about, what, three meetings from now? MR. GRAY: That's my point, that we have at some time in the future, either the next meeting or the second meeting after that, maybe a little more detailed information and explanation as to problems we've had there in the past. You know, is it something that's getting to be more of a problem, or has it been something that's just isolated? I don't think we have enough information at this point to make any kind of decisions or recommendations to anyone. MR. ANDERSON: If that's the desire of the committee, we can -- we can certainly go back and look into the previous correspondence and reports and then do -- and then do a look-ahead in terms of how trends are going. And I would think it would probably be maybe -- and maybe it would be about 60 days to do something like that, to get some type of result back to you, if that's okay. MR. GRAY: Sounds good. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Yes. Okay. Item 4-B, which is a discussion of the draft consent order concerning rocks on the beach. Has the commission formally signed this? I know that there's an agreement in-- MR. ANDERSON: No. Mr. Chairman, the -- that is going Page 39 September 6, 2001 before the next meeting of the Board of County Commissioners on the 11 th of September, next week. The board is going to accept that. And then, as Harry will indicate to you in a second, it basically calls for a plan to be developed within the next 30 days as to how we are going to get a handle on the rocks that are there now and what kind of a program we propose to address that. Harry, would you like to -- MR. HUBER: Yeah. Just to give you a time line related to the consent order, like Roy indicated, it's going -- it's an agenda item on the Board of County Commissioners meeting next Tuesday, September 11 th. And what that agenda item is is asking for authorization for the board chairman to execute the consent order. At that point then it would be sent back to DEP for their execution and filing with their clerk. And then once it's filed with the clerk of DEP, that establishes the effective date of the consent order. And in the consent order if you had a chance to read it, within 30 days of the effective date of the consent order, the county has to submit that plan indicating how they're going to do the rock removal. And so in addition, there's a provision in the consent order for us, and they're saying that we were going to have to pay a $5,000 fine or submit a plan, an environmental restoration plan. And I think the intent is to prepare and submit an environmental restoration plan in lieu of paying the $5,000 fine. And I've already started working on the rock removal plan. And the essential components of that would be to establish a compliance standard for the rock removal, establish a sampling procedure to identify where the rock exists, and to determine compliance after its removal. And then the consent order also requires us to identify the resources the county will permit to the rock removal, which would be the TDC funding, and then to establish the continued maintenance operation to maintain it after complete removal. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Thank you. This matter, of Page 40 September 6, 2001 course, has been going on for a while and very highly publicized throughout the county, the travails of that beach renourishment project. Does anyone have any questions or comments? I think we ought to treat this as an informational item because in a practical sense, the deal's done. MR. ROELLIG: Well, I'm concerned about a couple things. I don't know if there's a glossary that goes with this. When they say remove rocks from the near shore area, near shore is -- can be defined as several things by different people. MR. HUBER: Well, in this plan I'm proposing -- and, in fact, we've already had preliminary discussions with DEP as to coming up with a definition of that that's acceptable to both parties. And I think, you know, the -- and I'm, you know, going to be including that in this plan, the definition. And, of course, this plan will be submitted to DEP, and then it's subject to their approval before we implement it. They might come back and request it to be revised. We might be -- go back and forth a couple of times until we come up with an acceptable plan. But right now I would just propose that the definition of the near shore area would encompass that area where we've already performed an intensive cleanup on the Naples beach, and we went out -- from the mean high water line, we went out about, I think, 150 feet or something like that. And that -- that would be my definition of the near shore area. MR. ROELLIG: My concern is sometimes near shore can be 20 feet of water, and we don't want to be out there, I don't think. And does this also apply to removal of all the rocks imbedded? There's another kind of-- MR. HUBER: Well, that goes back to establishing the compliance standard -- MR. ROELLIG: Okay. That would be a compliance standard. Page 41 September 6, 2001 MR. HUBER: -- and what percentage of rock -- MR. ROELLIG: I would hope we wouldn't go through the expense of sifting the whole beach. DR. STAIGER: Well, there's been a request for that. MR. ROELLIG: I'm sure. But I think that's one area that the county or the city should be concerned about because the expense of that could be extraordinary, and the benefits, I think, would be very low. MR. HUBER: But I think the objective of this -- DEP sending this consent order to us is to bring a final closure to this whole -- MR. PIRES: Yeah. And in my dealings with DEP on behalf of other agencies in the past, when they send you a consent order, that's as far as they'll go, as far as they're willing to go. There's not much more room for negotiating at that point. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Thank you very much. The next item, 4-C, is a presentation of proposals for coastal engineering services. This one -- MR. HOVELL- This should be very short. I sent-- in your packages I sent you the list. There's seven firms. I believe I sent you a copy in each of your packages. There's Woodskol (phonetic) Group, Kagan & Bryan (phonetic), Humiston & Moore, Taylor Engineering, Coastal Engineering Consultants, Coastal Planning & Engineering, Coastal Tech. The selection committee's had its organizational meeting and is reviewing those proposals and will meet again next week to make that recommendation, which I would anticipate going to the Board of County Commissioners probably on the 9th of October meeting. By the time we go through the rest of the process, I would tend to think that around the first part of November we'll have one or more contracts in place to begin some coastal engineering projects. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And I would just add that I would Page 42 September 6, 2001 think it fruitful that at our next meeting, the next meeting of this committee, the recommendation of the subcommittee can come before us, and we can discuss it and endorse it or not and then send it up to the commissioners. There's a packet of stuff about this high (indicating). If anyone's interested, it's available from Mr. Anderson or people on his staff. Next we have another request for proposals matter, and that is presentation of sand samples for the beach sand. MR. HOVELL: I promised at the last meeting that we would present the samples and anybody could look at them. You're welcome to open them. We've got 5 gallons of each back at the office. We received proposals from two companies: E. R. Jahna, which was the supplier on the last trucking event -- I think it was in the April, May time frame -- and then Big Island provided two separate types of sand that they're proposing. Again, the selection committee has had its organizational meeting. They're reviewing the geological reports for both color and coarseness and calcium carbonate content and other types of things that would put it in compliance with the permits. And any comments you-all wish to make -- I'm not sure how much -- you know, we can put that into the county's procurement process, but I think that was the intent, was to try to get any comments from the committee. So maybe between now and the time we break up to go on the field trip, folks can do whatever they want to do with it and then provide some comments before we leave to -- MR. STRAPPONI: Is this upland sand? MR. HOVELL: Yes. I'm sorry. Big Island -- MR. STRAPPONI: Do we have in place a minimum standard in terms of coarseness or content, etc., etc., etc.? MR. HOVELL: Yes. MR. SNEDIKER: Plus the state does. Page 43 September 6, 2001 MR. STRAPPONI: Pardon? MR. SNEDIKER: The state DEP does too. MR. STRAPPONI: Do we have copies of it? MR. HOVELL: Yes. We can get some. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: What I'm going to do -- we have the three sand samples here. I'm going to put them at the table at the far end of the room. And anyone from the public or, of course, committee members now or at the conclusion of these matters, I encourage you to take a look at them and feel them and so forth. MR. SNEDIKER: Last winter the Big Island, or whatever the official name is, wanted very much to do the work, and then they backed out at the last minute because they could not perform. What's the latest on that? Can they perform now? Can they generate -- MR. HOVELL: I don't know the historical part. I think part of it was that it was either a new -- I don't know if it was a new plant or just a new section they were opening up. MR. SNEDIKER: I think they had a very thin vein, didn't they? MR. ROELLIG: Yeah, they had a thin vein. They would require a lot more processing to get the gradation. And one thing I've been somewhat concerned about, we -- apparently we're using one gradation for the whole county, and I don't know if that's -- that may simplify things a little bit, but I'm not sure that's really the most sound way to proceed because I assume that -- MR. HUBER: Actually, that range that we had developed that it has to fall within, that was based on a composite of the whole county. MR. ROELLIG: Oh, I see. MR. HUBER: It wasn't just one spot. MR. HOVELL: And if I could offer, I think the difference from a procurement standpoint, last time we put it out to bid, we were selecting one contractor for a specific amount of sand. And so there were various issues with how to pick that one contractor and could Page 44 September 6, 2001 that one contractor comply with the requirements that we put in our advertisement. This go-round we asked for proposals, and we said we're thinking we might want anywhere from 15,000 to 75,000 cubic yards per year. We want to have a multiyear contract, possibly with more than one vendor. So, in fact, we could establish contracts to -- long-term contracts to buy any or all of those sands as we see fit. And so, you know, it's not quite such an all-or-none. You know, if I gave one a score of a 90 and the other a score of an 89, am I missing out on the 89 because, you know, I don't want -- we don't have those kind of issues this time. And in the end, with one or more of those as we choose to develop the contract, we can also, then, come to final terms on production rates and deliverables. And once we know how far in advance -- you know, if they happen to have a slower production rate than, perhaps, somebody else, we could just build this into our project and order it further in advance. So I think we're in a more flexible position this go-round. MR. GRAY: And I think that's good because when we went through this the last time in doing the Park Shore beach, we actually had whole loads of sand delivered there, and we went down and took a look at them. We felt it. We smelled it. We didn't taste it, I don't think. We looked at it very closely. And I think depending upon what area of the beach we're talking about in the county, one of these samples might be more appropriate than another. In this case, I think, with Park Shore beach the last time we did this, we were able to pick out a sand that seemed more akin to the native sand that was there, and I think it worked out beautifully. I don't think anybody's had any problems with the sand that we selected. I haven't heard of any problems with the sand that went here on Marco. MR. SNEDIKER: I agree with you. MR. GRAY: I think to have -- I think to have more than one Page 45 September 6, 2001 source and have it readily available is the way to go. MR. ANDERSON: And if I could just add, that sand that was used on Park Shore is the Jahna sand, the grayer sand, the one that's in the middle bag. And that was -- that has good stability. It holds up well. It doesn't go away with the wind as the very fine sand will. And it's also performed very well -- I guess the turtles like it also; right, Maura? MS. KRAUS: Yes, they do. MR. ANDERSON: So it's much more stable. However, we do have the same grain size on the -- with the lighter color with the Big Island Type 2, so that would tend to hold up as well. MR. SNEDIKER: We're talking about two different sands with Jahna. And we got one sand, the coarser sand. Is that the sand that's there? MR. ANDERSON: Big Island is the two types of sand. MR. SNEDIKER: No. I mean, Jahna, there was a coarser and a finer. We ended up with a coarse -- barely coarser. MR. HUBER: I think probably what you're seeing there is the same sand that we put on the beach in April. MR. SNEDIKER: I think at Hideaway Beach where 15,000 yards of that came, it is very good sand. The turtles love it because we've had a lot of turtle nests exactly where that sand was put down just, what, 60 days, 30 days before the turtles came in. MR. GRAY: And besides that, the people like it. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And it was available, and it was more stable than some of the others. MR. SNEDIKER: Yeah. But it was very expensive in transportation. It was $15 worth of transportation and spreading -- or, what, $12 transportation and $3 to spread or something and $5 for the sand. MR. GRAY: It was $20 in-- Page 46 September 6, 2001 MR. SNEDIKER: Yeah, $20. MR. GRAY: It was very expensive. But, you know, if we want to keep the beaches right, I guess we got to pay. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And also with the efforts of Jim Mudd and his staff at the county, we're just going to have a much better and broader procurement ability than we've had in the past. MR. ROELLIG: For practical purposes, as long as they meet the specifications, I would assume we would -- since you only had two respondents, I would assume we would accept both of them. I mean, they're not going to -- MR. HOVELL: I would tend to agree with you. MR. ROELLIG: If we had ten respond, we could whittle it down to three. But since there's two, I would think -- MR. ANDERSON: We still have to do our due diligence and go through the whole process and -- MR. ROELLIG: Oh, I understand. MR. STRAPPONI: Roy, on the darker sand, has it been our experience that once it's been exposed to the ultraviolet for any length of time it lightens at all, or does it pretty much stay the same? MR. ANDERSON: I think it pretty much stays the same. That's wet right now, so it's a little darker than it -- MR. HUBER: It will lighten some when it gets out and gets exposed to the sunlight. MR. GRAY: It's just drying out. MR. ROELLIG: On Horizon Way it's imperceptible, the difference, I think. DR. STAIGER: The only -- the only problem that I recall that Big Island had last year was his production operation couldn't produce the volume we needed in the time frame needed. And he was going to increase that production facility, and I think that's what he's done. But he does have a fairly discrete vein of material, but he Page 47 September 6, 2001 has the ability to grade it. And that's a Collier County source which is up Immokalee Road versus up in, what is it, Hendry or-- MR. HUBER: Glades. MR. ROELLIG: Probably about 40 miles closer or something in that ballpark. DR. STAIGER: Besides, he's a good ole boy. MR. GRAY: Well, he's local. I'd tend to want to go with local people. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Thank you again. If anyone cares to touch and see at a closer range the samples, they're at the end over there. Discussion of beach renourishment priorities. Mr. Anderson, I don't know exactly what you had in mind here, but it would seem that we kind of addressed this earlier when we got to the Tiger Tail health issue and wrapped in Mr. Stakich's comments and so forth about where we're going on all this. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah, we did, Mr. Chairman. I think the thing that I would mention is that we've done an estimate of-- right now of the totality of all the renourishment that's out there as a result of the storm, and it looks like we may need potentially a hundred thousand cubic yards of sand to do it all. That's what preliminary numbers are looking like. And we do have the 50,000 in the budget, and that's also what's been permitted by DEP. So we -- we are -- we do want to look into it a little bit further, and then we'll be coming back to you with maybe some suggestions if we need to go -- you know, if we need to -- you know, what the ramifications would be under each scenario. You know, we could decide -- you might decide to do all hundred thousand or just do 50,000 or somewhere in between, but we'll give you the pros and cons. Perhaps we could come back at the next meeting with that. Do you think that'll be too soon, Harry? Page 48 September 6, 2001 MR. HUBER: No. The sooner the better. MR. ANDERSON: Yeah. Because we need to work it all in with the turtle season. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Very good. Thank you. Now, this is a public meeting, and we leave a spot on the agenda for public comment or audience participation. So if anyone has any questions or comments for us, this is the right time. MR. CARLSON: John Carlson, Naples. With regard to Tiger Tail Beach closing up, I think you have more than one issue. You do have some biological contamination, but I heard that you also have odor and you have -- the bottom of the lagoon is not as pleasant as it has been in the past. So work on it. You know, really, don't wait until you have a garbage dump kind of problem like you have in Naples, when the odor is -- odors are tough. You know, sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not. They're perceptual. Don't turn your back until you have a bigger problem. I was under the impression that one of the reasons that we didn't that we've had some difficulty in Naples with availability of sand was not that they didn't have enough capacity for Naples, but there were other communities that were also looking for this particular sand, and they didn't have enough capacity at one time for all the customers. And if you have more than one vendor to supply the same quality sand and that vendor is set up and commits to providing sand for you in advance, you're way ahead of the game. Then you don't have the kind of problem we had in Naples at the 11 th hour of getting -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: You're correct. And that's -- that's why Jim Mudd, who I referred to, is -- has, since he's come on board, set up a new procedure that we have procurement ability in place before we actually have the project, you know, on the ground, so to speak, so that we're not always playing catch up. MR. CARLSON: And then my final comment would be about Page 49 September 6, 2001 the dredging of Clam Pass, which I feel is really crucial to maintaining the fragile health of the Vanderbilt -- the Pelican Bay/Seagate community. You have to -- it seems to me that we have to dredge the entire area where there is any kind of constriction of flow; that means the throat as well as back into the mangrove system itself. If we don't, then you don't get full flow, and you will only begin blocking the throat quicker -- well, essentially at an earlier stage. And if you don't have full flow, then all of our plans for controlling cattail growth and that sort of thing, which is based, really, on having saltwater exposure, begin to fail. So for Clam Pass we really need full dredging, however that can be achieved. MR. SNEDIKER: A major part of the holdup last year was this former committee under its former name and so on. This committee stalled around for a long time before it did its thing. I don't think it was a problem with the supplier, though. MR. HUBER: No. It was primarily time constraints and budget constraints and the fact that we were going with just one supplier last year, but he didn't have a capacity problem. He could make it as fast as we needed it, really. But, you know, it was -- but we had time constraints as far as getting it completed before the sea turtle season. MR. GRAY: We also put it off a little bit because we only had one bidder, and I think at least two months expired trying to find another bidder. And we -- we couldn't get our Collier County fellow to come through with a bid the way we wanted it. So we ended up with the one bid, and that held us up. I think we probably got it done about as quick as we could, everything considered. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Yes. MS. RYAN: For the record, Nicole Ryan, Conservancy of Southwest Florida. I just want to point out that the Tiger Tail lagoon contains mud flats, and that's kind of that mucky, slick, slippery Page 50 September 6, 2001 substance out there. And that's where the birds feed, and it isn't a wasteland. If you go in there and you dig and you sift through it, it's very rich in life. That's why the birds are there. That's why they feed. So filling in the lagoon and covering up those mud flats, not only is it a state critical wildlife area, it's a federally designated piping plover critical habitat. So those things need to be, I think, considered early on because investigating filling in the lagoon could be just a waste of time. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We're trying to say that as individuals on this committee, we are not-- we don't have necessarily broad expertise in those areas. MS. RYAN: Right. But as -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: But certainly in the process, staff and The Conservancy and so forth would be able to help us out on that. MS. RYAN: Thank you. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Thank you. Anyone else? MR. LALONDE: Roger Lalonde from Marco Island. I understand what she's saying. But also when I came here years ago and I moved here, Tiger Tail Beach was absolutely beautiful. It was a beautiful area, and it was a family area, and it was thought of to be used as such. In the last few years the way the sand has been moving, we may not have to worry about it much longer because as it moves, it's going to fill in itself. The problem becomes, what are we doing to that area when it used to be such a good family place to be? You know, it affects the tourism. We're spending a lot of money to redo for food and concession there. We're doing every effort possible to make it better for families. If you've got to walk all the way through that lagoon all the time to try and get to the beach, kids aren't going to go there. The Page 51 September 6, 2001 parents aren't going to let them go there. And in the old days when they used to walk across the lagoon and fish back into it and have a lot of fun with their children for the day, those times are gone. And so we always seem to be in a rub with environment. We should be looking at what is best for both sides because we're losing a valuable resource that isn't available anywhere else in the county. Thanks. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Thank you. MR. KELLER: Can I say something? My name's Eric Keller. I was born in this county. I was raised. I came out to Marco before there was anybody out here. I went out to Tiger Tail all the time. As the community -- as that area changes -- I mean, I remember taking sailboats, as a kid, all the way through it. And to change that habitat would be changing tourism dollars. People go to that beach because there is habitat there. I was out there just the other day, and there was -- I go out there every day. I talk to everybody, and they love it. They love being able to see all the animals firsthand. It's probably one of the few areas that you get an up-close, personal touch to the environment. And to go in and to change those mud flats, you'd be taking away huge tourism dollars. It's still a family area. You can walk around, go out and see a different part of the island, see a lagoon firsthand. To change that in any way would be detrimental beyond ramifications, to fishing in the area, to crabbing in the area, to probably every aspect of environmental dollars. The way tourism money is being spent is not just in leisure; it's in experience now. If we don't look forward to see how that adventure travel, ecotourism travel is going to be spent in the next ten years, we'd be ignoring a huge resource. That's all I have to say about it. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Thank you. These are all very good observations. And as we go forward, naturally there'll be Page 52 September 6, 2001 certain things that can't be done because of different environmental or other concerns. And, of course, we'll try to balance all these considerations, but they're all important observations. Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, ma'am. MS. MOORE: Just years of experience, I just -- I'm Diane Moore. I live at Royal Way Cove Condominium. I just returned from Cape Cod where -- a ritzy town which had a similarly mucky beach. And in efforts to improve it, the town poured tons of sand, and the sand inevitably sank below the muck, and the muck returned, just to give you -- that's the years of experience up there. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: It sounds like a movie, The Return of the Muck. Thank you. Anyone else for public comment? Mr. Snediker, I think this may be the right time. You had an item that you brought to our attention. MR. SNEDIKER: Yeah. I took some pictures. I passed them out to the committee. Let me just spend a minute here to go over them. These are all pictures of Hideaway Beach taken -- most of them taken very recently. On page 1 the first one there was taken the summer of 2000. That showed where the beach renourishment was required, was needed because you could not walk on the beach in that area. The lower picture on that same page was taken after the Collier Bay Inlet's dredging. Sand was put there, and you can see the new T- groin that was put there just a matter of a couple months ago. The second page is similar. That's down near the south point area of Hideaway Beach. Again, the top picture shows last winter where the renourishment was needed. The bottom picture shows after -- in this case it was the trucked-in sand from Jahna, as we discussed a minute ago, and also the new T-groin that was put there. Those are both before and after pictures. Page 3, Little Clam Pass is an area that's been called an Page 53 September 6, 2001 obstruction from walking from Tiger Tail onto Hideaway. There you can see a person, happening to be my wife, standing in Little Clam Pass at high tide -- that's at 2.1, which is, give or take, high tide in this area -- and again at low tide. That is not much of an obstruction. I don't think it is. Also, you figure that by the time somebody has reached that point, they've already walked a half mile from the Tiger Tail Beach on the beach. So they've already walked a half mile before they get to this little pass. So that shows exactly what Little Clam Pass is at high and low tide. Page 4 is a -- is the picture is going -- taken a little bit north of there. Again, this is where the mangroves come out. And in the top picture, it shows where it's at -- near high tide where a person cannot walk there because the erosion has come into the mangroves. The bottom picture at 0.0 tide shows us basically all mud flats through there at that area. Page 5 is a little bit north of there looking south -- this is actually from the T-groin No. 1 -- showing, again, where mangroves have been there. A couple areas there have been cleared out where there were some dead mangroves, and permits were received to -- for the individual homeowners to remove those mangroves. And, again, you see in the longer picture at the bottom, which is a combination of two pictures, it's very, very shallow. It's just barely over ankle deep in that area. So it's about a 30-to-1 slope or some very, very shallow area there. And this is where -- the last two pictures on 4 and 5 is where it's talked about -- the project that is under way now, the $401,000 project to either put sand renourishment there or a boardwalk or some other structure. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Thank you. MR. STAKICH: Great pictures. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: To whom do we give a set of this Page 54 September 6, 2001 for the record; to the reporter, or who will keep that? If someone could, just make sure that a set gets to the reporter. Why don't we skip to No. 7 next, which is simply to schedule the next meeting. I would suggest that we've got a pattern now, which is the first Thursday of each month. We're going to be doing another field trip-style meeting next month in North Naples, is it, that we're planning? MR. ANDERSON: City of Naples. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I thought we were going to be third. So we're going to be meeting at Park Shore. I don't have personal knowledge if we've set a place or not. Have we made those arrangements yet? MR. HOVELL: Jon had suggested City Hall would be available. I think he's already reserved a room. And subject to your confirmation, we'll finalize the plans for that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That would be October 4th, 1'30 p.m., Naples City Hall. That's 735 Eighth Street South, and of course, that's in the City of Naples. MR. GRAY: We will be looking at pretty much all the beaches in the City of Naples, probably down at the pier, Horizon Way, further south maybe. DR. STAIGER: We may be able to go all the way down to the Gordon Pass area if we can talk to Lloyd. MR. GRAY: Maybe three places? DR. STAIGER: Yeah. We could take a look at the south end -- we've got a couple of accesses that are down there in the area -- the pier, Lowdermilk Park, and maybe Park Shore. We do have a large 20-passenger van that we can truck people around in from City Hall, so we can do that. I believe I reserved it for that day. If I haven't, I can do that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Did you reserve -- will we be in Page 55 September 6, 2001 council chambers? DR. STAIGER: Yeah. I think I set all that up for either that meeting or the one in November. I'll have to check. MR. KROESCHELL: I think the original schedule was it was going to be in November, so you better double-check it. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Yeah. I do know that the Naples portion of this trilogy was going to be the third one in November. It doesn't matter that it's October. We'll just have to all be straight on the details. MR. GRAY: We'll probably get that in our packet when you send it out. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. With that set and certain details to follow, let's go back now to Item 6, Mr. Anderson, which is just going over the procedures for our field trip today. MR. ANDERSON: Yes. We-- in terms of the method of transportation, we would go in individual cars, and we've spent a little time in terms of setting up an itinerary. A1 and Ron have worked on the locations we'll be going to. So, Ron, would you like to describe where the stops will be? MR. HOVELL: Yeah. First, if I could back up for just a second, the court reporter, I think, is only going to stay for this part of the meeting. When we go to these various sites, I sort of assumed we'd have to reconvene at each place but that I would just take informal notes. We really don't plan on discussing much, just pointing out, you know, the features of either things that we have done or things that are related to projects coming up in the future and the names of the, you know, various passes or beaches or what have you. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Let me discuss that for just a moment. That is what we do. For committee members and for the public, so we all know how this needs to work under the Florida Page 56 September 6, 2001 Sunshine Law, when it comes time to leave -- now, we will recess the meeting and, as Mr. Anderson said, we'll all get in our own vehicles. In the meantime, just to remind committee members, while we're in recess, the committee members cannot talk to each other about coastal advisory matters. You can talk to staff. You can talk to members of the public. You can talk about golf. You just can't talk about things -- business that might come before the committee. It will still be a public meeting, so the public is invited and encouraged to accompany us on our excursion today. And when we get to each point, we will then reconvene the meeting, and that will then be on the record. MR. HOVELL: Okay. So specifically -- and we put it in the notice of public meeting -- we first intend to go down to the -- what most people call the south access to Marco Beach. There's public parking available on Swallow Avenue, just across the street -- just across South Collier Boulevard from the beach access point. The main things we would want to look at down there, there's a sea wall -- and Al's probably most familiar with it, but there's a sea wall down there that probably six months ago was almost invisible. Now it's exposed by about 4 or 5 feet. There's the segmented breakwaters which you'll be able to see just off the point down there. And we have an upcoming project to both extend all three of those by some length as well as add a fourth, if I remember all the details right. Ken's nodding his head yes. And also down in that general direction is Caxambas Pass. So those are the main things for that one. After we leave that area, we'll go up to Tiger Tail Beach which has the -- you know, it's a county park, so it does have the public parking there. We'll go out -- I think the -- you know, some of the things you can get a feel for are what we discussed here today as far as it now no longer being Sand Dollar Island but, I guess, Sand Page 57 September 6, 2001 Dollar Peninsula, if we're going to keep that name. You know, and you can start to see some of the effects of the lack of flushing, and that is, you know, the muck that we've discussed. And although it'll be high tide, I don't know that we'd get any examples of the -- and, of course, this all assumes that it's not pouring down rain. And then the last stop is to go up to Hideaway. And by that point I would hope that we start to get a feel for who's coming and going and have somewhat of a convoy because we do have to get through the gate there. And I know I've alerted Mr. Sommers (phonetic), and Mr. Snediker lives there, and we've made arrangements to get folks in and to park on Beach Drive. MR. SNEDIKER: South Beach Drive. MR. HOVELL: South Beach Drive. And we'll be able to see -- and his photos document it well. We'll be able to see the effects of building the additional T-groin, the beach renourishment there, and to get a better feel for the Hideaway Beach projects. One of the main ones that seems to generate the most discussion is the access improvements to Hideaway Beach. There's at least two proposals that have been presented by Ken, I think -- on the last meeting did you present those -- to either build a boardwalk and/or do some amount of sand fill to allow a better walking access into the Hideaway Beach area. So those are the types of things we'll try and point out when we get out there. I don't know how noisy it'll be with the breeze or if we'll get rained out or not, but that's the main things. MR. GRAY: Will we have a leader we can follow in our cars? MR. HOVELL: We have two -- at least until about four because I think Roy has to leave. Right now we have two county vehicles with yellow flashing lights on top. So I think for the first trip or so you should be -- I don't know that we're going to turn the lights on up on top, but you should be able to pick us out from a distance that Page 58 September 6, 2001 we're driving. And we will go slow, and we kind of did anticipate somewhat a convoy. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Thank you. One last thing before we recess, I want to remind the committee members who had comments on the minutes to furnish them to the court reporter. And with that we will recess this meeting and reconvene at the site. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was recessed by order of the Chair at 3:27 p.m. COASTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE GARY GALLEBERG, CHAIRMAN TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING, INC., BY BARBARA DRESCHER, NOTARY PUBLIC Page 59