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EAC Agenda 06/07/2000 ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISORY COUNCIL AGENDA June 7, 2000 9:00 a.m. Commission Boardroom W.Harmon Turner Building(Building "F")—Third Floor I. Roll Call II. Approval of Agenda III. Approval of May 3,2000 Meeting Minutes IV. Presentation on County's Transportation Network—Present& Future V. Growth Management Update VI. Land Use Petitions A. Planned Unit Development No. PUD-00-04 "Outdoor Resorts of Naples,A Motorcoach Country Club,PUD" Section 26, Township 48 South,Range 26 East VII. Old Business A. Recap of Annual Report Presentation(Chairman) VIII. New Business A. Presentation by Jim Weeks—concerning wellfields in Golden Gate Estates lowering water table. IX. Subcommittee Report A. Growth Management Subcommittee X. Council Member Comments XI. Public Comments XII. Adjournment ********************************************************************************* Council Members: Notify the Community Development and Environmental Services Division Administrative staff no later than 5:00 p.m. on May 31, 2000 if you cannot attend this meeting or if you have a conflict and will abstain from voting on a particular petition(403-2370). General Public: Any person who decides to appeal a decision of this Board will need a record of the proceedings pertaining thereto; and therefore may need to ensure that a verbatim record of proceedings is ,,•-made,which record includes the testimony and evidence upon which the appeal is to be based. May 3, 2000 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISORY COUNCIL Naples, Florida, May 3, 2000 LET IT BE REMEMBERED,that the Environmental Advisory Council, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m. in REGULAR SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: M. Keen Cornell James Baxter Ed Carlson Michael G. Coe Thomas W. Sansbury Alexandra Santoro J. Richard Smith NOT PRESENT: John DiNunzio n ALSO PRESENT: Stan Chrzanowski, Senior Engineer Barbara Burgeson, Senior Environmental Specialist Stephen Lenberger, Environmental Specialist, Development Services Bill Lorenz,Natural Resources Director Marjorie Student, Assistant County Attorney Ron Nino, Current Planning Manager Page 1 May 3, 2000 CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Are we ready for the Environmental Advisory Council meeting of May 3rd? Could we have a roll call? MS. BURGESON: Almost ready. Hill is actually -- has resigned. And that's official. We received a letter. So one of the items on today's agenda will be to elect a new chairperson. Jack Baxter? (No response.) MS. BURGESON: Michael Coe? MR. COE: Here. MS. BURGESON: Keen Cornell? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Here. MS. BURGESON: John DiNunzio is in the hospital, so he won't be with us today. Sansbury? MR. SANSBURY: Here. MS. BURGESON: Smith? (No response.) MS. BURGESON: And we have a new member. Alexandra, I'm sorry, the last name again? MS. SANTORO: Santoro. MS. BURGESON: Santoro. MS. SANTORO: Here. MS. BURGESON: Thank you. Oh, Ed Carlson. MR. CARLSON: I'm back. MS. BURGESON: I'm sorry, Ed. MR. CARLSON: Here. MS. BURGESON: Okay. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: And Mr. McVey? MS. BURGESON: Mr. McVey is no longer on the board. That was one of the two positions that -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Oh, he did resign. MS. BURGESON: Well, actually no, it expired. (Mr. Baxter enters the boardroom.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Oh, expired, okay. MS. BURGESON: So Mr. Sansbury and -- was reappointed to a four-year term, as well as Ally being appointed to a new four-year term. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay, Mr. Baxter is here. MS. BURGESON: Yes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. So then we are down what, one or two? MS. BURGESON: Just down one right now to replace Bill Hill. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. And when does that happen? How will that work? MS. BURGESON: I imagine that will be advertised probably this week and hopefully they'll -- if we can at all possible -- oh, actually, it's got to be a 30-day -- typically it's a 30-day advertising period, so we will be down one more -- one person for next month's meeting, and then we should be back up to the full nine-member board the month after that. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. And how would you like to handle the election of a chair? And should we have a vice chair? Page 2 May 3, 2000 MS. BURGESON: Yes, we should. (Mr. Smith enters the boardroom.) MS. BURGESON: We can either run this meeting with you as the chairman, and then handle that election at the end of the meeting, or we can handle that election up front. Whichever you'd prefer to do, since you're sitting in as the chairman for this evening. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Pleasure? MR. COE: I'd like to make a motion to elect you as president of the board. MR. SANSBURY: Chairman, chairman. MR. COE: Chairman, whatever. MR. SANSBURY: Whatever. MR. COE: All the above. MR. SANSBURY: Second. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Now, is that--how generous is that? Is that for today? MR. COE: That means all in favor. MR. SANSBURY: For a one-year term; is that correct? MS. BURGESON: It actually runs until October 1. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: We have elections in the fall, I do remember that. But we should have a vice chair, should we not? MS. BURGESON: Yes. Yes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: How about some nominations for vice chair? MR. CARLSON: I would like to nominate Mr. Sansbury. MR. COE: I'll second that. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any additional nominations? I would say you're there. MR. SANSBURY: Okay. MS. BURGESON: Do you need a vote on that, on both of those motions? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: All in favor of both of those positions. (Unanimous votes of ayes.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Mr. Smith has joined us. I'd like to thank you, first of all. I'd like to thank Bill Hill, I think, for all of us, for his inspired leadership during the year that he was leading the way. And also welcome Ally, our new member. Nice to have you with us. Any changes to the agenda, or the agenda all right? (No response.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Minutes of the April 5th meeting. Do I have a motion? MR. SANSBURY: Moved. MR. COE: Second. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Discussion? (No response.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: All in favor? (Unanimous votes of ayes.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Number 4, growth management update. Bill, is that you? MR. LORENZ: Yes. For the record, Bill Lorenz, natural resources director. Not too much of substance to report since the last meeting. The Rural Fringe Advisory Committee has been reviewing the evaluation methodology for evaluating alternative land use scenarios. They've approved five factors out of the 12-factor matrix. They're meeting again today. Hopefully the next two meetings, which would be the end of May, Page 3 May 3, 2000 that they'll get through the evaluation of methodology. On May 15th, the Rural Lands Advisory Committee will be meeting. They will be hearing some preliminary results of Wilson Miller's study out in the rural lands area, in terms of data gathering. We will also briefly present to them the evaluation matrix as it currently stands, because they will need to buy into it as well. This is a matrix that's going to be used for all of the rural agricultural assessment to the degree where ifs applicable. The third item is that the Board of County Commissioners next Tuesday, May 9th, have a series of agenda items on their plate to hear. They will finally adopt the remedial amendments that they transmitted to DCA back in November. This is the typical process that occurs. They'll also be --maybe I'll look for Marjorie to look at the proper language. I'm just going to use the term readopt the -- well, maybe not readopt, but allow stand the 1997 EAR-based amendments that DCA did not have a problem with, and simply readopt the amendments that are changed as a result of the final order. Marjorie, if you just need to step in on that kind of-- MS. STUDENT: For the record, Marjorie Student, assistant county attorney. What will happen, because in an abundance of caution we had readopted the 1997 EAR amendments where there are no issues, and that led to some legal issues. So upon advice of our Tallahassee counsel that's assisting us with the implementation of the final order and also the DCA, we're going to repeal that ordinance that was adopted in September by repeal ordinance. Then we're immediately going to adopt the -- another ordinance that gets rid of what we say, the bad stuff, the stuff that the final order and the Governor and Cabinet told us to remove from the plan, which we had done in September. But this is just to clean it up. And then according to DCA, this 1997 EAR amendments are effective, and that will just clean that all up. And then the third amendment, I think the one that Bill alluded to, is the one that you had seen earlier in the fall, and it's just a matter now of adopting it into the plan. Before you would have seen it when it was transmitted to DCA for their review and approval. And there's some minor changes in that, and the response to the objections, recommendations and comment report that we received from DCA on that. MR. LORENZ: And then simply the fourth item, staff is already taking the first five evaluation factors that the advisory committee has approved, and we're creating a series of maps and data sources that we'll be using for the evaluation as a data source for the evaluation. The next step, once the evaluation matrix is complete, is we'll use the existing comp. plan to basically test the methodology and fine-tune any types of problems that we may come up with. Then it will be ready to use for evaluating the other alternatives that we'll be developing. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you. Any questions for Bill? I would just ask you, do you -- does it seem like the community character discussion that's been going on is finding its way into this process, or-- MR. LORENZ: Well, what we'll be using at some particular point, the information that comes out of that, where it's applicable, we will use certainly as input to help draft some of the land use strategy. So although it may be -- we're not seeing any concrete results now, I definitely see that we'll be monitoring that. We have staff that will be sitting on both-- evaluating the results of both committees: The rural lands -- Rural Fringe Committee and the Community Character Committee, to ensure that whatever coordination needs to come out of that will come out of it. So nothing's of substance now. MR. SMITH: Bill, I wanted to ask you, there's three phases, as I understand. What are the -- how are those phases? What happens during the phases? Page 4 May 3, 2000 MR. LORENZ: If you're referring to our uniform assessment process? MR. SMITH: Well, yeah, I suppose. MR. LORENZ: It will be set up as a flow chart. Basically the first phase is data gathering and developing this evaluation methodology that we're currently engaged in. The next phase will be developing a series of alternative land use strategies that we can then subject to the evaluation methodology, determine which alternative scenarios give us the best bang for the buck, if you will. And that basically would be the Phase II. Phase III will be the adoption of the actual plan and the series of amendments. When I say plan, I should say concept. It's the adoption of a concept, conceptual plan, and then translating that conceptual plan into a series of goals, objectives and policies that we'll use to amend the existing growth management plan. That would be Phase III. Thank you. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thanks, Bill. Okay, we have a couple of land use petitions, beginning with Nicaea Academy. I'm sorry, Nancy, you had a question? MS. PAYTON: The agenda said the gopher tortoise was going to be first. MR. SANSBURY: Yeah, gopher tortoise first. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Yeah, how would you like to handle that? I show gopher tortoise as old business, agenda Item 6. MS. PAYTON: To be heard first. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Would you rather take that down? MS. BURGESON: We had scheduled that or hoped that we could hear that first, because we had postponed that from the last meeting. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you. I beg your pardon. MS. BURGESON: Unfortunately, I'm right now waiting for copies of that language in the boardroom. They're making copies for me. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. MS. BURGESON: So unless I can borrow somebody's from their package, I don't have one with me right now. So it will just be a couple of minutes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: You want to wait a couple of minutes and then we'll be all set? MS. BURGESON: If you want to do that. If we think that one of these petitions might be quick enough to go through. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Can you handle it if we do one petition? MS. PAYTON: I'll try. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: May we hear about the Nicaea Academy PUD? MR. LENBERGER: Good morning. For the record, Stephen Lenberger, development services. The project planner isn't here at the moment. We have the second petition, Mission Church. Perhaps we can hear that first? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. Is that all right with the -- MR. COE: Fine. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: It's called a flexible agenda. MR. BADAMTCHIAN: Good morning, council members. My name is Chahram Badamtchian from planning services staff. This petition is to rezone 35.56 acres of property from agricultural to PUD for a Catholic church and school. The property is located on the northeast side of 951 and Livingston Road extension, and it's surrounded by a vacant PUD, residential PUD to the north, estate zoning to the south, and agricultural to Page 5 May 3, 2000 the west and to the east. They are proposing to build a church and a school, as I said. They are going to preserve 15 percent as a preserve, and they will also have five acres of lakes and water management areas. The preserve area will allow passive recreational uses such as biking, hiking, nature trails and boardwalks. And our environmental staff and our engineers are here to answer any environmentally related questions. And I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thanks. Questions for staff? I just have one. I haven't memorized the LDC. How come it's 15 percent and not 25 percent? MR. BADAMTCHIAN: 15 percent of-- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: The vegetation to be preserved. MR. LENBERGER: Good morning. Stephen Lenberger, development services. It's 15 -- 25 percent preservation requirement applies to residential and mixed-use -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: All right. MR. LENBERGER: --projects. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you. MR. LENBERGER: And since this is not, it's 15 percent. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any other questions for staff? MR. COE: Yeah. Why is the buffer included in that 15 percent?Any particular reason for that? MR. LENBERGER: The Land Development Code, under the preservation requirement, allows native landscaping, 100 percent native landscaping to be used to help satisfy that requirement. And the petitioner has elected to use a perimeter buffer, in this case, for the preservation requirement. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Does the petitioner want to give us an overview of the project? MR. FERNANDEZ: Good morning. Michael Fernandez, representing the petitioner. The project is approximately 36 acres, located on the northeast section of Vanderbilt. As stated by staff, it's for a school and for a church facility. We -- working with the Water Management District, we worked out our preservation area to be located to the eastern extreme of the property, but maintained a 50-foot strip all the way along the north edge for the purposes of providing a wildlife connection between a preserve area that is located to the north of our facility, the canal, and also the eastern edge of our site. And that is also of course providing us with a significant buffer between us and the residential project to the north, and to the county facility to the east. It's a fairly straightforward petition. Our access meets the county requirements as far as separation and alliance with an existing road on its southern access. We are not going to cross the canal along 951. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. MR. CARLSON: I have some questions, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Shoot. MR. CARLSON: There's some discussion here about reevaluating some wetlands,jurisdiction lines. Has that been accomplished? MR. FERNANDEZ: We're in the final stages of that. We've been given verbal okay already from the Army Corps. And South Florida is waiting to see what the Corps -- determination is. The wells on-site show that they're -- those were not wetlands. There is also a county well, monitoring well, on the adjacent piece of property, within about 200 feet of our site that has been active since 1995, and has only shown in one case a water level that would be classified as a wetland. So these are fairly well drained areas. Historically, a long time ago, this definitely was a wetland, probably because of the close proximity of the canal. This area no longer maintains the Page 6 May 3, 2000 hydrology for such a wetland. MR. CARLSON: Exhibit C that you provided shows the jurisdictional wetland line. And that's --this is still the present jurisdictional wetland line of this project? MR. FERNANDEZ: That is still the present jurisdictional line. We had asked that-- tried to get the Army Corps to get us a letter prior to this date. Have been unable to. And of course that's the ruling element. And of course that's what would be preserved unless that -- the reconsideration is made, which we do expect. MR. CARLSON: Exhibit E, existing South Florida Water Management District wetland maps. You included a letter from the district from Dawn Underwood. And at the bottom of that letter it says, staff recommends that monitoring of the water table at the project site be initiated as soon as possible in order to establish an accurate control elevation which will maintain or improve the function of the wetlands. Is that -- and again, the same wetland jurisdiction map. Has something fundamentally changed that there's no way to improve or enhance wetlands with control elevations? MR. FERNANDEZ: The --the situation in this particular case is that there is no underlined strata that holds the water up high enough. A control elevation would not allow us to maintain a wetland in that area. It's always going to be drained. It does not meet the hydrological conditions that define a wetland. MR. CARLSON: But all we have to go on right now at this meeting is that these are the jurisdictional wetland lines at this point? MR. FERNANDEZ: Yeah, we have submitted our correspondence regarding the well monitoring and all the backup to the Army Corps and so forth, and that's what we're waiting on. That's correct. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions from council? Okay, I think we have one down here. Okay. MS. SANTORO: Being relatively new, I wanted to ask this question each time until I get more information. But you've talked about going to the -- back to the growth management borders of 1997. So I want to be sure that this development is within the planned management growth area and not outside. MR. BADAMTCHIAN: The growth management area-- I mean, the urban area is one mile past 951. And this is right on 951, on the east side of 951. This is within that urban area. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions? Yes, sir. MR. COE: Didn't you say that your project was within 200 yards or feet of a well, an active well? MR. FERNANDEZ: It's a well monitor-- it's a monitoring well that the county has. On its facility next door, as you've heard probably in the last year, there's been a significant amount of publicity regarding spillage on a water treatment plant in that area. That is the facility that is to the east of our property. They maintain a monitoring well there for the purposes of looking at spillage and so forth, contaminants. And so that information was available to us for consideration when we submitted to the Army Corps and to the South Florida Water Management District for revision of the wetland lines. MR. COE: Are you permitted to be within that distance? MR. FERNANDEZ: That's just a monitoring well, yeah. We have -- there's no -- MR. COE: There's no real problem. MR. FERNANDEZ: There's no problem. MR. COE: You aren't going to be drilling a well on that property, are you? Page 7 May 3, 2000 MR. FERNANDEZ: No, we're not. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions? MR. SMITH: I had sort of-- I guess it's a question. Mr. Carlson had made an observation at one of our meetings not too long ago that that particular parcel just happens to be absolutely gorgeous in terms of the forestry,the trees that are there. Is there anything that's going to be done in the overall planning of this to preserve as much of that as possible? MR. FERNANDEZ: You're absolutely right, it's an absolutely gorgeous piece of property. We're fortunate to be working with individuals at the St. John's church that did the facility at 111th that are looking to retain a significant amount of vegetation to give the setting for their church, as well as when we do the parking areas, to include as much existing vegetation as possible. The other thing that we're very fortunate to have is that we're not going to be required to have a significant amount of fill on the site, which means that we have a greater chance for being able to retain some of the existing trees in the parking area, and we're fortunate again that our client looks at that as an enhancement, something that's very positive, rather than going in there and just strip cleaning the whole site off. So that's --right now we're working on that project as far as doing a site specific plan. But certainly retention of vegetation throughout the site is something that the client is allowing us to work with them to end up with a project that does as much of that as possible. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any other questions from the council? Does anyone in the room have any questions they'd like to bring to the petitioner or the staff? If not, what is your pleasure on -- I'm sorry, was there one? If not, what is your pleasure? MR. SANSBURY: Move approval to the staffs recommendation. MR. CARLSON: I would like to discuss this a little bit more amongst the board. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Do we have a second? MR. COE: Sure. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: A second? MR. COE: No, not a second. I mean, I want to hear his discussion. MR. CARLSON: The -- also provided with this is Exhibit K, which was the Bucks Run plan that we did approve, which if you look at that, you can see that preserve areas there do follow some natural boundaries and habitats. And this is immediately north of the project before us today. So if you superimpose those two projects, you'll see that the previous one that we approved, you know, had a plan to preserve habitats and follow natural boundaries. And we still have a wetland line in this project. But when you look at the plan, it's really not a plan, it's -- but it's site sensitive. It just simply has two straight buffers. And, you know, I'd like to see more site sensitivity in looking at the planned communities that are there, the historic wetlands. And if you're going to have preserve areas and preserve native vegetation, those communities are there and it doesn't seem like this plan is really sensitive to the site. MR. FERNANDEZ: Just so you know, we've been talking extensively with the environmentalists and the Water Management people at the district, and it's at their suggestion that we provided that linear connection between these areas. In other words, they're saying a 50-foot corridor, wildlife corridor, that enhances and connects then that irregular forms to the north to our larger area, which they would -- originally their comment was keep as much as you could on the eastern extreme, but one large area that would probably be the most beneficial to wildlife and to a habitat, they suggested that we put the lake that you see there as a buffer between our development and that retained preserve area. Page 8 May 3, 2000 But then they came back and they suggested to us that we provide that linear piece along that northern tier-- along our northern boundary for the purposes of connecting and providing a wildlife corridor that would connect that piece to these irregular forms to the parcel to the north. You will also -- MR. CARLSON: Whose suggestion was that? MR. FERNANDEZ: That's the Water Management District, their environmental staff. The other thing that you may note about your --the Bucks Run is that that was a reconsideration, a wetland reconsideration they came in for. They had shown significantly greater amounts of wetlands on that site. And that approval was to reduce it to the areas that the Water Management District had approved. In our case, our data is actually more extreme than theirs and allows us to go in there and remove that designation all together. But we were sensitive to what the Water Management District was talking about. We positioned our areas for these corridors. Our client again is trying to do a nice project with that lake in the front. We're going to mold that around the church facility itself. But we did provide, as the Water Management District suggested, the lake and the rear of the property to buffer the larger preserve area, so that that can become more of a naturalized area. And you don't have this information in front of you, but the parcel to the east, which the county owns, has also a significant amount of vegetation around it. So again it allows for wildlife and the vegetation to kind of meander over in that direction. So we felt that was a plan of action that really provides the most continuity, if you will, with the desires of maintaining a consolidated area for habitat. MR. CARLSON: Except that as I see it, you're --the large portion of your preserve area, the extreme western edge -- or excuse me, eastern end of this project really removes it from the preserve areas on the project immediately north to you that have already been established. MR. FERNANDEZ: It provides a connection. The alternative, if you came back, and let's say you continued that preserve area and you went straight south. What you would end up then was segregating that--you would create an island between development on both sides of that preserve area. By moving it over to the eastern edge, we retain a greater amount of vegetation, or a better enhanced -- or quality vegetation, according to the district, and we've allowed it to continue on, on the adjacent property which the county owns. So that appears to be more desirable than to have development on both sides being of a preserve area and being impacted by the parking and the building areas of the school. MR. CARLSON: The county land to the east is not all water treatment plant? MR. FERNANDEZ: No, there is some existing vegetation on that site as well that meanders throughout their facility. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Did you-- had you seconded the motion? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to MR. COE: No, I had not. I will second it. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay, we have a second. Any further discussion on the motion to approve? All in favor? MS. SANTORO: Aye. MR. SANSBURY: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Aye. MR. COE: Aye. MR. BAXTER: Aye. MR. SMITH: Aye. Page 9 May 3, 2000 CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any opposed? MR. CARLSON: Nay. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you. Are we ready for the gopher tortoise? MS. BURGESON: Is there a member on the board that needs extra copies of this language, before I make a presentation? MR. SMITH: (Raises hand.) MS. SANTORO: (Raises hand.) MR. SANSBURY: (Raises hands.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Barb, do you want to lead the way on this? MS. BURGESON: Yes, I will. Thanks. We made a brief presentation on this at the last EAC meeting, or actually the meeting prior to that when we were first initially discussing a very original rough draft of this ordinance. There's been quite a bit of change since that time, trying to be much more specific and detailed as a result of both staff looking at it more carefully and as a result of consultants and the public looking at it and suggesting that the more information and detail that we could put into the Land Development Code language, the easier it will be for staff to not only enforce that, but for the developers to understand what their responsibilities will be in regards to protecting gopher tortoise habitat and gopher tortoise populations. Just going through this pretty much a page at a time, the purpose, the only change there is to address a change in the language and put in the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Under new and existing development, again the language there is just to update the current language from the old project review to planning services department, and to add that the county would consider recommendations and technical assistance from the new language being Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The bulk of the change came in with removing one small paragraph referencing the species of protection and adding in several pages on gopher tortoise protection language. If you have any questions on this as we go, please feel free to stop me and I'll help you explain -- or help explain it to you. Gopher tortoises are hereby protected, expressly prohibited to harass, molest, hunt or remove. That's protection language for the tortoises. Below that is protection language for the burrows. And then provision given to allow personnel authorized by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to house and relocate tortoises necessary provided for in this section. We've -- requiring that whenever gopher tortoises are identified on the site, that protection management plan be required for each of those development petitions. We're giving priority to those areas as a part of the required native vegetation preservation requirements. For instance, when a piece of property requires 25 percent native vegetation protection, if it's not being fulfilled entirely in wetlands, then we want priority for the first upland habitats to be the gopher tortoise habitat on-site which contains the largest amount of gopher tortoise burrows and habitat with that. We're also allowing for an identification or a description of what is considered suitable habitat. That language came out of several different state and county documents identifying for what that particular habitat should have, being defined under No. 5 on Page 4. We're stating, going a little bit further, that where suitable habitat cannot be provided for on-site, or where a property owner meets the minimum on-site native vegetation preservation requirements by this code with wetlands, and there may not be enough appropriate habitat for tortoises on-site, that they do need to relocate those tortoises off-site. This will remove some of the problems that we've had in Page 10 May 3, 2000 past petitions where tortoises are just placed in very small holding areas, basically, until development is completed, and then released into areas that are not suitable habitat for survivability of the species. We're also asking for the ability to work with the petitioner in having some of the species protected on-site, having a maximum number per acre of five, and then if there's a larger -- greater density than that, then requiring that the petitioner relocate the balance of the population. We're adding into a different section, cross-referencing in 3.9.5, which is the habitat protection section, so that we give priority whenever there are gopher tortoises on-site to that habitat being protected first. We're also asking, on single-family platted lots we will be designing guidelines. They'll be available for all single-family homeowners to require that they protect tortoises on-site. We will be providing that with all Golden Gate Estates and all single-family building permit information so that they can make that identification and use our guidelines to protect tortoises on-site on their own. And then we're saying that gopher tortoises shall be removed from all active and inactive burrows located within the areas of construction prior to any site improvements, in accordance with the management plan and the protection plan that will be approved by Collier County Planning Services. Are there any questions regarding any of this, or-- we have a couple presentations, I expect, from -- I know that Nancy Payton will probably want to make a presentation. She's given us a package of information that's officially been placed into the record, and we'll be making copies of that and getting those out to you. Yes. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I did have a question or two for Barbara. It might be for Nancy. First of all, I reviewed some of the material that had been provided to us earlier at some of the earlier meetings. And one of the things that I noticed is -- if I'm incorrect in this,please correct me, but the gopher tortoise, as I understand it, is an animal that has found its presence to be mostly to stretch from the eastern and southern parts of Louisiana all the way to the southern parts of South Carolina and on down through the northern peninsula of Florida. And in South Florida, it's very, very limited and has been deemed to be very limited in its population to the kind of stretches of the east coast line and the west coast line on the southern portions of Florida. So that there's not ever been, at least according to what I've been reading here, a very strong gopher tortoise population in Collier County. Is that correct, or am I -- MS. BURGESON: I don't have any data regarding the number of tortoises that were here historically, but we have lost almost all of our scrub habitat in Collier County. I would assume that the gopher tortoise population was much, much larger than you might even believe it could have been, due to the fact that we're down to less than one percent of the scrub habitat that was here originally. A lot of the tortoises years ago were not protected, so there's no way to know how many of those tortoises had been here and were removed, relocated or killed prior to them being placed on the state list. MR. SMITH: I was just reading from the article entitled Identification of Critical Gopher Tortoise Habitat in South Florida, by Joan E. Diemer-Berish, biological scientist for the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission. Quoting from him (sic) it says, "Tortoises were never abundant in South Florida." And he (sic) cites a study, a 1958 study, "And have declined further because of habitat loss." And they found no tortoises in Hendry County, for example, and only small isolated populations in Broward and Collier County. And the map that's attached to that shows those strip areas within Collier County and Broward and Dade County where they -- MS. BURGESON: They're only on the high coastal ridges. MR. SMITH: Right. Page 11 May 3, 2000 MS. BURGESON: You can find that along the shoreline, you can find that in Immokalee. There's quite a lot of area in Immokalee. MR. SMITH: Great. MS. BURGESON: They're still scattered throughout Golden Gate Estates areas where the land is high and dry. MR. SMITH: Okay. And you know, that --that brings me to my next concern or question, really. The -- one of the criteria that is being proposed here, if I might take a second to find it. I'm looking for the document that you passed out just a minute ago. Under the proposed change to the ordinance under Paragraph No. 5, Sub D, the off-site relocation plans must be permitted and A, B, C are various criteria. Then Sub D is one where it says in the opinion of the Community Development Environmental Services administrator. And then it goes on, the requirement to provide the required gopher site habitat preservation area will not be conducive to long-term help of the on-site population of the tortoises. My question is: How do we know, or how would someone know what that opinion is going to be? I mean, isn't that a very subjective issue? And I tie that in with the idea that the single-family home platted family lots in Golden Gate Estates would then apparently be subjected to someone's opinion about whether or not gopher tortoises are -- you know, are going to be protected. MS. BURGESON: Well, this is in-- clearly in the professional opinion of staff, the environmental staff, in coordination with the management plan and relocation plan that's being submitted by the petitioner and their staff of expert biologists putting that together. So it's a coordinated effort on allowing Collier County staff that flexibility to determine at times when it may not be in the best interest of the population for them to be -- for them to be maintained on-site. So it's -- even though it's written there in the opinion of the Development Services administrator, that language is fairly standard in the Land Development Code. That falls back down to staff to make those --typically to make those determinations. And it will be done with all of the science and the background that we need to, to make our best professional judgments on those calls. MR. SMITH: And then I'll finish with this: The concern that I have is that you have a single-family owner of a single-family lot in Golden Gate Estates, for example, a person that may not be of very great means financially, who wants to build a home on his lot. He's faced with an opinion that is backed up with-- with some science, and his choice is to go and hire someone that he may not be able to afford. MS. BURGESON: Right now it is the obligation and requirement of every single-family homeowner in Golden Gate Estates to be doing what we're asking them to do. It's just that it's not been something that we've had the staff to oversee. It's not something that is new to their responsibility or obligations, it's just that we're spelling this out in the Land Development Code right now. For instance, if you had a lot in Golden Gate Estates that had a scrub habitat and gopher tortoise population on it, you are required by Collier County Land Development Code and Growth Management Plan to protect those species. They are protected by Collier County. We just do not go out and do site visits on all single-family home lots. So it's your responsibility at this point. And we're trying to help clarify that by stating in the code that we will provide guidelines for the single-family homeowners to do just that. This is not new obligations or responsibilities, this is just clearly defining what already exists and is probably being ignored on some lots in the Estates at this point. MR. SMITH: You mean there's already language that makes for this provision? MS. BURGESON: Yes, there is. MR. SMITH: Where is that located? Page 12 May 3, 2000 MS. BURGESON: It's in the Land Development Code and in the Growth Management Plan. MR. SMITH: I mean, what section is that? MS. BURGESON: I'd have to get back to you on that. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions from the council? MR. COE: None. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Comments from folks in the room? MS. STUDENT: I have one person signed up. Tim Durham. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Do we need to swear Tim in? MS. STUDENT: This is not quasi-judicial, this is a legislative matter that you're making recommendations on, so I don't believe that's necessary. MR. DURHAM: Good morning. For the record, my name is Tim Durham with Wilson-Miller, director of environmental services. For a change, I'm not here representing any particular landowner or project,just some comments on the language. Staff has been very cooperative, I think willing to work out some good language here, and we're generally-- you know, agree with what we see here. One concern I just want to point out in particular to the EAC is a lot of the language here is predicated on there being an off-site option available to a landowner. That is not always an easy thing to accomplish. Right now the State of Florida, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission -- it will be years before I get that down -- will issue a take permit routinely for a project with a small sized gopher tortoise population or a small amount of habitat. That take permit from them typically forbids you to move the tortoises off-site. Most developers down here will take tortoises and remove them from the burrow and try to protect them from harm, and the county requires them to do so. All that's well and good. But the state -- the Wildlife Commission is not very favorable towards relocating off-site. There needs to be some changes in that regard. In Lee County there's some off-site relocation options available to folks. I think Collier County needs a similar relocation option off-site. To recognize the biology of tortoises, you basically need a population of 50 or more in a consistent, cohesive group to have enough genetic diversity to assure long-term survival of the population. Protecting small little pods of three to 10 to 20 tortoises, spread out and disconnected in the county, does not ensure the long-term survival of the tortoise population. So I would just encourage as we move forward, perhaps the EAC could take an interest and encourage some kind of an investigation into possible off-site relocation for the gopher tortoises. Again, I agree, the population in Southwest Florida was never as big as in the Panhandle or other parts of the state, but we still do have a meaningful number of tortoises left in the county. It's a very unique habitat, and we should take some measures to try to protect those in a meaningful way. Not-- again, I don't want to have a feel-good ordinance that makes us feel good today but does nothing for the long-term survival of the tortoises. I think we need to take a comprehensive look at establishing some kind of a place for them to be taken care of in the long term. Thank you. MS. BURGESON: In response to Tim, staff-- in the beginning of this ordinance amendment, there's language about staffs intent, and that is to continue to work with the state and to work with the county. There's a lot of funding money available with the state right now, and we're hoping to be able to identify some areas that can be identified for gopher tortoise mitigation bank type of programs. We have discussions ongoing right now. And anything that you can do to help us in terms of identifying areas or _ funding and providing maybe some support to the Board of County Commissioners to encourage us to obtain lands for relocation. Page 13 May 3, 2000 MR. CARLSON: Also, the Water Management District, with the Save our Rivers lands, I think "' there are vast opportunities there. MS. BURGESON: Okay. MR. DURHAM: If I could add to that, Barb's exactly right. My understanding is there's approximately $800,000 in a trust fund that the Game and Fish has collected over the years from the take permits. And several years ago, maybe 10 years ago,there was a focused effort in Lee County to take that kind of money and apply it to Hickey Creek Park. Again, I think a similar effort needs to come from Collier County. And Barbara's exactly right, there's some efforts underway but I think my purpose here is to get the EAC sensitive to that and, you know, try to endorse that concept. It makes a lot of sense. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: So the kind of thing we might do, in other words, is encourage the commissioners to put together some kind of a refuge with --perhaps with state help or something like that. Is that what we're talking about? MS. BURGESON: That would be excellent. Some type of mitigation bank, similar to what you have with the wetland mitigation areas, similar to what Panther Island is doing right now. But this would be an upland mitigation area for relocation. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: I thought it seemed like a tough situation. Just from reading this stuff that you gave us. It sounded like Sanibel was being presented as a, you know, excellent example of the way it can be done. And yet I understand that they have a tremendous problem with this upper respiratory tract disease there. MS. BURGESON: Yes. Sanibel has only come into light as something from -- in terms of how they're doing in terms of protecting the tortoises, but it's not something that we're trying to gear ourselves towards. We hope to do better. --- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: It sounds like once you try to move them, you get into all kinds of trouble, and you have to really test them and, you know, do this and that. MS. BURGESON: But there's a couple of different ways that we can go. We could either look into the possibility of having tortoises tested for their upper respiratory diseases; we can look into relocating them into areas where there are no existing populations, so that you're not creating any possibility of infecting populations. We haven't really gotten into a lot of the details on that. And those are typically worked out a little more closely with the management relocation plans that we require. But if there's any direction, since this ordinance is an ordinance requested by this board, to go forward to improve the situation, if there's some more language you'd like me to add in to here to give us better direction in terms of maybe doing some medical scientific surveys or research on that. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Yeah, it's a tough problem. I thought your ordinance did a lot of positive things. Anyway, are there any other-- sure, Gary. MR. JULIAN: I just spoke to Rob Loflin (phonetic)yesterday, and their population is doing great because they're not stressed. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Where is that? MR. JULIAN: Sanibel. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Oh, oh. MR. JULIAN: There's a biologist on staff there. Sanibel has their own biologist on staff. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: So they don't have a lot of disease problem there. MR. JULIAN: No, it's suppressed. They're doing great. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Oh. -- MR. JULIAN: I've also brought Nora Demuris, a doctor from FGCU. Maybe you'd like to speak Page 14 May 3, 2000 _ to her for a minute? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Great. MR. JULIAN: Now, I was curious how -- I know I introduced the adoption of the ordinance and it was tabled. I was curious where it's going. Are you guys entertaining it? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure, that's what we're doing today. MR. JULIAN: Oh, okay. So it's still alive. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Yes, definitely. MR. JULIAN: Would you like to hear from Nora Demuris? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. MS. BURGESON: I just want to clarify, I think maybe there was a misunderstanding here. We're adopting our own ordinance. We are not at this point looking to adopt the Sanibel ordinance. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Right. Was that what you asked? I didn't mean to -- MR. JULIAN: No, no. I have 500 petitions and that's what I'm presenting, that we do adopt the Sanibel ordinance, because they do have a staff biologist and their population is doing very good. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Yeah, from what I can see, I doubt that it would be identical because we're not identical places, but I think that we are working towards -- MR. JULIAN: Well, we could work with that, too. But I'd still like to have that entertained by you-- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. MR. JULIAN: -- and provided to the commissioners -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure, we understand that. MR. JULIAN: With your blessing. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: That's kind of the model. MR. JULIAN: Thank you. Nora? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you, Gary. MS. PAYTON: I have a handout as well. Good morning. My name is Nancy Payton and I'm with the Florida Wildlife Federation. And we are offering today some strengthening amendments to the proposed gopher tortoise regulations. Gopher tortoises are long-lived animals. They dig burrows in dry, sandy soils, which shares with many other species of insects, reptiles, amphibians and mammals. And in fact, 360 other species share the mini ecosystem that a gopher tortoise creates. The preferred habitat of the gopher tortoise is dry, sandy soils with low growing scrubby plants. The same prime location for development and agriculture. There are three options for gopher tortoises that are losing their homes, either to development or ag. In this case, we're dealing with development. It's one, we can protect them on-site. Two, we can relocate them to a suitable habitat, but there are a lot of problems associated with that. One we briefly discussed, the upper respiratory problem. And also I brought with me a map of potential gopher tortoise habitat that exist in Collier County. And this is from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, through their Closing the Gaps in Florida's wildlife conservation system. And you can see there's not a lot of potential habitat for gopher tortoises in Collier County. And a lot of that habitat is habitat that's prime real estate in this county. Lastly, we can also talk about mitigation banking, which we briefly discussed. But in our opinion, the best is to preserve location, preserve gopher habitat -- gopher tortoise habitat on-site, is Page 15 May 3, 2000 what I'm trying to say. Since 1986, when gopher tortoises were listed as a species of special concern in the State of Florida, from '86 to '99, 38 permits have been issued, those take permits. Those are those kill permits. And that authorized the killing of 1,252 gopher tortoises, and allowed the destruction of 1,353 acres of good gopher tortoise habitat. What we got in return was 327 acres in a mitigation bank, which I don't know where that is. We rank sixth in the state in terms of the number of gopher tortoises that are killed through this Incidental Take Program. These are figures that I received from the Wildlife Commission. I handed out a packet of information that includes our recommended amendments to the proposed ordinance. Our rationale for those amendments, and I'll go through that quickly,this map that illustrates potential gopher tortoise habitat; an article that appeared last week, or several weeks ago, excuse me, in the Tampa Tribune that is a good summary of problems facing the gopher tortoises. And lastly, I submit for the record, and I've already provided this to staff, a copy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services South Florida Multi-Species Recovery Plan. I have many of these, so if there's anyone on the council who would like a copy, I'll gladly get that to them. These are our changes to the --recommended changes to the proposed regulation. And I base mine on the proposed regulation that was online. And I notice it's a little bit different than what we discussed today, or what Barbara discussed. But you'll get the idea of where we're going and what we're looking for in our recommended changes. MR. COE: Nancy, could I ask you a question? MS. PAYTON: Sure. MR. COE: These proposed changes that you just handed us, has that already been given to the staff? Has that been discussed with the staff? MS. PAYTON: Staff received it late Monday. MR. COE: This Monday? MS. PAYTON: Yes. MS. STUDENT: Again, Marjorie Student, assistant county attorney. I have not been provided with that. And part of my duties include the review of LDC amendments and I have conducted in my review the amendments for the Planning Commission and the Board of County Commissioners, but I have not received those until right now, so I'll need to take a look at them as well. MS. PAYTON: That's fine. We'd be happy to sit down with staff-- MR. COE: The reason I'm a bit confused here is a couple of things that have occurred here. And not that I'm living here in a cloud or anything. But Mr. Julian comes up here, and he's still trying to sell us Sanibel's plan and wondering what we're doing up here. And I don't know whether I've missed the boat here, but for the last couple of meetings, we've done nothing but talk about gopher tortoises and trying to come up with a plan for the county. I know this: If someone gives me something on Monday for a meeting on Wednesday morning and expects me to meld that with what I've been working on for maybe a month, I can't flip that quick. Now, maybe age, maybe it's stupid. MS. PAYTON: You don't have to flip that quick. MR. COE: They're not going to just take yours, throw out theirs and say let's do it. It's my idea they have to have time, I would assume, to sit down and evaluate this. MS. BURGESON: Right. And we will spend the time more carefully going through this. But I wanted Nancy to be able to make a full presentation to you, because this is your ordinance. I think that — what she's suggesting here is something that you want to listen to and consider. And if there's anything Page 16 May 3, 2000 that you would like to give me the direction to more carefully consider to replace into your ordinance, then I'd be more than happy to do that for you. MS. PAYTON: And I must say, this is a very fluid document, because I just pulled it down off the Internet last Wednesday or Thursday and it's not the same as what you are discussing today. So I'm behind in some ways. MS. STUDENT: I probably am, too, because the LDC amendment I have was a week or so old. MS. PAYTON: And I also remind the EAC is you don't have to make a decision today. You don't have to make a decision before the Planning Commission who hears it tonight. You're responsible to the County Commissioners, and you provide a recommendation to the County Commissioners. And as I calculate it, they're not going to be dealing with this until after your next meeting. MS. BURGESON: That's correct. MS. PAYTON: So there's an opportunity for those of us that come forward today that have still concerns about this and recommendations to sit down with staff and come back and have an excellent document. MS. STUDENT: I need to correct for the record, the Planning Commission is the Land Development Regulation Commission. And while you may make direct recommendations on other items to the board, growth management law requires that the Land Development Regulation Commission or Planning Commission is also responsible for the Land Development Code Program and has to make recommendations to the board. They have two meetings this month. The Planning Commission has one tonight and then two weeks hence on Wednesday night. So I don't know if that helps or not. But we've taken the position, too, that --well, never mind, I'm not going to say anymore about it. MS. PAYTON: Shall I -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Carry on, please. MS. PAYTON: Very good. We -- I'll walk you through it. First the Section 3.11.2, which is purpose, we struck that out and added a new section that more clearly identified that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has a threatened, endangered and species of special concern status. There is no species of special status that I could find in any wildlife law. And then we broke it down to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has two listings, endangered and threatened. And CITES doesn't classify wildlife as threatened or endangered. They put it on appendices 1, 2 or 3. And that's a-- we clarified that. It's kind of cleaning it up and making it more accurate. We put in a definition section to put in take, which is universally used in wildlife law to collectively say to harass, harm,pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, collect, or attempt to engage in any such conduct. That is common in wildlife law, and it ought to be reflected in this particular protective ordinance. We pulled the definition directly out of the Endangered Species Act. With the next section, it referred to -- this would be interim guidelines until there are standards. Well, there are no longer interim guidelines necessary, because the Multi-Species Protection (sic) Plan exists. Then we did some other collective changes in there, sort of cleaning it up. We did change the wording to require the county to consider and use technical assistant, not just they have the option, but we think that they should use it when it's provided from the Wildlife Conservation Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. __ And we also said that project plans should comply -- must comply with current state, federal and local wildlife laws before they're approved by the county and not have it sort of a stipulated Page 17 May 3, 2000 understanding that yeah, you'll get that at some point along the line. We also ask that all plans be consistent with the Multi-Species Recovery Plan. They complement it and assist it. And I listed the various species that have recovery plans in here, and they're cross-referenced with a list that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission provided to the county. I'll go on to gopher tortoises. We also included in the first item under gopher tortoises their habitats. They ought to be protected as well. You can't just protect a gopher and not his habitat. And we took out the harass, molest, hunt and inserted take. If you notice, nothing in that particular section prohibits you from killing a gopher tortoise. You're going to be in violation if you harass, molest or hunt them, but it's okay to kill them. Well, we've changed that to take the term put an -- insert the term "take" any such tortoise or to alter, degrade the functions and the values of its habitat. In the next item, we included active and inactive burrows, because inactive burrows still have tremendous value to other wildlife. And also the commensals, that's the little ecosystem that's around them. With No. 3, we restricted it to the -- who could give authority to handle gopher tortoises to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Our constitution says that they're responsible for wildlife, so it is they who should determine who are their agents to handle gopher tortoises and other wildlife. With regard to off-site relocation, we felt that this should be discouraged. We also recommended that the Natural Resources Department should verify the presence of gopher tortoises on-site and the quality of that habitat, and priority attention for staff should be to those areas that are in red on the map that's on the visualizer. With suitable habitat, we said that No. 1 suitable habitat should be the present occupied range of existing gopher tortoises. We struck out the reference to five gopher tortoises, the density, and that was done at the recommendation of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Their recommendation, if you're going to have density, the maximum should be two, but really, it should be determined on the value of the habitat. Because habitat may vary, and one type of habitat that's good might be able to carry five gopher tortoises. Another habitat, which is poor quality, may not be able to handle two gopher tortoises. Therefore, it should be a case-by-case situation. But if you want to deal with density, it's recommended that it be no greater than two per acre. We also inserted that the off-site relocation plan must be approved by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the permit must be issued prior to the approval of the development order by the Board of County Commissioners. We struck out all that section about suitable habitat and the Development Services administrator having that authority to determine what's good and bad gopher tortoise habitat, and left that responsibility to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Sixth, that we required that all gopher tortoise habitats, those preserves, go into conservation easements. That would ensure that they would be properly protected. And those easements are held by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. And again, we asked with regards to the single-family homes that the Natural Resource Department verify the existence of gopher tortoises with priority to, again, those areas in red on the map. And also, we recommend that those guidelines for individual homeowners be included in this ordinance. Otherwise, it becomes a very fluid document for individual homeowners. And under the -- talks about when development is taking place on a site, we felt that gopher tortoises should stay where they are, not be relocated, and that they be securely and safely fenced while Page 18 May 3, 2000 site work is being completed. And lastly, under penalties we again deleted killed, injured or molest and inserted taking. And also inserted the option of the county giving stop orders for developments that are violating this ordinance. And then I had one question, and that had to do with the fine that's here. It's a misdemeanor, and I wondered if that's the maximum that can be given under this type of ordinance, Marjorie, or could we make this consistent with state law, which is a felony of a third degree? MS. STUDENT: I'll have to look into that, quite frankly. MS. PAYTON: Well, then we'll recommend that the penalty be a felony of the third degree so it's consistent with state law. MS. STUDENT: I'm just not sure that a local government has the authority to -- MS. PAYTON: That's why it's a question. MS. STUDENT: Yeah. On something that's a felony, which is a state type of crime. MS. PAYTON: That summarizes my comments. I appreciate the opportunity. And Florida Wildlife is more than happy to sit down with anyone and everyone to talk in greater detail about what we've proposed and work together to get an effective gopher tortoise ordinance. And we'd also work on Mr. Durham's suggestion for what we do in the long term to ensure the survival of the species in our county. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you, Nancy. Any questions for Nancy while we have her? MR. SMITH: Well, Nancy, I'm looking at a map that was given to us as part of some of the study material. I don't know if this -- if you can see this or not. But-- MS. PAYTON: Not well, but I see the map of the State of Florida and I see a light and a dark gray. MR. SMITH: You can see the gray area here is the area where the gopher tortoise is found, or has been historically found. And this white area here is where it's not found. And there's gray along the coast, as you can see here. Very little in Collier County. My question for you is: Where did you get your information that Collier County was the sixth -- the sixth what, the sixth in number for kills or something, did you say? MS. PAYTON: Where I got it was that --received a summary of gopher tortoise incidental takes complete as of 11-99 from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. And I just added up the figures, and I can provide these. MR. SMITH: Do you have that? I mean, can I see that? MS. PAYTON: Yes, you may certainly see that. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Yes, sir. MR. SANSBURY: I don't understand one thing about your approach, because I think their approach should be to encourage developing areas where we have viable populations. By what you're saying here is you're not encouraging relocation. I mean, we heard from Mr. Durham. I happen to have been studying it quite a bit, and I happen to agree with Mr. Durham. And every biologist's report that I've seen says that it -- unless you have 50 or more turtles in a population, your biological diversity is not there. As I read your approach here, you're saying, hey, if there's two or three there, you keep them there, you don't encourage relocation. I've just done a relocation with 12 of them. I mean, they're doing fine, but they don't meet that biodiversity situation. I think our approach should be as we talked about earlier, and as we were going in this other ordinance, an approach to encourage an aggressive plan to establish banking areas and to establish areas Page 19 May 3, 2000 where we can create viable populations. We have parcels that are infill parcels that maybe have 12 here and 15 here and 20 here. That's not saving a gopher turtle. That's just preserving for the state of-- for the fact of not doing things. We should aggressively, if we're going to do this, try to set this up so we don't have this occur. And I don't find that approach in your approach here. You're saying you're discouraging relocation. Why? MS. PAYTON: No, I'm not discouraging -- MR. SMITH: You said that, quote -- I'm quoting you when you said that. MS. PAYTON: There are problems with where we're going to put them. And secondly, because of the disease factor. But I did -- this does allow off-site relocation if the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approves and a permit is issued. So it does allow off-site relocation when authorized by the State of Florida. MR. COE: How long does that process take? MS. PAYTON: I'm not sure how long that takes. MR. SMITH: Nancy, I see on the material that you give me here, I counted 11 that were ahead of Collier County. I mean, that's just -- and Collier County, of course, is one of the fastest growing communities. And I don't know if these numbers -- you're using these numbers and you're coming out with six. I look at 11 ahead of Collier County. I don't know why -- MS. PAYTON: In terms of permits issued? MR. SMITH: In terms of numbers killed, which is what you had underlined in red. MS. PAYTON: I said in terms of permits issued. MR. SMITH: All right. Let me see if I can find that. Well,permits issued. Well, of course, Collier County is one of the fastest growing communities. I mean, that wouldn't surprise me. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for Nancy from the council? Thank you, Nancy. Appreciate it. MS. PAYTON: You're welcome. MS. DEMURIS: Hello. My name is Nora Demuris, and I'm a comparative immunologist. I came here from the Pacific northwest when the Florida Gulf Coast University opened. And the research that I've done studies the effects of stress on the immune system, how we fight disease and how stress affects our ability to fight infection. And I think the gopher tortoise provides us with an example, a model species to demonstrate what's happening to our planet as we continue to put stressors on the environment that press on the limits of the ecosystem to sustain it. The reason that we need to preserve the gopher tortoises in the habitat where they presently exist is because they demonstrate to us the need to preserve the ecosystem of Southwest Florida, as we have come to enjoy it. I think Collier County is doing great things to demonstrate the need and the desire to preserve what's left of the beautiful habitat we have here in Southwest Florida that's brought so many people here. The reason we need to retain them on-site is because the gopher tortoise is simply an indicator species, much like the spotted owl is in the Pacific northwest. It's an animal, and it's an animal that might die without our protection. And if that animal dies without our protection, I believe it's an indication of the eventual decline of the entire ecosystem. So that's one of the main reasons that I think it's important to support what Nancy and these others are suggesting, that we retain the habitat. What we're asking for is to retain the habitat, the species that exist on the habitat, or a demonstration of why it's so important. We all know that healthy people are intimately tied to healthy environments. Small populations are still incredibly important. I don't know where the number 50 came from, Page 20 May 3, 2000 but I know that the population of Florida panthers was far below the ideal for genetic diversity to retain the population, and because of protection, has managed to come back and start to gain a foothold again. I certainly agree that mitigation banks are a good idea. Certainly there will be -- have to be some compromises in what lands we can retain and what habitats we can preserve and which animals might have to be moved off-site. We need to purchase the mitigation banks, but we have to be very careful about which animals we move and how we move them. I think there's also some data that demonstrates that gopher tortoises tend to go back to where they came from. So even if you pick them up and you move them somewhere else, they're going to try to get back home. And they'll probably die in the process. Upper respiratory tract disease. The reason that Sanibel probably is having such success in maintaining their population, virtually all of the animals that have been tested on Sanibel do have upper respiratory tract disease and still retain the antibodies for the disease. There was a study in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases published this last month where Joan Diemer examined many animals in South Florida, and all of the animals on Sanibel do have the antibodies for upper respiratory tract disease. They're probably not sick right now because of the preservation of the habitat, because Sanibel has taken active strong efforts to preserve the habitat and to prevent the stressors from those animals. Now,the map, I've seen the map as well, that shows the line that says there's no gopher tortoises here. We all know better. They're here, they exist, and they're valuable. And I think they demonstrate to us not only the value of the tortoise, but the value of the habitat which Collier County is recognizing is important and needs to be preserved. Gary just gave me this article about Identification of Critical Gopher Tortoise Habitat in South Florida, and it lists several sites here in Collier County. This was published in '91. I'll bet a lot of these sites have already been developed. And I would encourage you to continue to think carefully and create some strong documents that will help support and preserve the incredible habitat that brought so many of us here. Thank you. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you, Nora. Questions for Nora from council? MR. CARLSON: Okay, you're the expert on disease. I just would like you to reiterate that this respiratory disease thing may not be the terrible stumbling block that we, I think,perceive it to be. These turtles can get this, they can survive it, if the habitat is healthy and develop antibodies and -- MS. DEMURIS: Yes. From what I understand, many tortoises have the condition, yet survive. The animals live a long time. It's a lot like tuberculous. There's a lot of people that have TB and go on to live strong, long lives. When you get stressed is when you get sick. And if we can prevent the stressors, we can prevent a lot of the sickness. We don't want to --I think one of the major reasons that people don't want to see us moving animals wholeheartedly across the county is because if there are habitats that are not yet inundated with upper respiratory tract disease, it's best not to put them there. MR. CARLSON: Right. MS. DEMURIS: But certainly there are animals with it. One of the other-- some of the other data also demonstrates that animals who've had upper respiratory tract disease and then get stressed, were exposed to the disease again, are far more susceptible and may die more quickly. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: My impression was that the literature that we had to look at was pretty down on relocation. MS. DEMURIS: Yes. I think the -- mainly because there's not -- a lot of people are moving _ animals without checking to see if they have upper respiratory tract disease. And if you're moving them from an area that they're sick and putting them into an area where the animals are not sick, then you're Page 21 May 3, 2000 introducing a disease into an area that may have been disease-free. So relocation without testing is a major concern. Relocation is stressful. You know, these animals are used to living in a burrow all alone with, you know, 360 other species around them, not one of which is human. And so we're going to pick-- we're going to lasso them, drag them out their burrow and send them across town. I mean, I think I'd get sick, too. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: So your emphasis is -- remains on preserving the habitat. MS. DEMURIS: Preserve the habitat, absolutely. I think --I mean, I live in Lee County now and I'm looking at Collier County saying good for you; good for you for what you're doing to try to retain the remaining habitat left in Southwest Florida. And I'd encourage you to continue that and preserve the habitats that we have. They're going fast. There's a lot of people making a lot of money. We're recognizing very quickly also that there are other things of value besides money. And the health and well-being of the human population in Southwest Florida is intimately tied to the health and well-being of the gopher tortoise. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thanks,Nora. Other questions? MR. SANSBURY: Doctor, have you ever studied gopher tortoises in the field and done any studies on them, or are you speaking in generalities of what you've read? Have you ever actually studied relocation and what happens to them when they relocate and what caused them to go into stress? MS. DEMURIS: As I've said, I came from the Pacific northwest in 1997, and there are no gopher tortoises there. MR. SANSBURY: So the answer is no. MS. DEMUR'S: No, that's correct. MR. SANSBURY: Thank you. MS. DEMURIS: I'm working now to get started in collaboration with Joan Diemer and Machinski and Paul Klein and the people at University of Florida to start some research in South Florida. And I hope that I can examine mitigation sites, as well as areas that are being stressed from developers. MR. SANSBURY: Great university to work with. MR. SMITH: I did have a question. Your-- I think one of your comments was that it's -- you see it as you would the Florida panthers, some other animal as an indicator. Are you familiar with the Golden Gate Estates area? MS. DEMURIS: I've seen it, yes. And I believe there's a -- one of my former students who's about to graduate has identified a large pod of land in Golden Gate Estates, a bit over 85 acres, that's got a huge number of gopher tortoises that she's requesting will be purchased with some of that money as a potential mitigation site. MR. SMITH: Are you familiar with the history of Golden Gate Estates? MS. DEMURIS: I'm not sure. Do you want to buy some swamp land in Florida; is that -- MR. SMITH: Yes. That's quite right. That's what I mean. Are you aware that at one time a lot of Golden Gate Estates was just water flow? MS. DEMURIS: Yes. MR. SMITH: And that canals were built to dry it up? MS. DEMUR'S: Yes. MR. SMITH: Well, my question is, if I hear you correctly, and I know that you haven't done any of the science background of this, but the lady that you refer to, Ms. Diemer, has and she does not show the gopher tortoise in that area. And my question is: If that had been traditionally an area where the gopher tortoise had not been, how can that be an indicator of how well the environment is doing? Page 22 May 3, 2000 MS. DEMURIS: About 12,000 years ago, Collier County was under water. So to imply that habitats -- MR. SMITH: I'm just talking about maybe 50 years ago, 75 years ago. MS. DEMURIS: Could you repeat the question? MR. SMITH: Yes, I think I can. The -- you've indicated that you see the gopher tortoise as an indicator. 75 years ago Golden Gate Estates was a habitat area that would not have been very hospitable to gopher tortoises. It was drained. MS. DEMURIS: Okay. MR. SMITH: And is now high and dry in most parts because of the fact that there's a huge system of canals there. MS. DEMURIS: Uh-huh. MR. SMITH: How can that be an indicator of how the gopher tortoise -- I mean, how can that be an indicator of how well the environment is doing if there are gopher tortoises there? MS. DEMURIS: As mankind influences the environment, it changes in many ways. MR. SMITH: I agree with that. MS. DEMURIS: The Florida Bay --the species of sea grass that so many people are concerned about in Florida Bay wasn't there 75 years ago at all, yet now that's being used as an indicator for the health of the bay. Okay? MR. SMITH: So would you then be in favor of saying to individual potential homeowners who own lots that they might have saved up to purchase that they are to spend some 10 to $15,000 or whatever it is extra to do a scientific study in order to determine that the gopher tortoise is not a problem in their particular lot because of that change that you're suggesting? MS. DEMURIS: Speaking as a person who would like to see us preserve the environment, yes, sir. And I would hope that the Collier County --the mitigation bank, some of the funding that's become available to preserve gopher tortoises could be used to help. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thanks,Nora. Other questions? Michael? MR. SIMONIK: Thank you. Michael Simonik with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. Congratulations to Mr. Chairman and vice-chairman. I guess I'm in agreement with Tim. I'm in agreement with Nancy. I'm in agreement with a lot of things that have been said today. On Florida Wildlife Federation's proposed amendments to the ordinance -- and let me first say that I'm very encouraged to see this move forward and the great work that the staff has done on this and to bring it through. And I hope to see it go through fruition when we get to County Commission. So it's very encouraging to see that we're moving in the right direction with protecting some of our wildlife species in Collier County. Some of the things that I'm in agreement with from the Florida Wildlife Federation, mainly the number one, and you've heard it from other folks too, is the habitat protection. Not just the animal but the animals that it's -- the habitat that it provides for that animal and for a lot of other animals. What does that mean? That the Conservancy believes that we ought to save every square inch of land that might be gopher tortoise habitat. Well, we're struggling with the idea of whether or not we want to move one or two gopher tortoises from a development site into a larger mitigation area. I think there are times when a smaller population can survive in a development site when it's properly done if they're smaller than 50. But there's also times when we need to move them off of there. So it's a case-by-case basis that we have to decide that. I agree with a lot of the cleaning up language that Nancy's Florida Wildlife Federation has added in. I also agree with the looking at the Multi-Species Recovery Plan as the minimum standards for the Page 23 May 3, 2000 protection. I agree with the density, that it should not be five per acre, it should be two, because I've heard that as well. I also agree that there should be easements to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for the preserve areas. And I agree with Tim Durham, because I do think we still need a very large sanctuary for gopher tortoises. Probably somewhere in Immokalee; that's where our scrub habitat is left. There's practically none left in the City of Naples. As a resident of the City of Naples, I voted for the Fleischmann property, and that's nine acres. Not all of it is scrub; about three or four of it's scrub. But it's good gopher habitat. We've been talking with the cities, making that a relocation area for some of the gophers that are being displaced in other areas of the county. And maybe we can have about 15 or so gophers there. Now we'll struggle with the idea, is that enough in a population? Well, maybe it's not and we have to deal with that. But it's a place where we can relocate them. The -- another comment that I had, because private property rights are always an issue and the Conservancy has always said we respect private property rights, I do have some language that I think should be added in to the ordinance regarding that. I don't think that the ordinance should make it so easy for someone to just say, oh, we're going to move all the gopher tortoises and put them in the mitigation bank. I think it should have to do with the law relating to private property rights. And I just want to read the language. And I can gave it later to Barb. But I'll just read it. This ordinance is not intended to result in the taking of property under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution or Section 5 of the Tenth Article of the Florida Constitution, and any waivers and exceptions that may be granted by the Board of County Commissioners under the procedures and provisions of this ordinance where a landowner proves that the implementation of this ordinance will result in such a taking. Then they're granted the exception and the waiver to have those moved to a site. And Tim is right, there's no place out there. I get calls from environmental consultants saying to me, well, can we bring all these gopher tortoises to your property? Well, no, because we already have gopher tortoises that are at capacity in some of our lands that have gopher tortoise habitat. So the answer is no, and they're still looking. And I don't know where they go. And I know that there's problems keeping them on-site. And I've been here before this council and the Planning Commission and the board talking about gopher tortoise preserves that we've seen implemented in development projects, and I've said it again and again. I'm going to tell you, I know where those gopher tortoises end up when they're on a two-acre preserve that is 50 feet wide and a few hundred yards long. They end up at The Conservancy's Animal Rehabilitation Center. And I worked there last Saturday cleaning up poop in cages and I can tell you I saw the gophers that were hid, and they put fiberglass over their shell, but that's what we're doing to them. So we are struggling with the idea that every acre has to be preserved where there are gophers and that they can't be moved. Because there are times when they should be moved because they're not going to last there. But there's also the idea that there's 360 other species surviving in those habitats and the burrows and the area. So generally we're pretty pleased and very encouraged by this ordinance to see it continue on. And I think this is a perfect opportunity for this council, because we've had so much input today and proposed amendments and changes, that it does deserve a special -- not workshop but a subcommittee meeting where folks who are interested, like Tim Durham and other environmental consultants can sit Page 24 May 3, 2000 around the table over in one of the offices here and work out language as we go and come back to you or the next board or the Planning Commission and eventually the County Commission with language that everybody agrees upon. But it's very difficult in this formal setting to say, well, I like that one, I don't like that, well, how about making it this way. So maybe that is a good opportunity, and maybe Barb might think that's a good opportunity, too. But generally we're very pleased that it's moving forward. So I thank you. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Questions for Michael? MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Simonik, I'd like to apologize to you for something, because I misspoke at the last meeting, because when I challenged you on the fact that Collier County was the largest county in the State of Florida. I said Palm Beach County was. I was wrong. Polk County is, Palm Beach is second, and Collier and Dade are pretty close to be tied for third. I was wrong in saying Palm Beach was first. I went to my Florida handbook and checked it out. MR. SMITH: I'm going to challenge you on that. MR. SIMONIK: I'll look up my facts again, too. MR. SMITH: I had suggested once to Sheriff Hunter that Imperial -- Polk County was the largest land county in Florida, and he corrected me and said that Collier County is but Palm Beach can be, depending on how you define it. And I looked it up and he was right. And so one of us is wrong here. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: We're not getting off the subject, are we? MR. SANSBURY: I'll check in my Florida handbook next week, because that's what I went to. MR. COE: Well, my feeling is -- and I was originally a Texas boy, and I'm very dismayed that Florida has more cows than Texas does. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any other testimony on the gopher tortoise question? Any other thoughts? MR. HALL: Tim Hall, with Turrell & Associates. I'm one of the environmental consultants that works here in Collier County. When I was at school at the University of Florida, I worked with the Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, and one of my duties was doing different investigations on gopher tortoises. In the course of my work up there, I've probably relocated in the neighborhood of 200, 250 tortoises. We did studies on necropsies, on dead tortoises, to find out what their diet was, home ranges, and different monitoring programs such as that. I think that the language proposed that Barb put forward is a big step forward. And basically that was about it. I just wanted to show support. I don't know, I do have a little bit of scientific background with the tortoises that it seemed like you guys were interested in. I don't know if you have any questions. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: How do you feel about relocation? MR. HALL: The big problem is that the take permits and most of the relocation work that's done does not require follow-up. And the other problem is that most of the research that's been done on tortoises has been done on very large tracts of lands. The Kennedy Space Center, the Ocala National Forest, the Apalachicola National Forest, Gainesville. We had the Catherine Nordway Preserve. But in all of those, you're talking about thousands of acres. And I think that something that needs to be done that isn't is that more information needs to be collected on how tortoise populations react on small tracts of land. And before a relocation program or as part of a relocation program or a mitigation bank, I think that type of research would need to be included in that program to see how they react. Not only to the relocation process, but if you're relocating them into areas where there's new tortoises and new populations, then how they react that way Page 25 May 3, 2000 as well. And the other comment that I heard was the density. Some people are saying five and some people are saying two. I think I would agree with Ms. Payton in that that has to be completely site dependent. Because you can have two sites that may have the exact same vegetation, but if the piece of property next to them is a golf course on one and is a seawall or a canal on the other one, the -- while I may get some dirty looks here, the golf course site will support more tortoises because they can go off-site to feed. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. Thanks, Tim. Any questions for Tim? Any other thoughts about the gopher tortoise issue? MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman, may I do my little gopher tortoise presentation here? Because I'm deeply involved in it right now, and I just want to give you a little flier, and why I am a proponent of attempting to do mitigation areas and so forth. You have a look at the practicalities of what we have, and our county is developed to the stage it is. We've just gone through a program of relocation of a population. A population which we initially, when the initial surveys were done seven years ago or six years ago, was some 48 gophers. The land of which this development was not touched, it was left in its natural state for those five years. When we actually went in there in time to develop that parcel, there weren't 48. There were only 12. Left completely natural. There was a segment of the population -- and this is something that you've got to face and be practical about. There's a segment of our population that likes the gopher turtle as a food source. What had happened in this case is homeless people living on the site had essentially decimated the population, because the site was natural in its state but it was unprotected. When we did relocate them, we relocated them to a site within the golf course. I agree with Ms. Payton, I agree with what we've heard as enhancement of habitat. We've enhanced the habitat. We've done some extensive planting within that habitat. But you've also got to secure it if you're going to be anywhere around people. We've done that with a fence. But what this little brochure is, is that even if it's fenced and even if we've done everything we can, and we have had follow-up. We've been there, three and a half acres, we've been over a year, we relocated 12. We have 15 burrows. We know that nine of those burrows are active. We think we have the full 12 population and maybe more. We've only been able to verify nine of them. But people look at them, they see them in there, they think hey,they've got to get a drink of water. They take the fence down. They open the gate on the fence. Golfers playing golf. We have to post everything we have to try to keep the folks out of there. So I guess my point is small isolated populations in general urban areas, our purpose is to preserve the population of gopher turtles. We need to aggressively look at obtaining banking areas, enhancement of habitat, which is an easy thing to do. I mean, planting cactus that takes no care at all. Planting gopher apples. Planting things of this sort which -- and encouraging not taking an isolated population of five or 10 or 15 or 20 over here that traffic,people, what have you, are going to destroy in the long run. So I think the approach, and I think Barbara's done a good job on this, what we should be taking is to really aggressively go after it. Go after Fish and Wildlife or whatever they're called today, with this 800,000 or a million dollar fund they have. Start aggressively setting up some preserves, setting up some banking areas, and not concentrate so much on saying they've got to stay where they are. Because there's a lot of forces out there that affect these. And it's not only a guy with a bulldozer that's running over them. That's not what happens to most of the gopher turtles. They die from disease. They die from people, as I say, that segment of the population. And we've got to protect them. And I say we've been successful with three and a half acres, Page 26 May 3, 2000 but as Mr. Durham will tell you, we don't think that's a viable population. I mean, they're there, they're living. But we need to encourage banking. We need to encourage putting them together in preserves. End of conversation. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you. Well, I think we're getting there. Anyone have any -- MR. SMITH: I'd like to kind of comment from a different angle. Sort of the same conclusion that's been drawn, but from a different perspective. I think I'm always concerned with the fact that our constitution, as was pointed out by Mr. Simonik, the United States Constitution, and Florida's Constitution as well, our basic concept here in this country is that freedom involves the right to own things. And when you own something, that means you own it. It's yours, and you can do with it what you wish. There are exceptions to that. And that's where the police power of the state comes in. And I think it's always very, very important to remember that the police power of the state should be used only when it's absolutely necessary to use it. You don't just use it because well, I think it would be nice to do it or it might be important, or it could be important. And one of the concerns I have with the gopher tortoise issue is that from what I've been seeing, from what I've been reading and hear in Collier County, at least, the gopher tortoise has not been traditionally a species that has been very, very popular or populating this area. There are some isolated incidences where the gopher tortoise does appear, especially, for example, in Golden Gate Estates. And my deep concern is that when we start imposing police regulations on people's properties to the tune of what could amount to thousands of dollars for some people that really can't afford it, we'd better have some real good reasons to do so. And I think that there are better ways to protect the gopher tortoise than to use that police power. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Coe. MR. COE: Barb, is it possible for you to set up a workshop with your people and these representatives from these environmental groups to hammer out something that could come before us in a relatively smooth hammered-out way so that we're not trying to rewrite something that could very easily be rewritten in a workshop? MS. BURGESON: Right. Well, one of the things that I wanted to suggest to you, after listening to everyone here that's made presentations, is that there is something from every different group that's made a presentation today that is warranted to possibly go into or change language in what I've submitted to you right now as the current draft. For instance,Nancy has provided language that is better than what we've got existing, and it's something that I would like to put into our ordinance. Habitat protection is very important. We've tried to stress that. We may need to do a little bit of a better job on that. MR. COE: Well, maybe they could submit to you what their recommendations are, and you or whoever is the writer hammer something out so we could either approve or disapprove it. MS. BURGESON: Yes, I've got a lot of the recommendations from the different groups. What I'd like to try to do is to create some type of a subcommittee. Not a formal subcommittee, but maybe just put together a couple of group meetings with the different people here that are interested in sitting down with me and trying to change some of that language to improve it. It wouldn't be -- I'm not sure that we'd be able to go in the direction of going from a density of five to two, although two is ideal. The language that we've got in the ordinance right now says a maximum of five. Maybe we could be a little more specific to say a maximum of five, and five not being always granted as that density, but no greater than that as a density. So there's areas in there that we can work on that. If we can put some language together -- I'm not sure how we would get that back to you before -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you for volunteering to keep it going. Is that approach Page 27 May 3, 2000 satisfactory with the council? _ MR. COE: I have no problem with that. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Did you have a question? MS. STUDENT: I had a suggestion. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. MS. STUDENT: To maybe get something in to the land code now, with the idea that it will be continually worked on. Because we do have the requirement about the Planning Commission. Another thing might be that there could be an extra meeting called of the Planning Commission before --to deal with any revisions, you know, sometime in June, and then to take that back to the board. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: We have a timetable problem, is that what you're saying? MR. NINO: Yes, you do. MS. STUDENT: Well, as I had identified earlier, for land code amendments, the Planning Commission, under state law-- this isn't a matter of local law, it's state law-- is a land development regulation commission. And we can do some -- I get even a little bit uncomfortable about that. But we can do some tweaking, you know, between them and the board. I would say minor things. But if it's going to come back and there's going to be some major changes, I don't feel comfortable with it, not having gone through the Planning Commission. Because under state law, they are charged with the LDR program in making recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners on it. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Right. MS. BURGESON: What I'd like to do is, we have the presentation tonight that goes in front of the Planning Commission. MS. STUDENT: Right. — MS. BURGESON: The amendments that I'm considering doing -- and obviously we need to run that by Ron and everyone else to make sure that's even possible -- are not major changes as much as they are clarifications and improving the language, making the language more accurate and maybe identifying in a little bit more detail what we've already got in there. MS. STUDENT: Yeah, as long as, as I said, some minor tweaking, I don't have a problem with that. We can even maybe get the Planning Commission's tonight, their understanding of that. But if there's going to be some major changes, like the density thing or something, then I do have a-- I think that presents more of a problem. MR. NINO: For the record, Ron Nino, current planning manager. The LDC is amended twice a year. The first cycle will be completed on June the 15th, when all the Land Development Code amendments meet the board's agenda. The board will meet on May the 30th and June the 15th. Planning Commission will meet again on the 17th. Unless you can get that amendment package amended to meet those deadlines, either that or you go with some lesser version of the optimum so that it at least gets into law, and in the next cycle we can take a look at it in terms of strengthening the objectives of that section of the code relative to protection of the gopher tortoises. You know, that's -- that is a course of action that you could take. Because in reality, at this short time frame, it may be difficult to accomplish all of the objectives that I'm hearing thrown out on the table. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. MR. NINO: So for all practical purposes, you have your first meeting in June to make that decision whether or not you're going to go with a watered down version, which most people are saying this version represents, versus a delay all together in making any inroads. In other words, the board may say well, there's -- we're simply not there yet, we're not ready, let's put it aside. And that puts it aside for Page 28 May 3, 2000 �.� another six months. And do you want to take that risk that is inherent in that delay. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman, are we saying that in actually 3 -- 11.3? I mean, I think you set it up that way. You said these were interim guidelines until the permanent guidelines and standards are adopted. MS. BURGESON: What we are putting in here are replacing interim guidelines. This is not -- MR. SANSBURY: I was just reading 3.11.3. Did I read it wrong? MS. BURGESON: 3.11.3 is much broader than just the gopher tortoise -- MR. SANSBURY: Yeah, it's for the whole, for everything. MS. BURGESON: For all the types of species. MR. SANSBURY: Yes,right. MS. BURGESON: And so what we're putting in, in this language here, specifically in gopher tortoises, is to replace that interim language in 3.11.3. So what we're doing right now with this new ordinance is taking away what was existing as interim language, which was extremely -- almost non-existent in terms of protecting gopher tortoises. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Well, Barb, you're doing most of the work on this. Would you rather see us take it in two bites? MS. BURGESON: I'd rather see--I think that what we've got here, even though this is a compromised position for a lot of people, I think that this is far better than what we have right now. I'd rather see this go forward-- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: But then-- MS. BURGESON: --with direction to work more carefully at fixing some of the things that are in here that-- n CHAIRMAN CORNELL: In the next cycle. MS. BURGESON: Definitely. I'd like to see that. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Is that satisfactory? MR. SMITH: With-- I would urge, and I'd like to make a motion that we adopt these with the deletion of Paragraph No. 7,which deals with single-family lots. With the understanding that with further study-- and I think the scientist from the University of Florida pointed out that there needs to be further study to show that there's a need, or that it would be wise to keep small tracts as viable places for gopher tortoises and just not the science to support it. MS. BURGESON: We would be negligent if we remove that from the ordinance, as that is required by the Land Development Code and the Growth Management Plan at this time. And we're just trying to put some additional language in so that we're informing the population that owns the land out in Golden Gate Estates of their obligation. MR. SMITH: Well, I think there might be better language then, and maybe if needed,there might be a need to come back with some other language, but to delete it at this point. Because what this says, as I read it, is that the owner now is given the burden, given the onus of making his presentation, and he is charged with doing studies and presenting this to the county. And I just-- you know, based on what I hear and especially from the science, you know, we're placing an inordinate burden on the single-family homeowner. If the language is already there that you feel is adequate, let's keep it at that now and let's do these other changes once we've had some more science to support it. MS. BURGESON: The language that we have right now is not adequate. That's why this paragraph was added into the language. MR. SMITH: But I don't see that other language, Barbara. I can't compare it. MS. BURGESON: I'd have to get that to you at another time. I don't-- Page 29 May 3, 2000 MR. SMITH: Well, I know. But that's a little bit unfair to us, because how can we compare it tc what's there? I'm saying what's there is to me certainly not acceptable. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay, you're offering that motion? MR. SMITH: Yes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Does that have a second? MR. BAXTER: I suggest that you leave the number and the title and then to be determined for a later date, the substance. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: We need to -- I need to see if we have a second, I think, for Attorney Smith's motion. Is there a second for the motion? MR. SMITH: If he's offering that as an amendment, I would accept that. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: How would you state the amendment? MR. BAXTER: I would suggest leave the No. 7 and the title, and the body to be determined, the wording to be determined. That way it's in the proposal, but it's not complete. MS. STUDENT: You mean in the code oftentimes will say reserved. MR. BAXTER: Yes, to be discussed. Because we're not prepared to make this decision at this time. MS. STUDENT: I think we need to just put reserved in there. If you put to be discussed in an ordinance, then -- MR. BAXTER: Right, okay. You're right. MS. STUDENT: -- we have to give adequate notice to -- MR. BAXTER: You know what I'm trying to say. MS. STUDENT: Right. I think that's the way we do it. MR. BAXTER: All right. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. So you'd leave it in but in a sense leave it blank? MR. BAXTER: Right. That way we can move forward and then come back to it. MS. STUDENT: It would just say reserved. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: So then you are the seconder. Is that the idea? That's an amended motion to which you're seconding? MR. BAXTER: Yes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. Any discussion on that idea? MR. COE: Yes. I don't see any reason why a private landowner who may own from anywhere from two and a half acres to 500 acres should be any different than a developer. The problem is with the gopher tortoise. It doesn't have anything to do whether you're a private landowner or whether you're a developer who is also a private landowner. So why should we have different laws for each person? The developer, you know,just because he has, quote, more money, he's isn't poor, he has a different law. That doesn't ring true to me. MS. STUDENT: May I interject? MR. COE: Yes. MS. STUDENT: We also have a law in Florida called the Burt J. Harris Private Property Rights Act. Depending upon the facts of the situation, and I'm just throwing this out for your information, because that's law is full of ambiguities. But where the property owner, depending on the facts of their particular property, can claim that a regulation inordinately burdens them, they came come into the local government and essentially say you've taken my property, get out your checkbook. And there's a whole extensive local process. It starts locally with a hearing examiner, trying to work it out with local government. And the other reason I'm throwing that out is a large landowner-- because facts alter cases. A Page 30 May 3, 2000 large landowner may not inordinately burden them, but a small property owner might come in and say well, you've inordinately burdened me. Or a collection of them may come in and say that. And then Collier County's got a liability issue. Just throwing that out for your concern. MR. SMITH: I'd also like to comment in response to Mr. Coe. You suggest that there should be no distinction made between a 500-acre and one -- or two and a half acres. But that's exactly what this proposal is. It says when the gopher tortoises are identified on platted single-family lots. There aren't too many 500-acre single-family lots. MR. COE: No, but you could own more than one lot, couldn't you? MR. SMITH: You could. MR. COE: And there's a lot of people out there that own more than one. That's not the point. The point is, is that the gopher tortoises are the thing we're trying to preserve. We don't--we should not, kind of in my eyes, look at who the owners are. I don't care if you're an owner. I don't care if I'm the owner. What I care about is that the gopher tortoises are going to be preserved,period. Just because you have two and a half acres and you have two on your acres, you should be required to preserve those just as well as a developer who has five on the corner of his lot. Shouldn't be any different. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you. Any other discussion on the motion? It did seem like one of the nice things about the Sanibel ordinance is that it brought the single-family homeowner into the picture. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? MR. SMITH: Aye. MR. BAXTER: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Opposed? MS. SANTORO: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Aye. MR. SANSBURY: Aye. MR. CARLSON: Aye. MR. COE: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay, I guess my question was, do we -- are we content with the direction that Barb is suggesting that you go in, which is to do as much as you can within this timetable and then we'll do the rest of it in the second cycle? MS. BURGESON: That would be to accept the language as we've proposed as this point with this draft, right. And then -- MR. CARLSON: There's not another meeting available to us to work in the no-brainers that you agree with? MS. BURGESON: I can certainly go in that direction and present that to you. But in the meantime, I think it's probably important for us to try to get at least this language supported by the EAC to go forward. MR. CARLSON: Well, that's what I thought Ron was saying, that we had better do something or-- MR. NINO: We can deal with the no-brainers. MR. CARLSON: -- let the whole thing -- MS. STUDENT: We can deal with those. MR. NINO: We can deal with the no-brainers. Ron Nino. Substantive change, Marjorie is telling you, has to go to the Planning Commission. -- MS. STUDENT: The no-brainers or the cleanup stuff, that's okay. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. Do you want to make a motion? Page 31 May 3, 2000 MR. COE: I'd like to make a motion to approve it as written. MR. SANSBURY: I second it. Can I have one question, Mr. Chairman? I'm not being a smart aleck, Barbara. But how do you remove them from an inactive burrow? MS. BURGESON: Inactive is not a collapsed or an abandoned burrow, it's just -- MR. SANSBURY: I'm just kidding. MS. BURGESON: -- the burrow. And they may be in them. It's just identified as being currently inactive. It is today. Next week when you go back, it may not be. MR. SANSBURY: Okay. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay, we have a motion and a second to proceed with what you've got. Right? Is that what I heard? MS. SANTORO: Could I have clarification? Why are we voting on these versus a chance to incorporate other concepts? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Well, we're going to do both, as I understand it. But we're going to do this now because we need to do this now. And then we're going to pick up the rest of it in the next several -- MR. NINO: Ron Nino, for the record. You are not closing the door on enhancements to wildlife protection. Every six months you get an opportunity to address that and make changes to existing regulations. So the next cycle will begin in July of this year and will culminate in December of this year, and that you will have another opportunity to add to the dimension of preservation and protection to whatever species of wildlife you think needs to be addressed, including revisiting the gopher tortoise issue. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: So it's kind of like let's do what we can now and then let's do the rest of it later. MS. SANTORO: What was the May 17? That's the problem? Is that the date that the Planning Commission -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Well, you've got a better handle on the dates than I do. I guess the -- our concern is with the last meeting of the Planning Commission before the end of this cycle. MR. NINO: The Planning Commission's last meeting to deal with this cycle is May the 17th. Anything of any substantive change, Marjorie is telling you, has to be heard and recommended by the Planning Commission for the board to deal with it. MS. STUDENT: And just for clarification, that's a matter of state law. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. Any other discussion on the motion? All in favor? MR. BAXTER: Aye. MR. CARLSON: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Aye. MR. COE: Aye. MR. SANSBURY: Aye. MS. SANTORO: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any opposed? MR. SMITH: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: So ordered. Would a break be in order? Wonderful. How about -- where are we? 11:00. How about seven minutes? (Brief recess.) Page 32 May 3, 2000 CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay, we're -- we are reconvened. Let me note that Ally Santoro had to leave the meeting. And I think everybody else is here. Okay. All ready to get back to work? Okay, we're going to consider the Nicaea Academy petition. MR. BELLOWS: For the record, my name is Ray Bellows, planning services staff The subject site, as you can see on the monitor, is located on the east side of Collier Boulevard, and about a mile south of Immokalee Road. It's on the south side of Crystal Lake RV Resort. Subject 119-acre site is intended to be used as a mixed-use development; is designed around a 72-acre preserve area. There's also a three-acre residential tract, as you can see on the master plan. And the 44 acres will be for community facilities that will include a private school, a church, possibly a fire station. The subject site is located within the urban mixed-use district on the Future Land Use Element. This district permits residential uses, a density of four units per acre, and nonresidential uses such as churches, schools. So therefore, it is consistent with the Growth Management Plan. Environmental staff is here to present the environmental review. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to help. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. Questions for Ray, off the bat? MR. LENBERGER: Good morning. For the record, Stephen Lenberger, development services. On the wall I have an aerial of the property. And also the Water Management Plan, which mimics the PUD master plan with a little more detail as far as the building locations, and also the lakes. As you can see from the aerial, the subject property is located immediately south of Crystal Lake RV Resort. It's a long rectangular piece of property. Most of the site -- and the site is 119 acres, and about 100 acres of that are wetlands. The uplands, it will be easy to show you, those are in this area here. This is the pine flatwoods. It also has a couple of areas of palmetto prairie located on the north side of the property. Most of the wetlands are pretty much categorized as pine/cypress, cabbage palm. There is a wetland hardwood forest here with cypress and maple, holly, things of that nature, located on the western half of the property. The petitioner is going to save about 71 acres on-site, and they're indicated on green on the conceptual Water Management Plan that I have up here. That's about a 60 percent preservation, and that exceeds the county's requirement of 25 percent native vegetation retention. There is an ST area on the property. It's located on the west half of the property, roughly in this area. And basically what the petitioner has done is tried to limit the impact areas out of the hardwood swamp, which is the heart of that ST area. And like I said, most of the property is wetlands. They did a threatened and endangered species survey, and what they found, no actual wildlife utilized on the property that were listed. But they did find several species of wading birds, tri-colored heron, woodstork, white ibis flying overhead that are utilizing the canals, adjacent to the site or running off-site. Protected species of plants, basically commercially exploited species, epidendrum, orchids, and also tillandsia species. If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Questions for Steve? MR. CARLSON: I have a question. No one is challenging that these wetlands are wetlands? I mean, we just went through a project just south of here where the wetlands weren't wetlands. These are _ wetlands? MR. LENBERGER: Right, these are wetlands. I can tell you from the project we heard just a Page 33 May 3, 2000 moment ago, that section is near the Vanderbilt Pines PUD, and that whole block in there was extensively drained. I remember when we did the Vanderbilt Pines PUD, they did the jurisdictional determinations, and a very small portion of that property was actually a wetlands. As I understand, the hydrology on that particular property is lacking. But here it is good, and there's quite a bit of water that sits in that hardwood swamp. MR. CARLSON: So what's the proposed mitigation for the impact to the, what, 34.35 acres of wetlands? MR. LENBERGER: Right, I'll let the petitioner handle that. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: May we hear from the petitioner? MS. BISHOP: For the record, Karen Bishop, agent for the petitioner Barton-McIntyre. We are -- we've been meeting with the District right now. We had actually less impacts earlier. The District and the Corps asked us to consolidate our wetlands instead of accessing the uplands that unfortunately split the site in half We had all of our residential stuff back there. They asked to us move that to make it all contiguous so that you can have -- as you can see, we have a corridor and a flowway. The roadway on the south side of our project is Tree Farm Road, goes partway down there, and so there is no flow literally past that roadway. But to the east the road does diminish. And to the east there is a connection. So we revised our plan to do that. Our proposed mitigation is on-site mitigation. We're working out the numbers now with the -- with the District and the Corps for what those are. And so far they seem to have accepted our -- our wrap analysis and what we propose to do on-site. MR. CARLSON: What are you proposing to do on-site? MS. BISHOP: I have my biologist to give you exactly what we're doing, but we're doing on-site mitigation, which is removal of exotics and enhancement in certain areas. MR. HALL: Tim Hall, Turrell & Associates. The on-site mitigation is going to include maintaining the hydrology of the wetlands. And also, the quality of most of the wetlands in the eastern portion of the property are pretty heavily infested with melaleuca. And because of the roadway and the canal -- there's also from the roadway a power line easement. The historic sheet flow's been altered in the area. So our mitigation is going to include removing all of the exotic vegetation, which is mainly melaleuca, Brazilian pepper, maintaining the on-site hydrology and, if necessary, replanting appropriate natives. MR. CARLSON: Are the water levels here close to historic, or is there any way -- is their enhancement appropriate? MR. HALL: The only visible water levels that we have as far as the biological indicators, liken lines and water marks, is in the depressional hardwood swamp, the little depressional head there. Which, when we surveyed them, showed them to be about an inch to two inches below ground level in the remaining -- of the remaining wetlands. As far as the old historic levels, we don't have any of that information. We just based the control elevation and our hydrologic scheme on what was existing. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for the petitioner or staff? Anybody among us in the room that has questions about the project or-- MR. COE: I had a question of staff On sheet flow, it's being stopped or changed by the road. The road may have been put in at a time when we weren't as concerned about sheet flow as we are now. Is there a way to alter the road that would get our sheet flow back? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: The District would be probably looking at that. You could put culverts under the road. If you knew how much sheet flow was coming through, you could size the culverts to Page 34 May 3, 2000 pass that amount of water. I assume that's where you're headed with this question? MR. COE: Yeah. MR. HALL: One of the problems with that is that the property's -- south of the road are developed as a nursery. So restoring sheet --the water really, even as sheet flow going across the surface of the ground, wouldn't-- even if you could get it across the road, would still be blocked by the nursery and the activities going on there. The existing off-site flows, as we said, are on the eastern portion of the property, heading to the south, and that's what we have --we modified the plan and we've tried to maintain that off-site flow so we don't cause any impacts to the properties to the --to the undeveloped properties to the south and to the east. MR. COE: In other words, the east, it will just flow east and south. MR. HALL: No, currently-- MR. COE: Is there a road currently there? MR. HALL: Currently the flow is from -- is to the southwest. It comes from the northeastern part of the property onto the property and out to the canal. Some small portion of that flow does also go east, and that's what we have tried to maintain. MR. COE: Okay, thank you. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: What is your pleasure on this project? MR. SANSBURY: Move approval. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Do we have a second? MR. BAXTER: Second. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: All in favor? Any opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you very much. Is it convenient to go through the water resource workshop? MR. LORENZ: Yes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Seems like it might take us until 1:00 or something like that. MR. LORENZ: Well, the time frame is about an hour and 40 minutes in terms of what staff has presented. I know that John Boldt has a-- we'd like to be able to reschedule -- move John up on the agenda. He's got a commitment. He has to be out at 11:30. Maybe 11:35 he can give about 10 or 15 minutes of presentation, and then move him ahead of schedule. Then we'll just keep the rest of the schedule that I've given you. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Is that okay,just to keep going? MR. CARLSON: Yes. MR. COE: That's fine. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you very much, we appreciate your putting this together. I think this should be very helpful to us. MR. BOLDT: Good morning. I do apologize for the fact I have to leave shortly, so I'm going to make an abbreviated presentation. But my name is John Boldt. I'm the Collier County stormwater management director. My purpose here this morning is to give you a brief overview of some of the stormwater activities that are going on in Collier County now. I think that you would be of interest. The handout that was just given to you is just a basic fact sheet, the blue sheets I've given you. The first page of which kind of gives a brief summary of those things that I am and am not involved with as the stormwater director for Collier County. Page 35 May 3, 2000 And one of the distinctions you need to make is that I am responsible for the secondary drainage — systems of the county. The primary or the larger systems are the responsibility by a delegation to South Florida Water Management District Big Cyprus Basin. And Clarence Tears is going to follow my presentation, and he'll tell you more about the larger primary systems and some the very large, very county-wide things he's doing. I'm more involved in the secondary, more the regional systems, the operation and maintenance of about 146 miles of secondary systems, 12 water level control structures, and three stormwater pumping stations. Operation and maintenance takes up a good share of my energies, but the rest of our energies are devoted towards a capital improvement program of the remaining systems. And in this year's budget we have some almost eight million dollars budgeted towards these larger basins, either in the planning of them, the design or the construction. And I'd like to just focus on that for the time being. First one I'm going to show you very quickly, give you a rough idea of what's involved, is our so-called Lely area stormwater improvement project. These are very small-scaled maps, very difficult for you to see everything involved. MR. BAXTER: Could you face that forward so I can see it? Thank you. MR. BOLDT: A little out of kilter. This is part of Water Management District No. 6, out in East Naples, bounded on the north by Radio Road, on the east by Collier Boulevard. Here's U.S. 41 and Rattlesnake Hammock through this area. There's a very large system out there between the Lely main and the Lely branch. We've been working on this project for about 10 years. Tried to implement it. Very complex situation, involved two very large developments on the lower end. The Villages of Sabal Bay project and Lely Lakes have all the outfalls for all this water. And we're proposing to make improvements to this system to provide, first of all, drainage and flood control, enhancement of water quality treatment in "— the area before it discharges down into the Intercoastal, protection of the wetlands, and in some cases some groundwater recharge, although that's not a major issue in this area. The main runs up across 41, parallels Rattlesnake Hammock, is coming from through Royal Wood out into the Heritage --Naples Heritage area. And the branch starts on the north side of Davis Boulevard, east of Santa Barbara, goes through Crown Pointe, down through Riviera, crosses Rattlesnake Hammock and joins. And so we're in the process of trying to get permits for this area. Have the funds budgeted for some land acquisition, some major mitigation needs that we're going to have out in the area for the engineering design. And we expect to do this. This will be about a 16 million dollar project spread over about three or four years. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Does that water end up in Rookery Bay, John? MR. BOLDT: Not really. It's in the intercoastal. It depends which way the tides run on whether it goes into Naples Bay or Rookery Bay. But it doesn't go directly into it. Another major study that we've been working on, it's a$600,000 study,joint effort between Collier County, the Big Cypress Basin and the City of Naples. Would you like to give me help here in straightening this leg up? It's the so-called Gordon River extension, starting just south of the Parkway and running all the way on up in -- and the headwaters of it is the Pine Ridge Industrial Park, north of Pine Ridge. We're just completing Phase III of the study, which is the data collection portion of it. We're going to soon enter into Phase IV, which will be a model, a computer model which will model the hydrology and the hydraulics of this system, both for water quantity and water quality issues. And again, we're looking at impacts on wetlands,the water quality improvements as discharges "— into Naples Bay. This is the headwaters of Naples Bay. And in this particular case,the city's coral -- Page 36 May 3, 2000 excuse me, coastal ridge aquifer lies underneath Goodlette Road area over here. And we're quite sensitive to the groundwater recharge area here. Let's see, this is about a six-phase study that we're just -- MR. CARLSON: I have a question on that, Mr. Boldt. MR. BOLDT: Yes, sir. MR. CARLSON: Are you acquiring an easement for the maintenance of that? MR. BOLDT: We propose that in the future. We're not at that point at this time. We're just doing the study, trying to figure out what we've got, what improvements might be necessary. You know, all of the what ifs. And then what the impacts of those would be, you know, to the wetlands and downstream and, you know, how much benefit -- MR. CARLSON: As long as I've been here, and that's a long time,people have been talking about a Gordon River greenway. Is there any way to coordinate the drainage easement with a greenway project? MR. BOLDT: That's a possibility, although very controversial because we are talking about, you know, a lot of private property rights there. Those are golf courses, by and large. And they're going to be quite sensitive to not having people wandering up through the middle of their projects. But those will all be looked at during the study phase when we get into the alternatives. The other major study we're doing that would be of interest to you does drain-- goes directly into Rookery Bay and that's the so-called Belle Meade study area. I'm particularly interested in those portions of the agricultural area north of U.S. 41, out east of 951, and the remote possibility, or the possibility, the future that those things will become more development oriented. I'm really nervous as a stormwater director about the agricultural activities because of the way they're set up. There's either all sorts of dikes and dams and pumps and reservoirs out there, you know, to serve their needs, but would not be compatible with residential developments and trying to reestablish historical flows down through that area. And then south of U.S. 41 into the Fidler's Creek area. We're working very closely with Fidler's Creek on a regular basis on the acceptance of the flow from the north and passing it on down into their long Fiddler's Creek, which is the interface with the wetlands. This is in the very initial stages. We just completed a new update topographic mapping of this area and will within the next year launch into the data collecting and the engineering phase of that. Another planning effort we have,just starting to start program into it is the so-called Immokalee area stormwater master plan. We have not yet funded this, but it's in the schedule because it is the headwaters of the State Road 29 canal,the borrow canal, which is Barron River, which goes all the way down to Everglades City. We're concerned about it. There are a number of flooding issues in what I would call the village of Immokalee that need to be addressed. And we're looking at those. And we want to do a master plan of the whole thing that will, you know, deal with all their various issues of water quantity, water quality up in that area. Again, the very initial stages. Just to let you know, we have two urban areas in East Naples that we're proposing to do some study in the future. We have already obtained some of the initial aerial topographic mapping of this, and we'll be programming over the next couple of years the initial data collection and study of it. Two basins that are side by side, north and south, one of which is Rock Creek, which flows in and crosses Airport Road at the southeast corner of the airport and goes into Naples Bay. By and large, this one and the one to the south of it is what's Haldeman Creek, are highly urbanized areas with a lot of older developments that don't have modern state-of-the-art water management systems in them. And we -- want to take a look at those, how we might optimize water quality and provide some additional stormwater flooding drainage in those areas. That was Rock Creek. Page 37 May 3, 2000 Haldeman Creek is actually the basin we're physically located here at the Collier County complex. The major outfall of which is over here in our Wal-Mart, south Wal-Mart parking lot. There's a control structure. This water headwaters up over near Queens Park and Kings Lake and serves the area south of Davis Boulevard, down through this whole Lakewood, Glades area, and then serves up as the headwaters for Haldeman Creek. As I say, we just gathered the initial data for this. Because it's so highly urbanized, there would be a very limited opportunity to do much there, but we're going to try to optimize what we can. Really going fast through these things. And I can spend a lot of time and explanation on a lot of different details. Another one that we've put high priority on is the Gateway Triangle area by Davis, U.S. 41, Airport Road. It's particularly in the western portions of it, near Commercial Drive and Linwood. There's some very severe flooding problems in that area. Mainly because the property is only two and a half to three and a half feet above sea level. It's very difficult to provide, you know, really good flood water protection of that. We are looking at it. We have a system proposed which includes a two and a half acre dry retention area that we just recently purchased and hope to incorporate into our water quality treatment area of this whole system, and then discharge it into U.S. 41 six-laning. They just put a new storm drain in there. The other -- I guess the thing we have planned here is that this discharges into the Boat Haven Canal, which is tidal water. We're proposing to do a pilot project by putting a flexible rubber check valve on the ends of those discharge pipes at that point to prevent saltwater from surging back and forth in those pipes, give us some additional protection of the storage. We have more water quality treatment. And that's a project we hope to undertake this next year. Another project we got a high priority on is the so-called Wiggins Pass, way up in the northern portions of the county. This being Wiggins Pass Road and 41. Here's The Audubon. Bentley Village, Sterling Oaks. And all this water comes down through Tarpon Cove. And at this point is pretty well blocked south of there and is creating some -- quite a bit of a ripple effect back through these projects. And we're working quite hard trying to obtain some land rights south of Wiggins Pass so we can safely pass this water through, take it through some wetlands, do some water quality treatment and discharge it in some tidal waters down there. This one was programmed. We actually have some construction funds for it, but we're a long ways from doing that. Last one I just want to bring to your attention is some of the projects you've been reviewing over the last year or so. One of which is the Mediterra project, way up on the north county line. And another project out east of there, the Ronto project by -- I don't know if there's any other name associated with it. There's a number of other larger projects springing up on this North Livingston Road extension between Immokalee Road and the county line. And we're quite concerned about the flow being generated through here,passing through these existing neighborhoods, Imperial Gulf and Palm River. And we're in the process of--just collected our data. We're going to do a computer model on this system to look at some of the -- what we know are some of the restriction points and what it's going to take to provide some better flow through this area, and look at the flowways we have coming from these natural flows out to the east, through some of those cypress areas. And so that's another one of our major projects. And with that, let's see, I have about 25 major projects. I've just introduced you to about 10 or 12 of them. And we have an ongoing program of improvements to these, and to the operation and maintenance of the existing systems. Page 38 May 3, 2000 �-. And with that, I'll turn it back over and let Clarence tell you about some of the larger things that he's doing in the county. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you very much for joining us. MR. BAXTER: Can we get a copy of all this? Is that possible? MR. BOLDT: Of the maps themselves? MR. BAXTER: Yeah. Do you have them shrunk down? MR. BOLDT: I can see what I can do. It's pretty difficult. MR. TEARS: Good morning. Can you hear me? Clarence Tears, director of the Big Cypress Basin. I'm here today just to give you a brief overview of what we're doing. I'm providing each of you with a copy of the annual report. And I stuck inside the front cover our five-year capital improvement program. So as I go through this,I'll try to talk about some of that. In January,the Big Cypress Basin board approved our current five-year capital construction program. And on this sheet I provided you inside your cover, you can see what we have planned for the next five years. Currently we're working on the Cocohatchee Canal, Phase IV. This is the final improvements to the Cocohatchee Canal. And what we're trying to do is provide 25-year storm event protection,yet we added three water control structures to provide water quality, and tried to prevent over drainage of some natural sloughs. The current year we're working on CR-951 improvements,to try to convey some of those stormwater during the summer. Yet at the onset of the dry season, our goal is trying to hold back water. So it's always a balance for water managers. We usually get 80 percent of our rain during the summer and nobody wants it, so we have to get rid of it. n And over some of our critical restoration projects, what we're trying to look at is how can we better manage this water on publicly owned land to try to allow it to go through natural systems. And what we found,the best way to manage water is naturally. And as we grow and become more urbanized, it's more and more of a challenge to do that. Some of the critical restoration projects you can see identified on this sheet are in sort of a tan color. Lake Trafford restoration,you heard about that. We're trying to remove eight and a half million cubic yards of muck from the lake. We purchased a disposal site just upstream of the lake,which is 640 acres. And our long-term goal, and the board has actually been discussing this, is possibly using this site after the restoration project as a restoration site,because it is contiguous with the CREW land acquisition. And one of the ideas is to restore the site. There is some gopher tortoises located on the site, so it's a challenge for us to make sure we don't disturb them in the restoration process. I think this is great for our community. It's one of the largest fresh water lakes south of Lake Okeechobee. I think it's critical to the long-term sustainability of our migrating bird populations, another thing that people come to the area. We talk about economics. What people don't realize,that the reason a lot of people come to South Florida and to Naples is the diversity of what we can do here. We can play golf, we can go to the beach, we can go do sport fishing, we can go just a few miles away and see migrating birds,birds that you can't see anywhere else, unless you want to go to Central America or South America. We just have an extremely diverse community and opportunities for everybody. And sustainability is extremely important. And we know sustainability is based on natural flows of water. And how do we maintain that? And you as advisory board, that's a major challenge, because you see all of the growth that's coming to our area. And every road, if it's only four inches high, impacts surface flows. It's a major challenge. Page 39 May 3, 2000 Southern Golden Gate Estates, I think this is probably one of the most important opportunities that we still have available to us, and that's restoring 53,000 acres. And using that, once it's in public ownership, to rehydrate that area. And what that would do is originally -- right now we have a point discharge at Port-of-the-Islands. We go anywhere from 200 million to 600 million gallons a day at one single point. So what we've done is drained the whole Southern Golden Gate Estates area and single --just pushed all that water at one point. So water in itself is a pollutant. So our goal is if we can restore this area, not flood it, restore it and rehydrate it, the idea is to distribute this point discharge over 18 linear miles. Now, this flows into the Cape Romano, Ten Thousand Islands. So what that does, that's improving the estuarine system. And the estuarine system is where Florida life begins, aquatic life begins. It's just better for the sustainability of Collier County. Currently we're at about 37,000 acres. It's being purchased by the State of Florida. Eventually it will become the Picayune State Forest and managed by the Division of Forestry. Our goal is within two years to have all the land acquired to move forward. We currently have -- it will be part of the Everglades restoration and we'll work with the Corps of Engineers to get federal funding for this project. It's estimated the restoration project will cost roughly $16 million. That's adding plugs to the canals. We'll have to add two to three pump stations just south of I-75 because we still have to provide flood protection to the properties to the north. And that's an important component, is that currently there are people in northern Golden Gate Estates have a one in 10-year storm event system. And we will maintain that, or whatever the current level is in that system. No less than one in 10-year storm event. So that's a critical component of the restoration is to make sure we provide flood protection. One nice thing about Southern Golden Gate Estates, it provides rehydration. When you allow water to move slowly across land, it filters back into the ground so it gives us rehydration. All those channels built in Southern Golden Gate Estates over the years have dropped the groundwater levels close to the channels over 10 feet. Not talking surface water levels, groundwater levels. And the idea is that groundwater levels get too low, you start to have saltwater intrusion and your biodiversity changes and everything changes. So that's the goal of that. Also, if you allow water to move slowly through natural habitat, it cleans the water. It cleanses the water before it gets to the Gulf That's going to be important as we grow. Because urbanization, more traffic on the roadways, all that brings more and more contaminants, more and more pollutants, and the best way to cleanse that is naturally. Then we have the Tamiami Trail. This is already a critical restoration project. We have an agreement signed with the Corps. It's a 15 million dollar project, adding culverts under Tamiami Trail. Not to convey more water from one side to the other but distribute the flow and try to make the Trail more invisible. Fortunately this is only costing the taxpayers of Collier County about 400 -- a little over 400,000. I've been able to work with Florida Department of Transportation to piggyback with the road improvements, and through the Corps for a 15 million dollar project, it's costing a little over 400,000. And then I think three to four years out we get 200,000 of that back. So the, you know, final number is about 279,000. So that's a pretty good return. And we've been able to get federal funding to take care some of the local projects. This sheet's just important to show-- you know, we talk about contiguous, you know, wetlands, long-term improvements and sustainability. You can see the CREW lands that are currently being purchased. You can see Lake Trafford. You can see the Camp Keais Strand, the piece that moves from Page 40 May 3, 2000 north to south, and how it's connected to all the other pieces. And as we move into the future, the CREW area is really the headwaters of our whole water supply. In Collier County, I think it's 90 percent of the water that we utilize is rain driven. So that means every time -- when it rains in the summertime, that replenishes our chief water supply. As we go to the deeper, deeper aquifers, which we will have to do in the future, because of the demands on the shell aquifers, that water supply originates somewhere up by Orlando. But as we go deeper into the aquifers, the quality of the water is degraded. The chloride levels get higher. So the cost to process that water increases. And recently we just finished the lower west coast water supply plan. And in that plan it's stating that we need to move to alternative water supplies because we've tapped out our chief sources, which is the Tamiami Aquifer. So what that means over time, the cost of water may rise, yet the technology continues to improve, so you'll see the cost probably level out. But if we tap the deeper sources, what we do, the shell aquifers are not impacted and we still maintain our wetlands, which are extremely important to the community. Another sheet I just pulled out of the Florida Trend in May, I thought was real interesting, is this sheet here that says more than a third of the 564 plants and animal species listed as threatened or endangered in the U.S. use wetland habitats. And then another interesting thing is, 1999 state lost a net total of some 2,400 acres of wetlands, nearly twice as much as it lost in 1996. So, I mean, our wetlands are going away quickly, yet they're extremely important to listed species. Also down here it says wetland in a floodplain can reduce flood peaks by 80 percent. So, you now, once we channelize water, the velocities increase, you know, we're changing water elevations. But if we can keep it in natural areas, we can reduce a lot of the flooding impact. The natural areas are extremely important. Overall improvement of water quality. Some of the things I've already stated, but it's extremely important. The other thing the basin's working on is the Big Cypress Basin watershed plan. This is a model. We've created a model to represent the whole basin of Collier County. The western portion of the basin from State Road 29 west. And we use this as a management tool. We say what if. What if we make these changes, what are the impacts to the whole system? Historically, what engineers will do is they just take a little piece of the whole pie and they focus on that little piece. But through our capital construction program, what we're trying to do is look at the whole pie and what are the impacts. Because sometimes when we add a structure over here, there's impacts way back here. And the whole idea is look at the old system, the cost benefit. Recently through this water management model we actually asked the developer to put a structure in. Then we found out that the impacts of that structure, we actually asked them to reduce the height. So the models are working. We're presenting the final stage of that plan to the board at May 19th's meeting, and then we'll probably proceed with another model which is a Mike SHE model to incorporate all the data collected in South Lee County, because that is important to the regional benefit of our system. And the better we can understand how those flows impact Collier County, the better we can manage our system. So we're also looking at that. Another thing that's really important is water quality. I'm working currently with the county on a cooperative water quality monitoring program. And the idea of this program is, do we have water quality problems? And if we do, can we address those and correct them? Also, as we go through the restoration of some of our projects, what are the impacts of those restorations? Have they improved water quality, or have they degraded water quality? And it's extremely important. Page 41 May 3, 2000 Over the years, we've been collecting a lot of data, but they go to one location and then five year later they go back. It's never provided us any training information or long-term analysis. This program that we put together with the county will provide us that. We're also working with other counties, all the way up to Charlotte County, in trying to see what they're doing, and in trying to incorporate all the data together, make sure everybody's using the same protocol to collect data, and make sure it's consistent. And there's actually -- out of this, we've created a water quality consortium of the whole west coast. And all it's going to do is improve the way data's collected and make sure the data we're collecting is worth something. MR. BAXTER: Do you have a copy of the protocol for monitoring and collecting this data? MR. TEARS: They're actually looking -- each area has their own protocol for collecting data. This committee, actually at their last meeting, discussed that. They're all bring their data -- their protocols, I think, to the next meeting. They're going to review it and discuss it. So hopefully the outcome will be one established way of collecting data. And there is some variations, even in the testing procedures. And what they all do, all the labs take from the same sample and they analyze it. So we're trying to compare data. And if we see some differences, why do we see differences. So that way if you compare the data in Collier County to data in Charlotte County, you're comparing apples with apples. That's extremely important. The next thing that I want to talk to you briefly about is the Southwest Florida study, which is a component of the restudy. And I've got just a couple of pages. The Southwest Florida study will deal with all Lee County, most of Collier County, Hendry County and portions of Charlotte County. It's approximately 4,300 miles. And it's just to identify water resource problems in the area. One important thing is when the Corps comes in to do this study, what it does is anything identified in the study provides federal dollars, matching dollars. So for the basin what that will do is if —some projects are extremely expensive, instead of impacting the local taxpayers through the ad valorem process, we can get some of that federal money into the community. The study participants are federal agencies, state agencies, local government, tribes, and Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council. And right now they're in the study scoping phase. What we're trying to do is get information from all the stakeholders. You know, what are your concerns, what are your problems, what do you think needs to be addressed in this study, and that's what they're looking at. We tried to create a list of stakeholders. And what we did is met with each individual group separately, because in the past we would bring all the stakeholders together. And one group of stakeholders would take charge of the meeting, and we didn't hear the voice of all the stakeholders. So we tried to keep the meeting separate at the beginning to make sure we --that we cover all of the issues. Now, this is a joint project between the Corps and the South Florida Water Management District. And as we move forward, everybody will be involved in the process. Hopefully in September, after we go back to the stakeholders again with the scope of work, we'll present the scope of work to the district governing board at the September board meeting. Then hopefully we can go forward with the study. And the study is anticipated to take almost four years. And also the study will incorporate South Lee County, the Caloosahatchee River study and also the Big Cyprus Basin study. So the information that we already have won't be lost or duplicated. And another thing you've been hearing a lot about is the restudy. Who's paying for what? At this point I can't tell you exactly who will pay. But the basin is set up a little differently. Can everybody read that? There's the district tax and you have the basin tax. Well, Big Cyprus Basin actually has their own basin. And there's two basins within the district. And the other basin, which is the Okeechobee Basin, is made up of 15 counties. So 100 percent of our basin tax stays in Collier County. Page 42 May 3, 2000 In my 20-year projection for my capital improvement program, I've already looked at some of the critical restoration projects on the table, and I've already set aside funding for those projects. Now, in the restudy, if you look at this chart, there's only a maximum that the basin millage rate can be, and the District maximum. Now, if the District decides or is required to raise the District millage rate, we could be impacted. But if they raise the basin millage rate, they would only be able to raise the Okeechobee Basin for that. And what the district also looked is that the Governor requested them to try to come up with 100 million dollars. They went through all their line items, all their budgets, all their programs. They only could come up with about 48.15 million dollars. So they're short. I'm not sure where the Governor will expect the District to get the shortfall from, but at this point there's some ideas of looking at documentary stamp. You could raise the documentary stamp and receive about 60 million dollars. Water use fees, broad tax, sales tax. There was some charging additional tax on airfares. These were all options and ideas. Currently none of them have been really considered, and so I can't actually tell you where the funds will come from. But we're not part of the Corps of Engineer design project. If it's a project in Collier County, we'll probably pay it through the basin tax. If it's outside the county, if it's through the Okeechobee tax, it will not impact Collier County. But if it's attached to the District tax at large, there will be some impact to Collier County. I'm sorry, I can't give you more information. That's the best I have at this point. That's a real basic overview of everything that we're working on through the Big Cypress Basin. I'm here to answer any questions that you may have. MR. SMITH: Mr. Tears, I think I remember seeing you at some of the community character meetings. MR. TEARS: Yes. MR. SMITH: Yeah. And I was going to say, this is a little bit different from what you've talked about, although it's certainly related. I notice that you have all of the canal systems, especially in Northern Golden Gate Estates, shown on the map. And there was some suggestions made at that community character-- at some of those community character meetings that some of these canals in Northern Golden Gate Estates could and perhaps should be looked at for recreational uses and made, you know, useful for purposes of the people, you know, boating and other-- fishing and that sort of thing. Does your-- does the southwest-- or the South Florida Management District have any regulatory authority over that particular aspect of these canals? And if so, what would be -- what do you think the position would be of-- MR. TEARS: No, most of ours, regulatory authority comes through what the county provided us with and it deals with the drainage easements. The majority of the channels in Collier County are drainage easements. That means the underlining fee to that property is through an easement. So we don't own fee title to the majority of the property. Whenever we build a structure, we do try to get fee title around that structure, because it is a permanent facility. We do, through our permitting process, manage the over-banks and what goes into the channel. But no, we don't get into managing, you know, boats activity. That would be probably managed through Florida Wildlife or Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation and through the county. Marine patrol would also be involved. But we encourage fishing. You know, through our techniques of management and channel -- maintenance, we try to ensure that we don't impact aquatic species in the channels. And through our long-term efforts, we hope to improve that and make them viable, sustainable communities for our Page 43 May 3, 2000 aquatic life. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions? MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman, question. How are we looking -- I know our water source which we work with you guys directly on, which is the Airport Road canal and so forth, is way down there. How are we looking in your projections on where we're going on water restrictions? I know you've got long-range weather projections and things like that. MR. TEARS: Currently the District wasn't looking at going to water restrictions because of the rains we had last month. They sort of rebounded and the groundwater levels were retaining. But if they dropped significantly,the District would, you know, push for water restriction. But at this point I haven't heard of any suggestion to go to water restriction. But we are dry. And what I recommend to everybody is, you know, conserve water. And I think it's just a mentality, we need to realize we all have to do our part in the future. And whatever we can do. You know, turn off the hose when you're washing your car. Wash your car in the grass, if you have a dry spot. Then you serve two purposes. Take shorter showers. But we all need to do our part. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thanks a lot for joining us. MR. TEARS: Sure. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Appreciate it. MR. TEARS: Have a great day. MR. SANSBURY: Thank you. MR. LORENZ: Yes, Mr. Chairman, let me just add, part of what Clarence was talking about was the Southwest Florida study. I've had contact with Curt Thompson with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who is -- of course, the Corps and the Southwest Florida Management District are the partners for the Southwest Florida study. He wanted me to provide you with this complete packet. He couldn't be here today. And the Corps, of course, wants to involve the county local interest as stakeholders, as Clarence had noted. And this is the total packet for the Southwest Florida study. At some particular point, of course, as maybe some issues start to emerge out of this study, the council may want to take up reviewing those issues, and then as your role as advisors of the Board of County Commissioners, you could certainly feel -- develop a set of recommendations for the County Commission. But this is the total packet of some of the slides that Clarence had shown on the viewer. With that, I believe that Joe Cheatam is up next. Joe is the county's wastewater director. MR. CHEATAM: For the record, my name is Joseph Cheatam, the wastewater director for Collier County. I was here a few months ago and I gave you a presentation on reclaimed waters. I'm only here today to give you an update. I have no really formal presentation to make this morning, but I just want to give you some facts what's going on in the last couple of months in our department. The two sources of reclaimed water for our system comes from the south county water reclamation facility and the North County Water Reclamation facility, with a combined capacity of 16.5 million gallons per day. The south county plant right now is at 82 percent capacity, and we are in the process of completing a design report to upgrade this facility to 12 MGD. The north county plant is designed for 8.59 MGD. Right now it's at 92 percent capacity. We have 5 MGD capacity going on line the year 2001. Both plants utilize 70 percent of their effluents for reclaimed water distribution in the county. We just completed a report with Camp Dresser and McKey looking at our reclaimed water for the future. It's a 10-year planning horizon. The report now is in draft form. It will be finalized sometime in July of this year. The report identified our existing irrigation demands for the county, future potential customers for our reclaimed water system, our level of service standard, our sources of existing irrigation needs, our allotment program. Page 44 May 3, 2000 And finally, the county -- Board of County Commissioners has mandated to our department to make our system more reliable in the future. And what does that mean? Doesn't mean that our plants are going to shut down the doors,just means that the customers of our reclaimed water system wants water when they need it. As of today, we are rationing reclaimed water in the south portion of the county, due to high irrigation demands. In the future, we're trying to look at other alternatives through supplementing our system to provide more water for our customers. We set down some alternatives for criteria for distribution of our water for our new customers from this study. In the future, all of our customers will have at least 100 acres of irrigation needs. They must be near our transmission lines or be willing to pay for extensions of our pipelines. And the priority for these customers will be based on their difficulty to obtain other sources of irrigation water, such as from problems with saltwater intrusion. So in the future our customers will be prioritized on the greatest need comes first. Another problem we've had with the county is some of our customers irrigate more than others, so we have to develop a standard -- or a level of service standard for our customers. And we are trying to develop a standard which we've come up with from the Water Management District of one inch per acre per week. And by developing a standard, which means some of our contrast will need to be redone, so we can't conserve water to spread the distribution amongst more customers. We're looking at three alternatives for more irrigation water for a system. Number one is aquifer storage and recharge and recovery. Right now we have a permit process going on for a well to demonstrate whether or not this can be accomplished or not. It's in the process now review. And we have a public hearing on June 16th at the North County Water Reclamation facility. We're also looking at Mulepen Quarry, the source of irrigation water, using groundwater wells located adjacent to the Mulepen Quarry as an alternative. Another alternative will be taking surface water either from Mulepen Quarry or from the Golden Gate canals. These alternatives are being studied by our consultants and by our staff. We'll be making a recommendation sometime this summer and going before the board this fall with a recommendation for additional sources of irrigation of water. And with that, do you have any questions? Yes, sir. MR. CARLSON: You say you're setting the standard of one inch per acre per week for your customers? MR. CHEATAM: That is something we are considering. It's not something that has been approved yet by the Board of County Commissioners. MR. CARLSON: Do you have any idea what people are using now? MR. CHEATAM: Yes, we do. Some are using less, and some are using more. It ranges anywhere from .8 inches per week to 1.5 inches per week. MR. CARLSON: Okay. So my point was, is there a potential for conserving water and actually needing less water if you stick with that standard? But it doesn't sound like there's going to be any big savings there. MR. CHEATAM: We'll save probably a couple million gallons per day doing this process. MR. CARLSON: Okay. And how do we get involved in getting our input into what we think would be the appropriate supplemental water, which in my opinion would be the Golden Gate Canal system, rather than surface water bodies like Mulepen Quarry? MR. CHEATAM: Right now we are working with AB&B Consultants here in Naples. And they're our lead engineer. And so those comments could go through them or through our staff Page 45 May 3, 2000 MR. CARLSON: Is there going to be any public input -- MR. CHEATAM: There'll be some -- MR. CARLSON: -- formal public -- MR. CHEATAM: We haven't really planned any. But if there's a demand for some, we definitely could have some public meetings on these alternatives in a workshop setting. MR. CARLSON: Could you just give me your card before you leave? MR. CHEATAM: Okay. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Anything else for Joe? MR. COE: I have a question. A golf course. I don't know how many people play golf in one day on one golf course. Say 150 people, maybe? MR. CHEATAM: I don't know. MR. SANSBURY: About 160 to 180 rounds a day on an 18-hole course. MR. COE: 160 to 180. What's their water usage versus the same, say, square acreage use of, say, homeowners? Who uses more water, for the benefit of more people? MR. SANSBURY: We do. If I could answer from our standpoint, if I could. We have a two-pipe water systems throughout Grey Oaks which we actually utilize. Golden Gate Canal happens to be the source with the backup of wells. I would say the golf course probably -- and we -- each house is metered, as is the golf course is metered. I would say that the golf course probably uses on an acreage basis probably 25 to 30 percent more water than an individual residential owner, if I had to guess. We do --the number-- we do between three and a half to four and a half inches worth, you know, of the use. THE COURT REPORTER: I'm sorry, I couldn't hear the last part of your answer. MR. SANSBURY: As I say, how much water we use at the golf course is between two and a half inches -- excuse me,three and a half inches and four and a half inches per acre. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Per week? MR. SANSBURY: Per week, I think -- MR. CHEATAM: Per week. MR. SANSBURY: Per week, yeah. MR. COE: And that compares to how much per household? MR. SANSBURY: I would say two, two and a half, maybe. MR. CHEATAM: Most of our customers have septic use permits, so they have additional sources of water. We're just trying to spread out water out over the -- as much as we can throughout the whole county. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Anything else for Joe? Thank you very much. MR. CHEATAM: Thank you. MR. LORENZ: Our next speaker will be Paul Mattausch. He's the water director on the potable water side of the equation. MR. MATTAUSCH: Give me just about 10 seconds here to get plugged in and -- Paul Mattausch, department director for the water department, Collier County. And I'm very pleased to be here today. And for some reason, I don't have -- I'm all plugged in and I have this up running and I don't have it on any of your monitors either, right? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: No. Page 46 May 3, 2000 MR. MATTAUSCH: This worked this morning at 8:30. I was here to make sure that everything was -- everything was up and running. Kady, if you can hear me, for some reason, we don't have a-- MR. COE: Hear that, Joe? Why does the water that is used for irrigating my lawn stink? MR. CHEATAM: Probably has hydrogen sulfide in it. Does it come from a well? MR. COE: No, it comes from your plant. MR. CHEATAM: Shouldn't smell from our plant. MR. COE: Yeah, right. It didn't smell when it came from the lake. MR. SANSBURY: I think that was off the record. MR. COE: No, it's not closed. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sounds informal. Is that what -- (Brief recess.) MR. MATTAUSCH: Again, since it's been so long, for the record, Paul Mattausch, director of the water department. I wanted to reintroduce myself. I would like to tell you, unlike Joe, who was here a couple of months ago and gave a presentation,this is my first opportunity to appear before this council. And I appreciate the invitation. So what I'm going to do is give you an overview of the water department and walk you through briefly from source to tap so that you know exactly who we are and what we do and where our water comes from and where we are headed with potable water supply for Collier County. I want to give you a picture of what we see as the future, what our demands are, and where the demand for water is taking us. And it's nice when things work. I'd like to talk about source first. We have two well fields. Golden Gate well field, located basically -- Golden Gate Boulevard and Wilson Avenue, near that intersection we have 27 wells. Those wells average about 100 feet deep, and they have a capacity of 28.6 million gallons of water a day. And that is --that is our permitted capacity. This is a picture of what a well site, typical well site looks like. You don't see a whole lot from above the ground. Most everything is below ground. The well, the well casing itself, the motor, motor controls and electricity to make a well operate are located in a vault facility similar to this. Our second well field is our newest well field and was just placed into operation in 1999. It is located along Vanderbilt Beach extension. It is unlike the Lower Tamiami Aquifer, which is a surficial aquifer. This is a significantly deeper aquifer. We actually, to get into this aquifer, go through a couple aquitards, a couple of regions of ground that have very low transmissivity, allow very little water to flow through those layers. And we have 10 wells located in this aquifer, some 700 to 1,000 feet deep. And the capacity of this well field is 19 million gallons a day. One of the well houses in this well field is shown here in a slide. And the reason why there's a difference between this, I do want to point out that because Southwest Florida-- and I've been here almost two years now, and I'm learning to appreciate the thunderstorms that we have in the summertime here. Because we do have frequent thunderstorms, all of our facilities have generation capacity. And what we do is we power several well sites from one well site. And this happens to be a well site that not only houses the well and the motor and the motor controls and that kind of thing, but it also houses a generator, so that the generator can run two or three additional wells from this site so that we have power capacity to continue to operate with or without Florida Power and Light. The South County Regional Water Treatment Plant was constructed in 1984. The original Page 47 May 3, 2000 capacity was four million gallons a day. It was expanded in 1988 to a total of 12 million gallons of water a day. It is a lime softening treatment plant; one of the earliest forms of water treatment and a very, very reliable water treatment facility. We also have degassification. We talked a little bit about odor from groundwater. Our groundwater has hydrogen sulfide in it, and so in order to make the water more palatable, aesthetically pleasing to our customers, we do remove the hydrogen sulfide. And rather than put that into the air where people no longer drink it but they breathe it, we tie that up with sodium hydroxide and chlorine, and we treat that. That goes into the sanitary sewer system tied up, and so that it is not discharged into the air. This is a slide of the administration part of the South Water Treatment Plant. It's located just east of 951 on Utility Drive,just north of I-75. The North County Regional Water Treatment Plant was constructed in 1993. Its initial capacity was 12 million gallons a day. It was expanded in 1999, last year, to 20 million gallons a day. 12 million gallons, the original capacity, was membrane softening, and the new eight million gallons a day expansion is reverse osmosis. One of the differences -- going back briefly to the source. The Tamiami Aquifer is a surficial aquifer, fairly good quality fresh water supply. And the difference between that aquifer and the Hawthorne Aquifer, as you heard Clarence say, the deeper you go, the poorer the quality of water, the higher the chloride concentration. We do have total dissolved solids and chlorides in approximately 15 percent of the concentration of seawater. So it is brackish water. And reverse osmosis process removes the chlorides, total dissolved solids, from the water, and makes a very high quality of potable water. We mix those two streams from that plant, the 12 MGD of membrane softening and the 8 MGD of reverse osmosis. The plant effluent is those two waters combined. We also degassify and have odor control here because of the hydrogen sulfide in the raw water. And this is a picture of the North Water Treatment Plant. We also are currently putting in--placing into operation, we've been injecting for about a year, actually a little bit less than that, into an aquifer storage and recovery well. We call that our Manatee Road ASR Well No. 1. We have a capacity in that well of 1.5 million gallons a day injection capacity and recovery capacity. During the -- one of the things that's unique to our way of life here in Florida, we kind of have an inverse water demand cycle. Our lowest demand is during the summertime when a lot of the rest of the country, the demand is high. And during that period of time, when we have excess water treatment capacity, we can place that potable drinking water down into an aquifer and use that excess capacity. Continue to run our water treatment facility, get that extra million and a half gallons a day of drinking water, place it into an aquifer, create a big -- a large bubble of treated water within that aquifer. And then during the period of time when we need that excess capacity, when we need that water back, we can withdraw up to a million and a half gallons a day of that potable water. The water comes back out of the aquifer still drinking water quality. The only thing that we have to do to it is bump up the chlorine residual in it to get the disinfectant level that FDEP requires and actually EPA requires in drinking water. That well is about 528 feet deep. One of the things that makes the hydrogeology very good for aquifer storage and recovery is we have an aquifer down there that's only about 63 feet thick. And that allows us to --between the two aquitards, it allows us to create this large bubble of drinking water that we can then recover when we need that water. This is a photograph of the ASR well site. On the left, in the fenced in area, you see a motor Page 48 May 3, 2000 standing there. That is directly over the well. And the right center, you see the chemical feed facility. And on the extreme right-hand side is the ground storage tank, located at our Manatee Road facility. That pipe going up the outside of the tank is the discharge from the well into the ground storage tank. And we mix it in there with the rest of our potable water supply and provide that to our customers. Water operations has a staff of 36 people, and their capacity is to operate those two well fields, operate the two water treatment facilities, maintain the two water treatment plants, and operate the remote pumping stations that we have on the system. We have a number of booster stations and ground storage tanks on the system. This is a picture of the odor control and degasification towers at the North Water Treatment Facility. Water distribution, that staff has 52 people. Their task is to maintain underground utilities, the water mains, all of the appurtenances that go along with a water distribution system; the valves, fire hydrants, all of those things that are connected to the water distribution system, and to maintain our remote pumping facilities. They also do meter installation and testing, and they also run the cross-connection control program. Our cross-connection control devices that we are --have been installing in the system in order to maintain the integrity of the distribution system so that we don't get contamination from a secondary source. Joe earlier talked about reclaimed water. There are dual distribution systems out there, and should someone cross-connect the two systems out there, we don't want that water to get back into the potable water supply, so that's why we run a cross-connection control program. That staff does have the chore of maintaining our remote facilities. This happens to be one of those remote sites. This is also a unique ground storage tank. For those of you who have not been down 92, down just on the north edge of Marco Island, Goodland, this is the Goodland ground storage tank. And an interesting paint job on that facility. We have a laboratory staff of five, and they're responsible for compliance sampling and analysis, process control sampling within the water treatment plants, and analysis, and also producing our Consumer Confidence Report that will be going out shortly, our third annual Consumer Confidence Report. And I might add that we're very proud of the fact that we can produce a Consumer Confidence Report. It's now mandated. For the last two years it's been mandated by EPA under the 1996 revisions to the Safe Drinking Water Act, the reauthorization of that act. The Consumer Confidence Report lets our customers know where their water comes from, what processes it goes through, and exactly what's in their water. And again, we've had another year of 100 percent compliance for drinking water standards. Some statistics -- and I want to head into the last part of where I want to go here and where we see the potable water supply going in Collier County. 1999 water systems statistics. We provide water for about 190 square miles of service area in unincorporated Collier County. That's provided through a little over 600 miles of water main. And at the end of 1999, we had about 35,500 service connections. That number of service connections is growing. And I have a slide that's going to show you that. Some additional statistics. In 1999, we produced -- we put to our distribution system 7.2 billion gallons of drinking water. That met 100 percent of the standards for drinking water. Our average day for the Collier County water system was 19.8 million gallons a day. We had a maximum day on December 27th. Remember I talked to you a little bit about the fact that we see a little bit unique cycle as far as demand is concerned. This was Christmas vacation, and we had a lot of visitors in Collier Page 49 May 3, 2000 County. And our highest demand day of the year happened to be between Christmas and New Year's, — 25.3 million gallons. And one of the other things about our water supply and the uniqueness of water supply, typically a lot of public water supply systems see their highest peak hour somewhere between 3:00 and 6:00 in the afternoon. We see our peak hours somewhere between 3:00 and 5:00 in the morning when all of the irrigation systems are on. And that peak hour happened to be -- happened to take place twice on May 15th and May 17th in 1999 at 5:00 in the morning. We reached a peak pumping rate of 51.3 million gallons a day. That's a lot of water. Bill and I were discussing just before I came up here, you know, our peak demand is not residential usage, our peak demand is irrigation usage. Miles of water main. And this gives you a good comparison. In seven years, this water system has grown by 40 percent as far as miles of water main is concerned. We're running now-- for about the last four years, we're running between three and a half and four and a half percent growth rate, some 25 miles of water main a year that we're adding to this system. Service connections. In a seven-year period of time, we have grown by almost two-thirds. 65 percent. We've gone from about 25,000 service connections to almost 36,000 service connections. Actually, we are over 36 now. And that percent growth has been running in the seven to 10 percent range; about 220 new service connections a month. And that's a lot of new service connections. One of the things that we have seen just this year, this year for the first year in a considerable number of years, we are actually ahead of the demand growth or the demand cycle as far as treatment capacity. This is the first year in a number of years that we have actually been able to maintain our normal 80 pounds per square inch delivery pressure to the distribution system. We haven't had to cut pressure, delivery pressure, to the distribution system in order to artificially enforce water restrictions or — water usage at a lower rate than what we would normally see. And since we have been able to keep that 80 psi going to the distribution system, we have seen a significant increase, in fact, for three months in a row you see December, '99, January, 2000 and February, 2000, over 25 percent increase over the same month one year ago as far as water consumption is concerned. Water to distribution systems. And so far, through seven months, we are running almost 20 percent more water to distribution system than we saw in the previous year, simply because our demand was artificially low-- what we were seeing as far as demand, was artificially low because we had to reduce pressure to the distribution system. There are some very severe consequences to that. One of the major ones is liability as far as firefighting capacity. When we reduce pressures to the distribution system, we reduce our ability to fight fires. And so it's a much more comfortable position for us to be in to be able to be ahead of that demand curve and have actually excess capacity rather than being on the other side of the demand curve and not having enough capacity and having to really struggle through a situation where we don't have enough water for the demand of the system. You heard Clarence talk about alternative water supplies. That's one thing that Collier County is really out in the forefront on. We're on the leading edge of developing alternative water supplies with our ASR well, and also, development of the Hawthorne Aquifer, taking some of the stresses off of the surficial aquifer system, the Tamiami Aquifer. When we have excess capacity out of the Hawthorne Aquifer, we can reduce our pumpage from the Tamiami Aquifer and reduce those stresses on the surficial aquifer; and therefore, we reduce stresses — on the environment, on the impact that we have on wetlands in Collier County. Page 50 May 3, 2000 South plant expansion. This is -- I just want to wrap up here where we're going --not only developing the alternative water supplies, but also staying ahead of that demand curve. We just finished in 1999 the water treatment plant expansion at the north plant, eight million gallons of reverse osmosis. We are already about seven months into the preliminary design, nearing the final phases of preliminary design and getting into design of the next water treatment plant. It will be an expansion at the south plant site,just north of I-75. It will be initially eight million gallons a day of reverse osmosis from the Hawthorne Aquifer. Permit application, looks like we're going to go to FDEP and South Florida Water Management District with our permit applications in the fourth quarter of this year, and we'll see construction of the facility in 2001, 2002, with completion somewhere in the second quarter of 2002. And we are constructing that facility to be expandable. We're trying to look at the five and 10-year horizon so that we can expand that facility and construct it. It's a little more expensive constructing up front. It drives the cost per gallon upwards above $2 a gallon in order to pay for capacity. But if you build the building so that you can expand it, the cost of expansion drops to about 55 to 60 percent of that cost on a per gallon production basis. So we are building that facility to be expandable. And this is what the inside of the process looks like in either membrane softening or reverse osmosis. The process is simply taking water and pushing it under high pressure through a very small core membrane so that the only thing that passes through that membrane basically is H2O. And if you have any questions, I would be glad to answer questions. Yes. MR. CARLSON: But one of the products of that very hyper saline water -- and since we're tapping different aquifers and making fresh water bubbles underground, where is that hyper saline water going? MR. MATTAUSCH: We are -- our waste stream, our concentrate stream, is going to deep well injection. Those deep wells are about 3,300 feet deep in an aquifer that's actually extremely brackish. And actually our concentrate stream that we're placing into that aquifer is actually less concentrated than what is there. MR. CARLSON: Do you have one of those wells up at the north plant? MR. MATTAUSCH: No, we have two. MR. CARLSON: You have two. MR. MATTAUSCH: Yeah. And there are two deep well injection -- injection wells there. There will be two new ones at the south plant site in order to handle our concentrate from the new RO at the south land site. MR. CARLSON: Okay. And I guess just for the benefit of this board, in addition to all these wells and all that production you just talked about, doesn't the City of Naples also have a well field out in Golden Gate? MR. MATTAUSCH: Yes, they do. MR. CARLSON: And where is that? MR. MATTAUSCH: There's is south of ours. MR. CARLSON: And a million gallons per day is what? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: It's -- MR. MATTAUSCH: Oh, okay, east. I'm sorry, east. I got my directions turned around. Theirs is east of ours. And about four miles east of ours. And I believe that their average day is -- I don't know, I can't speak for them. I know that they're producing less water than we are. Page 51 May 3, 2000 MR. CARLSON: And they're in the Lower Tamiami. -- MR. MATTAUSCH: They are in the Lower Tamiami Aquifer also, yes. It's a very prolific aquifer. It's just that with all of the demands that we have from -- you know, actually, the municipal water supplies are really a small percentage of the demand on that aquifer. The largest demand on the aquifer is agricultural irrigation. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions? MR. SANSBURY: Excuse me. I guess it's a myth that the highest use is at halftime Super Bowl. That's -- MR. MATTAUSCH: Yeah, we can see halftime on our pressure charts. Absolutely. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for Paul? MR. CARLSON: What is the percent of the water that is used for irrigation? I've heard it's half I've heard it's like 50 percent of the water goes for -- MR. MATTAUSCH: From our system are you talking about? MR. CARLSON: Yeah. Like for lawn watering, the water that you produce. How much is, you know, consumed in the house versus put on the lawn? MR. MATTAUSCH: Our irrigation -- and I'm just going to give you an educated guess at this point, because I don't have those numbers in front of me. And I'm going to guess that at times of the year that's probably 35 to 40 percent of our water is irrigation. MR. COE: I have a few questions. What about security on these well heads? What do you have for security? Or can you tell us? Is there security? MR. MATTAUSCH: The well houses, the vaults themselves, are locked. I mean, nobody can get to the immediate well head itself. And -- MR. COE: But you don't have any alarms or anything like on it so if somebody was to open it, — you'd know? MR. MATTAUSCH: Not on all of them, no. We are beginning to retrofit and do that so that we do have entry alarms. But all of them are not. And I'm not going to tell you which ones are or not. MR. COE: Obviously. What's the potential for contamination of any of these wells, say, from other water sources that are too close or whatever it may be? MR. MATTAUSCH: I think we've seen fairly good isolation between surface water, water table water and where we are withdrawing water from the aquifer. Again, I think probably -- MR. COE: What's being done to prevent like, say, something like -- and I don't know much about it,just kind of what I've read in the paper, about Caloosa Bay, that operation? MR. MATTAUSCH: We are right now in the process of surveying all of our wells, global positioning and mapping, so that we know exactly where any potential sources are, surface water sources are. Again, it's -- you know, it is a surficial aquifer. There is always a potential for contamination of that aquifer from the surface. One of the things about the -- I guess the difference between being on a private well and being on a public water supply, there are barriers of defense against contamination in the water treatment plant itself. And so if a contaminate does make it to the aquifer, we have water treatment processes that can handle most substances that would get into the groundwater. MR. LENBERGER: Let me add that the county in 1991 adopted a Groundwater Protection Ordinance where for all the public water supply well fields, we modeled a risk management zone around the well field itself, which approximates about a 20-year travel time from potable water at that boundary — getting into the well itself. Page 52 May 3, 2000 Within those zones, the county has adopted a number of standards in terms of land use standards of facilities that would address storage of hazardous waste or hazardous materials. So that's a code the county has adopted. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Anything else for Paul? MR. SMITH: How does the water supply, you know,the natural water supply, in Collier County compare to water supplies nationally?I mean, you know, in other areas of the country. MR. MATTAUSCH: That's a difficult question to answer,because there are so many varied water sources that are used for public water supplies. Actually,the -- as I mentioned,the Tamiami Aquifer is fairly good quality water. One of the major problems that we have with it is there are small quantities of organic hydrocarbons, materials in the water naturally occurring in the water. And that is a problem for us as far as treatment of the water without producing a family of compounds called trihalomathane. And that's the biggest problem that we have with the water here. It's moderately hard. And we do run both processes, softening processes, so we do produce water that's moderately soft. Difficult question to answer without getting into a real lengthy discussion about--I mean, I came from a water supply in southeastern Michigan that we used to joke about. It was a surface water supply river. And, you know, when we would have spring rain and there were no crops in the field, we used to joke about going out and walking across the river to the other side to see if it looked as bad from the other side as it did from the side that the water plant was on. I mean,there are significant differences in quality of water. Some water supplies are very hard, very high in other natural minerals that we don't have the problem with here. MR. SMITH: The aquifer system, as I understand it,that we have here in Collier County is an extension of an aquifer system that starts way up, what, in North Florida or even further north? MR. MATTAUSCH: The lower aquifers -- in fact,the lower the aquifer, the farther away the source is. The Hawthorne Aquifer, some of the recharge areas are up in northern Florida and south central Georgia and part of Alabama where the actual recharge area for the Hawthorne Aquifer is. The Tamiami is much closer to that,you know, around the Orlando area. MR. LENBERGER: The surficial aquifer system,which is the water table in Lower Tamiami, is basically locally recharged. When you get down to the Hawthorne,then you're getting up maybe a little bit in Hendry County towards the Orlando area along with the Floridan. MR. MATTAUSCH: Yeah. Yeah. And the lower Hawthorne is actually part of the Floridan Aquifer, which recharges much farther north. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Well, thank you very much. MR. MATTAUSCH: You're welcome. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Appreciate your coming. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: As you can see, I don't trust the Power Point computers. Okay, good afternoon. This is Stan Chrzanowski. I'm with development services department, and I've been asked to do a short segment on why we do what we do for stormwater management. I'll be putting some-- MR. BAXTER: Before you start, could we get cards from these gentlemen,please? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I can get a card from Paul and from Joe and send them to you. MR. BAXTER: Thank you. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Okay,we do the permitting of the stormwater management in Collier County. There used to be a couple of agencies called the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Environmental Regulation that a few years back were combined to form the Department of Environmental Protection. Page 53 May 3, 2000 They are -- that is the agency basically charged with stormwater protection for Collier County. — They have delegated that authority to the South Florida Water Management District. The District reviews now for DEP. And the Army Corps of Engineers and DEP have the real responsibility. Collier County has been delegated by the District the responsibility for reviewing projects that are 40 acres or less, which is quite a few of the smaller commercial projects, in areas that are not in Water Management District overall permits. And we have the Collier County Stormwater Management Department. You heard from John. You saw his basin studies. He's charged with the basin studies and the maintenance. Water Management District likes to do publications. This is one of their publications titled Frequency Analysis of the South Florida Water Management District Rainfall. They do this publication so that people can design projects. The hydrology of Collier County is roughly -- we get about 53 inches of rain a year. That's from a publication like this that said that during that 70-year span, we had an average of 53 inches a year, typically divided into a wet season that ran five months with 36 inches falling during the wet season, and a dry season that ran seven months, and it gives you the dates there, with 17 inches falling. So in the middle of that wet season, you'll probably get about two months with 24 inches of rain in them. We get most of our rain in one short span, and then we go a lot of the season, the dry season now, April, May, when you see the wells go down and everything, and we start talking water restriction, we get very little rain during that time. Our standard design storm is --you hear a 100-year storm. Well, a 25-year storm, 25-year, 24-hour storm drops roughly nine inches of rain. A 25-year, three-day storm drops roughly 12.2 inches of rain. A 100-year, one-day storm drops roughly 11.2 inches of rain and a three-day storm drops 15.2. Within the county, there are different rain zones. These rates vary a little. The difference between -- they're statistical storms. The difference between them, the 25 -- or the one-day and the three-day, is the Water Management District has figured that the three-day storm would drop 1.359 times what a one-day storm would drop. A very significant figure for a very rough number. When you size within a project, the -- okay, design intensities. Why? We have certain design intensities that we specify that the engineers use for sizing the internal components, because the stormwater system, the catch basin, the culverts and all, if they're not properly sized will back up water onto the roads or onto your parking lots. What the sizing is based on is a peak hour rainfall intensity. And there are a few different ways to do it. The peak hours --the Water Management District storm drops about four inches of rain during that peak hour. But if you go to the Florida Department of Transportation intensity duration frequency curves, you see from this map where it's Zone 8, down here in Collier County, it gives you different rates of-- you know, for a different duration, like a 15-minute storm that happens in 100 years, it's about eight inches per hour that's dropped. But those storms don't last for an hour. They last for maybe 15 minutes. So you get your two inches of rain in that 15 minutes and that's an intensity of eight inches an hour. Time of concentration. In a simplified way to state it, the time of concentration is the amount of time it takes for a drop of water that goes --that drops on a project to go from the farthest point of the project to the discharge point. Say if you were looking at Radio Road, which is what we call the common hump and sump design, it's a succession of catch basins, and the gutter rises up from the catch basin to a high point and drops down. Halfway between the catch basins is the high point. You go to the crown of the road, the middle of the road, a drop of water that falls there has to fall down along the grade of the road and then along the catch basin. That may take 10 minutes. If the storm lasts for 15 minutes at that intensity, then the time of Page 54 May 3, 2000 concentration forces the system to react to that whole storm. If the storm drops water at eight inches an hour but only does it for five minutes, then the time of concentration hasn't been reached and the system never sees the full effect of that eight inches per hour. Now, that is taken into account when you're designing the small basins like we see locally. Larger basins like rivers, streams, canals, swamps, time of concentration is measured in days. You may get rainfall in North Florida that doesn't hit the St. John's River -- or north of Florida, doesn't hit the St. John's River sometimes for days and the river will peak well afterwards, depending on what fell upstream. Down here, usually minutes is our time of concentration. We get a stream of literature designing better design storms, computing peak flows. It tells us -- okay, why do we need design storms? We need design storms so that designs are all judged by the same project criteria. The Water Management District has a storm that they came up with. It's a statistical storm. It tells you incrementally every 15 minutes for a span of 72 hours how much water is falling as a proportion of that 11-inch, 100-year storm. That gets put into a computer. The computer tells you how your system reacts to that. And for a 72-hour storm, the 60th hour is when that four inches of rain falls. So your system reacts slowly at first and then you get this sudden rush of water through the system. Now, every project that designs a stormwater system that gets permitted by us -- well, the smaller projects don't have to do that if they're less than two acres of impervious. But if you're more than that, you have to do a storm routing, which means you have to put that statistical storm through your computer and see what the computer says how high your water is going to rise. That-- when you hear that we've done a design or the water-- or we have done an analysis or the Water Management District has reviewed an analysis, that is what they're looking at, how your system behaved with that statistical storm. Okay, the topography of Collier County. There's a couple of terms that I'd like to go over. Mean high water is the average of the water of--the average high water of Collier -- around this area. It's at elevation 1.8 along the beach. Then you have mean high-high water, which is the highest of the high waters. How high that rises is an average. That's an elevation of 3.2. You have a national geodetic vertical datum, which was the data that was set at either 27 or 29 using, they figured, the shape of the earth as a geoid and assigned elevations based on that shape of the earth. It's something that has since been redone as North American Vertical Datum, which was done in the late Eighties, which I guess the new flood insurance rate maps are switching over from NAVD to NGVD. They assumed the earth had a slightly different shape. And in this county it matters by 1.1 to 1.2 or 3 feet. Right now it's just affecting some survey computations. All of our permits are based on NGVD. If we ever go to NAVD, I assume there's going to be a little confusion there. Now, some examples of the topography of Collier County, the seawalls along Marco and down along Port Royal, they're all about at elevation 5.5 NGVD. Horseshoe Drive, where our office is located, is about --the buildings are set at about elevation 9 or 10, so you can see two or three miles inland there's not much rise. Golden Gate City, the houses are all around elevation 13, seven miles inland. You can see it coming up about a foot a mile. Everglades Boulevard, that area in there varies somewhere around 16 or 17 up to about 20. The houses along there are all just set 18 inches above the road. The District also puts out publications like the determination of 100-year coastal surge flood elevations for Collier County, Florida. Federal Emergency Management Agency are the people that come up with these elevations. They issue FIRM maps, flood insurance rate maps. Page 55 May 3, 2000 The old flood insurance rate maps were based on storm surge. They had a model of a storm that came in, blew in from the coast and blew water into the county. So if you looked -- if you were close to the Gulf, you were in a velocity zone, which means the water is coming in in heavy waves and is going to knock down your house that way, and a certain amount of flooding would come in. The elevation along the coast that you had to set a house at was around elevation 14. And that elevation dropped going inland. They didn't take rainfall into account. The maps are presently being redone, and my understanding is that they're now working storm numbers that the Water Management District has given them for the Golden Gate Canal system, so that they can come up with a better analysis of what happens when the water going out meets the water coming in. We should see those probably within a couple of years. Now, our criteria for where you put a house slab in Collier County, there's an ordinance, the Construction Administrative Code, has an absolute elevation, you can't go any lower than 7.0. There are some existing houses in the county that are down in the low 5s, some of the older structures. The flood insurance rate map elevation, if applicable, you have to at least go to that elevation, you have to be 18 inches above the crown of the nearest paved road or 24 inches above the crown of the nearest unpaved road. We do have some evacuation routes in the county, like Immokalee Road, that we don't force people to go to that elevation because the road right around the corner and the houses right around the corner are a lot lower. If you're near an evacuation route, that road elevation does not govern. And the South Florida Water Management District, the 100-year, three-day storm analysis that's done, fixes the finished floor elevation for those kind of areas. And whichever is the stricter of the criteria is what governs. Okay, design procedures. When you're designing a project, one of these engineers will look at — what the predevelopment discharge is versus post-development discharge. He will do an overall storm route. He'll have that design storm fall on his project and see what it does to his lakes and his culverts. Then he does the internal culvert drainage, the culverts that feed his parking lot into his retention areas. The criteria that are used for internal culvert drainage are not fixed by any ordinance. Some of the engineers use the 8 that's the FDOT standards. Some engineers only use a 3.3. The 4.0 is probably the most common. That's the peak hour of the Water Management District storm. If you're in the parking lot of your favorite shopping center during one of these summer storms and there's six inches of water in the parking lot, he probably used a 3.3. If it's totally dry during the same storm, next door they probably used the 8. We do not have a criteria. That's the judgement of the engineering developer. Design features of these projects. You have a discharge structure, the weir that holds the water back and doesn't allow it to discharge at a rate that impacts your neighbors. The catch basins, the manhole and the junction boxes are the structures that accept the water that's running off the site into the culverts that go out to the discharge structures. Discharge structure, it generally discharges into a swale or a canal of some type. That canal during a storm can be a little higher than usual. That's called tail water. If your tail water is higher than your discharge structure, your water can actually come back onto the site. In that case, we have a condition known as the fully submerged weir, or-- most of the culverts down here, if you look down in them during the wet season, there's water sitting in them. You look down a catch basin, there's water a foot down. That's fully submerged. The ground here is so flat that a lot of the culverts are laid perfectly flat. They don't run downhill like up north. The culverts function fully submerged the same way a siphon-- an inverted siphon would function. You pour water in one end, it will come out the other end, it will bubble out. Page 56 May 3, 2000 Let's see. I think I have a couple of repeats in here. Okay, when somebody wants to come in and look at a project, they come to us. We have John Boldt, who did a presentation, has done a drainage atlas for the county. It takes into account historical drainage patterns, artificial drainage patterns, cut-off canals, like the canal that runs along the north side of Immokalee Road. Generally the drainage pattern around here is in a north-south direction. But these canals, they intercept that flow and head it out. So people to the south of that canal, even though they are close to the canal, are really farther down. Projects on the south side of Immokalee Road, and you've seen it in a few of your--use the water, it's forced to go the south, plus the Water Management District says you can't force it up. Okay, water quality. The runoff from any rain storm that comes, we have a concept called first flush. They figure anywhere from the first half inch to the first inch of water that falls after no rain is going to wash most of the pollutants from the road or your lawn into the retention area. We require that the first inch be retained on-site,percolated into the ground, because we don't want the pollutants entering the canals or the swales or Wiggins Bay or Clam Pass. The pollutants that go with that first flush are generally herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, what comes from your automobile. You look at that slick on your driveway -- I'm sure none of you gentlemen have that, but I was in a house yesterday that had one in their garage. You look at the slick on the driveway, when the rain hits that, it washes that down into our stormwater system. A lot of them try to get removal from dry retention areas and swales. The plants will take out some of the pollutants. That's the organic removal. We used to have up north catch basin geometry. We'd put baffles and sumps. The sumps would take out the silts and the sands from the sanding of the roads in the winter. You'd have to clean those things out. We don't do sumps down here. It's a maintenance problem. If you don't maintain them all the time, having the sump filled with sand does you no good at all. If we --well, there is some mechanical removal that can be done by the geometry of the catch basin. And you have adsorption versus absorption. Adsorption is the medium that you're going through, the sand or whatever. Pollutants cling to the outside of the surface, and absorption means that the medium actually absorbs it and takes it in. I guess plants. Sources of runoff. We have roads and parking lots. They contribute most of the vehicle pollution. We have roofs which are usually fairly clean sources of runoff. The District allows you to treat those like lakes. We have lawns and golf courses, which is where you get the herbicides and the pesticides and agricultural. And then rain that falls directly on lakes is pure water. Just forces the lake to rise up as much as -- if you have 11 inches of waterfall on a lake, that's how much the lake rises. And the solutions for the runoff problem, you can either retain it on-site or you detain it before it discharges, like in a lake, so that whatever is growing in the lake, plants can pick it up. One last thing I want to get into: Lakes. Just an editorial comment. I have heard many times people stand up here and talk about natural lakes. This is a section from the soils survey map that was done in the late Thirties of Collier County. If you look at it, you can see the Cocohatchee River coming in here and going up. This is the slough that goes up through Palm River. This is the one that goes across under Immokalee Road. There is no canal over here. There are no lakes in Collier County. That map there is possibly a portion of a map that was given to you. I had him kind of reduce all the detail for the roads and all and blow up the detail for the lakes. And those are all the lakes that we've dug in Collier County since we've been permitting lakes. A lot of them are quarries, a lot of them are Page 57 May 3, 2000 lakes. All of them are basically exotic. They don't belong in the county. Anything that grows in them, I guess you could say is non-native, because it probably wasn't there. We are permitting a lot of lakes in this county. You see a lot of them come in here as quarries and whatever. I don't know whether it's a good thing or bad thing. It does hold back a little more water than regular ground. But anyway, that's my presentation. And if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them. I went through a lot of stuff, and I talk fast. MR. SANSBURY: Are there any -- what's the term -- stormwater utility tax in Collier County? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: They were thinking of doing a stormwater utility -- MR. LORENZ: Be back in 9 -- 1990. 1990 through '92 we were developing a stormwater utility concept, and the Board of County Commissioners decided they did not want to do that. MR. COE: After a lot of heat. MR. LORENZ: Yes. So we're not -- we don't have the stormwater utility. I don't -- I haven't heard anything about trying to resurrect that. Although I know Lee County, of course -- MR. SANSBURY: Palm Beach has one. MR. LORENZ: Lee County had rejected it around that time as well. But they look like they're trying to resurrect it. They've had at least some discussion. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Anything else for staff? Many thanks. MR. LORENZ: Last presenter is Kevin Dugan. Kevin is a chief environmental specialist with the pollution control department and has some information concerning water quality. MR. DUGAN: Good afternoon. For the record, I'm Kevin Dugan with Collier County pollution control. I'm going to try to sum up everything that you heard today. Stan, last one you mentioned, all the stormwater, John Boldt started it off. Clarence tears. Even Joe Cheatam with his irrigation. That water falls on the ground somewhere in Collier County, either gets soaked into the ground as its supposed to, or gets run off As Clarence had mentioned earlier, the county is now working with the District on a water quality program. The county currently monitors 56 stations throughout the county, and we monitor them monthly for water quality. But there is a-- we test for 36 parameters. So if you can imagine 56 stations, 36 parameters, I'm not an engineer, I can't do that calculation for you real quick. But it produces a tremendous amount of data. Now, to look at water quality and try to simplify things, what I've done with that hand-out that I gave you is based on what the DEP does in their-- what they call their 305-B report to the EPA, and it is a water quality index. The DEP water quality index is based on a minimum of two years' worth of data. since we're only working with one year of water quality assessment. Now, this was based on data that was taken from November, 19 -- December, 1998 to November, 1999. Now, it's -- the hand-out is broken down by basin, by station. And it starts at the estuary or the place where it discharges into the estuary and works inland. I'm not sure how well you can see the map, but it does correspond. The lines that you can see surrounding these areas, those are the district lines or basin lines. Unfortunately this map does not have the names of the basins on them. But primarily they're the same basins that John Boldt was talking about earlier. By way of the different canal systems throughout the county, you know, we end up with pretty good, well-defined basins. Now, what the water quality index is, is simply we look at several types of values. Primarily Page 58 May 3, 2000 what we're looking at is nutrients. The easiest way to measure water quality when it falls into, you know, a lake or an estuarine system is a problem of eutrophication. Eutrophication is based on the amount of nutrients that are coming into that water body. Now, an area that you can see is right up at the top here, this is Lake Trafford. That's one of the red dots in the county. That lake is -- it's in pretty bad shape. As far as eutrophication goes, it's got very high oxygen because of the amount of plankton in it. The nutrients in it just makes the algae grow, you know, to a point where it will end up choking out, you know, normal organism,plant organisms that should be growing in there. It decreases the oxygen, which leads to the fish kills. Some of the other areas that we have where you can see red spots. This one down here is called Tomato 41, that was an area that John Boldt was talking about that was just south of the Belle Meade area. That's where he talked about that maze of canals that come through the farm fields. Again, because of, you know, what we look at in this particular water quality index, there was a high amount of nutrients which you would expect coming right off the farm fields. There's very little flushing activity that happens down there. The water stagnates, the oxygen levels drop and the nutrients go up. And one other red dot in the county is this one here at Haldeman Creek. Traditionally, you know, we've always found in our, you know, studies that this has always been sort of what we consider a hot spot. It's actually, you know, this outfall right here where it comes out at the south parking lot there of Wal-Mart that John was talking about. And this is actually on the saltwater portion of that. Mostly what you're going to see are the blue dots which stands for good water quality. Like I said, this is a pretty simple water quality index. It's based on good, fair or poor. Most of what you see is going to be good. There are some areas, and again, they're mostly down near the estuaries, because this is going to be the catch basin or the last spot where these nutrients are traveling from the interior portion of the county coming towards the coast. Now, if you'll look at your water quality assessment, you'll see under the sites there are -- like it will say under there eco. riv., there's 79 to 91, and it gives a 50 percent. We do have a database that we have that extended back to 2-1979. And what I did is I went through that database and for a good portion of that for sample sites that we had doubled up on, they had done a water quality index in that, so I was able to retrieve that data. And you can see -- compare what it was from '79 to '91. You know, 50 percent is -- it's fair. But you can see the value that we're getting today is 46. So there hasn't been a large range of differences in water quality, or from what we're seeing from water quality rate now. That database that I mentioned is currently being analyzed by the Corps of Engineers and EPA for that new EIS study that they've done. I've got a couple graphs here just to show you some of the water quality trends. This is the Cocohatchee River Basin. And this was, you know, what you're seeing from 1979 to 1991. Good is on the bottom, poor water quality is up to the top. These we can use as trends because we've got, you know, so many years worth of data. This project we're currently working with with the district is a five-year project. After about three years, we should be able to start looking at some pretty good trend analysis. This is the Gordon River extension and the main Golden Gate Canal over the same period of time. You can see, you know, they pretty much follow the same trend. This is Water Management District 6, and Henderson Creek. Unfortunately Haldeman Creek is the one, that short one down at the end. They didn't really start sampling that or recording the water quality index until like 1988. And lastly, this is the Fakaunion Canal, and the Barron River Canal system. And you can see Page 59 May 3, 2000 they pretty much mirror each other with the bottom one having a better water quality than the top one. So as it stands today, other than Lake Trafford and a few isolated areas that you would normally expect to find, you know, degraded water, our analysis shows, you know, we're doing pretty good. At that point, can I take any questions? Okay. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you very much, Kevin. MR. LORENZ: And for the council, what I'll do is I'll get together everybody's business cards and then send all that information to you. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Good deal. Can anybody show cause why we should not adjourn? MR. SANSBURY: So moved, sir. MR. SMITH: Second. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Good. We're out of here. ***** There being no further business for the good of the County,the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 1:20 p.m. ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISORY COUNCIL KEEN CORNELL, CHAIRMAN TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY CHERIE' R. LEONE,NOTARY PUBLIC Page 60 Item V. ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISORY COUNCIL STAFF REPORT MEETING OF JUNE 7,2000 I. NAME OF PETITIONER/PROJECT: Petition No.: Planned Unit Development No. PUD-00-04 Petition Name: Outdoor Resorts of Naples,A Motorcoach Country Club,PUD Applicant/Developer: Outdoor Resorts of America Engineering Consultant: Keene Engineering Environmental Consultant: Collier Environmental Consultants, Inc. II. LOCATION: The subject property is an undeveloped 93.5 acre parcel located on the south side of Immokalee Road, approximately %2 mile east of County Road 951, in Section 26, Township 48 South,Range 26 East, Collier County, Florida. III. DESCRIPTION OF SURROUNDING PROPERTIES: Surrounding properties are mostly undeveloped with the following zoning classifications. ZONING DESCRIPTION N- Agricultural Undeveloped R.O.W. Immokalee Road Agricultural(Mule Pen Quarry) Active S - PUD (Crystal Lake RV Resort) Developed Agricultural Undeveloped E - Agricultural Undeveloped W- Agricultural Undeveloped Golf Driving Range IV. PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The applicant seeks a rezone of the property in question to Planned Unit Development (PUD) to allow for a maximum of 420 recreational vehicle units for a density of 4.49 units per acre. This PUD will also provide accessory facilities such as pools, recreational areas, snack bar, clubhouse and community buildings. Approximately 18.65 acres of the site will be devoted to preserve. The preserve area will allow boardwalks, landscape buffers and nature trails. The PUD Document contains language regarding residency restriction, which is similar to the language contained in the Land Development Code. V. GROWTH MANAGEMENT PLAN CONSISTENCY: This property is located within the Urban Residential Mixed Use designated area on the Future Land Use Map of the Growth Management Plan. A consistency review analysis with applicable elements of the GMP is as follows: FLUE and Density: The requested density of 4.49 units per acre is less than that which the site is eligible to receive under the Future Land Use Element (FLUE) of the Growth n Management Plan (12 dwelling units/acre), therefore, this petition is consistent with the density provision of the Growth Management Plan (GMP). The FLUE permits travel trailer recreational vehicle parks within the Urban Designated areas, subject to compatibility with surrounding properties and that the site has direct access to an arterial roadway. The proposed Outdoor Resorts of Naples PUD is consistent with the GMP. Traffic Circulation Element: The Traffic Impact Study (TIS) indicates that the proposed project will generate approximately 1,327 Weekday trips and 189 PM Peak Hour trip ends. The TIS indicates that the project trips will not exceed the significance test (5 percent of the LOS "C" design volume) on Immokalee Road within the project's radius of development influence. However, this segment is projected to operate below its adopted level of service at the build-out of this project. Since the site-generated trips do not exceed the significance test, this project is consistent with Policy 5.1 and 5.2 of the Traffic Circulation Element(TCE). Conservation and Open Space: The Collier County Land Development Code requires open space consisting of at least sixty (60) percent of the gross land area. Native vegetation preservation or re-vegetation requirements of the LDC will be achieved by the design for preservation areas and by re-vegetation of native species, therefore, the Conservation and Open Space Elements of the GMP will be achieved through PUD development commitments. • • Utility and Water Management: Development of the land will proceed on the basis of connection to the County's sewer and water distribution system. These facilities are to be designed, constructed, conveyed, owned and maintained in accordance with the Collier County Ordinance Number 88-76. Water management facilities will be constructed to meet County Ordinances and they will be reviewed and approved as a function of obtaining subsequent development order approvals. The above prescribed course of action makes this petition consistent with this element of the GMP. VI. MAJOR ISSUES: Water Management: The project site is located within the Cocohatchee River drainage basin according to the Collier County Drainage Atlas. The proposed outfall for the project is the existing Immokalee Road roadside swale. The site is located within FEMA Flood zone X per F.I.R.M. 120025 0225D, map revised June 3, 1986 per survey information. The Water Management System for the project proposed the construction of a perimeter berm with the crest elevation set at or above the 25-year, 3-day peak flood stage. Water quality pretreatment is proposed in the onsite lake prior to discharge to the Immokalee Road swale outfall. The Water Management System will be permitted in accordance with all rules and regulations of Collier County and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) in effect at the time of Final Site Development Plan Approval. Storm attenuation is required of this project with a peak allowable discharge rate of 0.04 CFS per acre. Additionally, the minimum roadway centerline, perimeter berm and finished floor elevation criteria of these agencies shall be satisfied. Environmental: Site Description: The subject property is an undeveloped 93.5 acre parcel. Native habitats found on site consist mainly of pine flatwoods and pine-cypress-cabbage palm. There is also an area of cypress located in the northern half of the property near Immokalee Road. Three soil types occur on the subject property; Oldsmar fine sand, limestone substratum (Unit 10), Hallandale fine sand (Unit 11), and Riviera fine sand, limestone substratum (Unit 18). Soil Map Unit 18 (Riviera fine sand, limestone substratum) is listed as hydric by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. A map and aerial photograph showing the location of all the soil types found on site are included in the EIS. According to the Water Management District map provided in the EIS, natural elevations on site range from 13.2 ft. NGVD to 14.8 ft. NGVD. The wet season water table was found to vary from below ground surface to approximately four inches above ground as evidenced by adventitious rooting on Melaleuca trees and lichen lines. The proposed control elevation for the project is 13.4 ft.NGVD. Wetlands: Potential jurisdictional wetlands total 68.66 acres out of 93.54 acres or 73% of the total site. In order to offset adverse environmental impacts resulting from development activities in wetlands, the petitioner proposes to restore and preserve 15.18 acres of the wetlands on site. Restoration will include hydroperiod enhancement, exotic vegetation removal and supplemental plantings within areas devoid of vegetation, once exotics are removed. Approximately 3.47 acres of uplands will also be retained in these preserve areas. Off site mitigation will most likely be required as well, the ratios of which will be determined by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) during the Environmental Resource Permit(ERP)review process. Preservation Requirements: The applicant is proposing to preserve 15.18 acres of wetlands and 3.47 acres of uplands as preserve areas. An additional 4.98 acres ornative vegetation will also be retailed or replanted in buffers. This meets the 25% native vegetation retention requirement pursuant to section 3.9.5.5.3 of the Land Development Code. Listed Species: A threatened or endangered species survey of the subject property was conducted during the months of August and September 1998. Established transects were oriented north-south and east-west and superimposed on an aerial map of the site. These transects were ground-located and walked by compass bearing. Early morning (0730-1000), mid-day (1100-1500) and late-day (1500-1800) time periods were chosen to survey these transects. This survey was conducted daily for a minimum of five days. All possible species of plants and animals listed by state and federal agencies were surveyed for. No listed species of wildlife were found during the survey. Several species of plants that are listed by governmental agencies were found on the property. These include wild pine (Tillandsia spp.) and butterfly orchid (Encyclia tampensis). These plants are listed by the state of Florida primarily due to commercial value. Since the original threatened and endangered species survey was conducted, an additional 29.5 acres were added to the project site. This new acreage was assessed during the month of January 2000. Approximately 28 hours of field work were spent on the addition. Of these about 15 hours were spent looking for listed species. No threatened or endangered species were found during this survey. VII. RECOMMENDATIONS: Staff recommends approval of Planned Unit Development No. PUD-00-04 "Outdoor Resorts of Naples, A Motorcoach Country Club, PUD" with the following stipulations: Water Management: 1. A SFWMD surface Water Management permit must be obtained prior to SDP or subdivision approval. Environmental: No additional stipulations. PREPARED BY: -�-� �. / 1241NyDo STAN CHRZ• •WS '.E. DATE SENIOR ENGINEER S-Y 7%coo STEPHEN LENBERGER DATE ENVIRONMENTAL SPECIALIST II REVIEWED BY: d.14/r ,., 5 < < 71 CHAHRAM BADAMTCHIAN,Ph.D., AICP DATE PRINCIPAL PLANNER ✓ / J F r 401 ^ eino v00 Fox THOMAS E. KUC} *.E. DATE ENGINEERING REVIEW MANAGER C1 (x_ RO ALD F. NINO,I . DATE CURRENT PLANNING MANAGER 7/trz) RO RT J. MULHERE, AICP DA E PLANNING SERVICES DIRECTOR APPROVED BY: VINCENT A. CAUTERO, AICP DATE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT & ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATOR SL/gdh/c: StaffReport i^1 COLLIER COUNTY GOVERNMENT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES DIVISION 2800 North Horseshoe Drive PLANNING SERVICES DEPARTMENT Naples, Florida 34104 Phone (941) 403-2385 May 20, 2000 Fax (941) 403-2395 Timothy Ferguson 2272 Airport Road South Suite 210 Naples, FL 34112 RE: Planned Unit Development Petition No. PUD-00-04 "Motorcoach County Club PUD" Dear Mr. Ferguson: The referenced matter will be reviewed by the Environmental Advisory Council during its forthcoming meeting scheduled for June 7,2000. The Public Hearing to consider this item and other matters will begin at 9:00 a.m. at the Collier County Government Complex, Administration Building, Third Floor, Commissioners' Board Room. It is recommended that you or your appointed representative be present at this meeting to answer any questions the Environmental Advisory Council may have regarding your request. Attached for your information is a copy of the Environmental Advisory Council's Agenda and Staff Report for this meeting. If you have any questions regarding this matter,please do not hesitate to contact this office at (941)403-2400. Very truly yours, d�✓may /� Stephen Lenberger Environmental Specialist II SL/lao/h:\EAC letters Attachments cc: EAC File Outdoor Resorts of America Vincent A. Cautero, AICP, Administrator www.co.collier.fl.us COLLIER COUNTY GOVERNMENT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES DIVISION 2800 North Horseshoe Drive PLANNING SERVICES DEPARTMENT Naples, Florida 34104 Phone (941) 403-2385 May 20, 2000 Fax (941) 403-2395 Timothy Ferguson 2272 Airport Road South Suite 210 Naples, FL 34112 RE: Planned Unit Development Petition No. PUD-00-04 "Motorcoach County Club PUD" Dear Mr. Ferguson: The referenced matter will be reviewed by the Environmental Advisory Council during its forthcoming meeting scheduled for June 7,2000. The Public Hearing to consider this item and other matters will begin at 9:00 a.m. at the Collier County Government Complex, Administration Building,Third Floor, Commissioners' Board Room. It is recommended that you or your appointed representative be present at this meeting to answer any questions the Environmental Advisory Council may have regarding your request. Attached for your information is a copy of the Environmental Advisory Council's Agenda and Staff Report for this meeting. If you have any questions regarding this matter,please do not hesitate to contact this office at (941)403-2400. Very truly yours, li Stephen Lenberger Environmental Specialist II SL/lao/h:\EAC letters Attachments cc: EAC File r-� Outdoor Resorts of America Vincent A. Cautero, AICP, Administrator www.co.collier.fl.us