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EAC Minutes 01/05/2000 RJanuary 5, 2000 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISORY COUNCIL Naples, Florida, January 5, 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: William W. Hill Ed Carlson Michael G. Coe M. Keen Cornell Thomas W. Sansbury J. Richard Smith NOT PRESENT: John DiNunzio James L. McVey ALSO PRESENT: Stan Chrzanowski, Senior Engineer Barbara Burgeson, Senior Environmental Specialist Stephen Lenberger, Environmental Specialist, Development Services Marni Scuderi, Assistant County Attorney Ron Nino, Current Planning Manager Page 1 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: With the public's indulgence, I'd like to wait a few minutes before I convene the meeting to allow a few minutes for the remainder of the board to get here. I guess it would be all right, I'd like to announce, since there will be public participation at various points in the procedure, for the convenience of the council and for the court reporter, we would like you to sign in, indicating your name and the project for which you would like to appear. That enables us to keep proper records and the court reporter to be accurate. Those slips, and you might take a minute now, are on the speaker stand here to my right, if you would pick up one of those, if it is your intent to speak. I suggest that you might fill one out in case. You can always add your name later in the proceedings, but it would be a little more convenient if you would fill one out at this time. I have 9:05. I'd like to call the January millennium Y2K meeting of the Environmental Advisory Council to order. Could we have roll call, please. MS BURGESON: Carlson. MR CARLSON: Here. MS BURGESON: Coe. MR COE: Here. MS Cornell. MR Here. MS DiNunzio. BURGESON: CORNELL: BURGESON: (No response.) MS. BURGESON: CHAIRMAN HILL: MS. BURGESON: Sansbury. MR. SANSBURY: MS. BURGESON: (No response.) CHAIRMAN MILL: Hill. Here. McVey has an excused absence. Here. And Smith. Let the record show that we do have a quorum. We can conduct business. With the council's permission, I would like to make three changes to the published agenda. Item 6-A under new business, for the convenience of the staff of the public works department, who we have asked to make a presentation concerning the effluent distribution system in Collier County, in particular, how it affects our purview on the environmental aspect of petitions, I'd like to move that portion of the agenda first, followed by a short presentation by Mr. Ken Pineau, our Collier County FEMA representative, who will discuss another item concerning the methodology and problems associated with lift stations, sewage collection systems, et cetera, which has come before the council on various petitions that have been before us. And thirdly, we've asked, with the council's permission, to add a brief presentation by staff, and I think Mr. Bob Mulhere will do this for us, concerning the situation at TwinEagles. I think it's important, and it may be knowledge that everyone has, but I'm a little uncertain as to the background of TwinEagles, and I thought it would Page 2 January 5, 2000 be important for us at least to hear a report on that situation as to the background and the status. (Mr. Smith enters boardroom.) CHAIRMAN HILL: So with the council's approval, I would like those three to be placed on the agenda prior to Item 4, consideration of land use petitions. They will not be lengthy, so I would ask those changes to be approved and ask for any other changes that the council may so desire. MR. CORNELL: You need a motion? CHAIRMAN HILL: Please. MR. CORNELL: Move. MR. COE: Second. MR. SANSBURY: Second. CHAIRMAN HILL: Discussion? MR. SMITH: When you say they won't be lengthy, we have a real heavy-duty agenda here this morning. Richard Smith, by the way. My apologies for being a little late. Can we set a time limit, actual time limit? CHAIRMAN HILL: We will at the time, right. MR. SMITH: Okay. CHAIRMAN HILL: And let the record show that we're now six present. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HILL: So be it. We do not have minutes at this point of the December meeting, so we'll dispense with the approval of those at this time. I'd like to move on then and welcome the representatives of the public works department who are here at our request to discuss briefly -- and I want as much information you can, but if you could be as brief as possible, because we do have a full plate. MR. CHEATHAM: We'll do that. For the record, my name is Joseph Cheatham. I'm the public works wastewater director for Collier County. I've been in Collier County now for eight months. And I have with me Bob Casey, who's our reuse coordinator for our reuse system in Collier County. We'll be giving you a brief overview of the system, and then any questions you may have, Bob will help me address those questions as well. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. MR. CHEATHAM: First of all, our reclaimed water system is an integral part of Collier County's environmental system here in our county. We know there's a shortage of water in this area of the county and we're trying with the system to make sure that we have a supply of water that's good quality for irrigation for a lot of areas of Collier County. The reclaimed water treatment requirements are very stringent. There are -- they are maintained by Florida Administrative Code 62.610. And the biggest portion of the requirements is that it must Page 3 January 5, 2000 meet secondary treatment standards, and it must have high level disinfection, less than 20 milligrams per liter BOD, less than five milligrams per liter suspended solids, and turbidity less than 2.5, and fecal coliform samples nontechnical (phonetic) samples 75 percent of the time. We also have a trimage (phonetic) also every two years for Cryptosporidium and Giardia. Those are two bacteria that is in the news these days about surface water contamination for drinking water supplies, and we monitor that as well. Our system is mainly used for irrigation of golf courses, condominium common areas, irrigation of county road medians. We also use it for Pelican Bay fire suppression; we irrigate parks; we have an aesthetic park located in the south part of the county, Highlands Park, which has a wetlands area with reclaimed water; we have groundwater recharge; we're getting into aquifer storage; and also, we do a lot of residential irrigation. I'm not going to really name all of these, but we have a number of customers in the north part of the county. Our main customer base is in the north part of Collier County. We have several residential areas that we irrigate also, several golf courses. Again, these are some more of those installations you see. There's a large number of golf courses in the north part of the county with Vineyards and Pelican Bay, as well as Imperial. Imperial was our first customer in 1985, so they were our landmark customer many years ago. And very quickly, on the overhead you'll see the south county customers. The south county bay really started around 1990-91 time frame. With EPA grants, we were able to put in a lot of installations down in the south part of the county as well. Our first customer, I just mentioned, was Imperial, 1985. The late 1980's, we received EPA grant to expand the system in the south part of the county. 1991, we acquired the Pelican Bay improvement district, which included a one MGD facility, a groundwaters storage facility, as well as a 3.5 MGD capacity of raw water facility used for fire suppression. 1991, we built a pipeline from the north county wastewater plant to the Pelican Bay area for irrigation purposes. I just wanted to mention to you, as well as reclaimed water is the primary source of effluent disposal for the county. We have a capacity at present, 16.5 million gallons per day of treated wastewater. And right now on an average basis, we are disposing of 8.9 million gallons per day of reclaimed water back into the environment. So you can see around 55 percent of our effluent that we treat goes back into our reuse system, which is a large portion of our effluent disposal. Without that effluent disposal system, we would have to do other means of disposal, which would be a lot more expensive, a lot more costly. Right now we have 50 miles of distribution mains in the system, and we're expanding that in the future to handle future growth in the county. We have 24 storage facilities, of which includes groundwater, Page 4 January 5, 2000 above ground storage tanks, as well as lake systems. And we provide reclaimed water for over 20 golf courses in Collier County. Since golf is a popular sport here in the county, and as we -- as golf courses come on line, they're looking for us for irrigation needs. Almost on a weekly basis we get applications for irrigation needs. We irrigate 10 miles of roadway medians. The latest one would be the Davis Boulevard median project that we provide reclaimed water for. One thing that really stands out is we provide 5,294 acres of irrigation to this county, which is a large land mass. We provide reclaimed water for 11 residential neighborhoods. And the last three years we provided 3.26 billion gallons of reclaimed water back into the environment. And I mentioned before, it's 8.9 MGD per day and it's 54 percent of our upgraded capacity. An issue that we have to face every year is the seasonal influx of residents to Collier County, which also has a higher demand for reclaimed water during the months of January through May. That also coincides with the driest portion of the season for Collier County as far as rainfall goes. So our demand really goes up dramatically during this time period. And during this time period, we have to actually curtail our reclaimed water customers back because of the high demands for reclaimed water so we can provide enough water for everybody to have irrigation requirements and that. That's something we're working on right now to augment, and we're trying to provide additional sources of irrigation, water. And one project we're looking at right now is to provide some surface water augmentation to our reclaimed water system to help during this time of contailment (sic) so we can actually meet some of those needs a lot better during the dry portion of the season. We also have a wet weather disposal system in case of wet weather. During the summer months we don't have as high a demand for reclaimed water, so we have to have another means of disposal, and we do that through injection wells. These wells go down around 3,000 feet in the ground, down through the brackish water. And this water is high quality still. It meets all the reclaimed water standards, but is -- we have to have a means of disposal, so this is the means of disposal we have during wet weather season. We charge the customers 13 cents per 1,000, which is probably the best deal going around today. It's a lot better than your newspaper as far as a bargain goes, as far as your daily needs go. It's a pretty good buy. It brings in around $423,000 of revenue for Collier County. Some of our future things we'll be doing, looking out for the future for Collier County's system is the aquifer storage recharge. That is something that we're looking at right now to permit on a demonstration project, to actually put water back into the ground and then bring that water back up during the times of dry season. And we're looking to now to permit a site near the north county water reclamation facility, right now working with FDEP to permit that demonstration well, and we'll be putting several million gallons per Page 5 January 5, 2000 day down the well. And then after the well has been charged over a couple of years, we'll be pulling that water back out of the ground and use for irrigation needs. The water, it goes down to the ground, down to the salt water level, and fresh water and salt water don't mix, so it acts like a big bubble. And it's like a big storage tank below ground. And it's a good means of storage and a good means of supplying water during times of drought. One thing we also want to do is connect the south county system to the north county system. You have a map, I believe, that was handed out. And I'll just briefly show you on the map. We're trying to come down Radio Road and then go up the new Livingston Road connection, and connect into our system right in this area here near the Vineyards. And this system will open up a lot of potential customers along this Livingston Road corridor, and also supply water needs to the customers from the north, where our biggest customer base is located. CHAIRMAN HILL: Is that visible? MR. CHEATHAM: As you see on the map, the orange on the map is our existing customers. As you see, our biggest base of customers is right in this area right here. We also have our south county customers located in this area down in here. And the pipeline will actually connect these two together so that we have excess water in the south, we'll be able to pump water to the north where our highest demands are located. The gray area is the City of Naples, and the area down here on Marco Island is another system provided by Florida Water Services, which is not part of Collier County. The green area is potential customers we have earmarked for future, and you can see there's quite a few still here to the north. We have some right here in the central part of the area. And we see we have a large amount here at Fiddler's Creek, which is requested of water, and their demand could be as high as six million gallons per day just for Fiddler's Creek alone. So you can see we have a very, very high demand for reclaimed water. We don't have enough to go around. So our charge in the future is to find creative ways to help meet that (sic) irrigation needs. We're also working on a reclaimed water master plan right now with a consultant to try to look at our system to see where we are, where we need to go, and we're enhancing our inspection program for cross-connection control. As you may know, we have numerous residential customers in our system, and we have to make sure they're not cross-connected into our potable water system, to protect the drinking water supply of Collier County. We're looking to -- in the future, not any time maybe soon, but somewhere down the road, may even look at forming our own irrigation utility, part of the company. Right now the Board of County Commissioners is really just looking at our needs we have right now. But down the road there may be some needs as far as opening up a new Page 6 January 5, 2000 utility as far as irrigation needs go. CHAIRMAN HILL: Can we -- I know we're under a little bit of a time. I hate to constrain you too much. Can we begin to wrap it up? MR. CHEATHAM: I'm finished right now. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. MR. CHEATHAM: That's my last comment. I'm glad you mentioned that, and I'm opened up now for questions. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I do have a question. I understand on the east coast of Florida they have attempted to inject deep water wells, and there's been some serious problems in terms of the recharge merging with some of the aquifer water that's used for potable water. What is your response to that? MR. CHEATHAM: Well, the response would be is it has to be steady. And what we're doing now is making sure there's a confining layer between the potable water and also the saltwater. And also, where the aquifer storage well would be -- where the bubble would be located, so that it is actually confined and it would not be able to migrate up into a drinking water supply. And that's probably what you may have heard is there was a leakage in the confining layer over near the east coast. We have to study that and make sure that we don't have that problem here in Collier County. Our consultants tell us that the confining layer here in the county is very well intact. There was, I know, some talk on the news about the City of Naples water supply, which was a little different story, but we go down much deeper than that, than the drinking water is. So we're down in the thousands of feet, where the drinking water supply is in the hundreds of feet in the ground. So if you had the confining rock layer between that, you should be safe. Again, the water we put down the ground meets drinking water standards, so that it is a high quality product that meets all the bacteria counts that you would see in the drinking water supply. It has a high level disinfection. And so it's not what you think something that could cause any type of pollution by any means. It is a very, very high quality product. I came from Gainesville, Florida, where we injected 8 million gallons per day into a drinking water supply, which is something that is not done -- it's not heard of around the country. But we had 22 years of data to prove that that high quality product did not cause any impact at all to the potable drinking water supply. So I'm confident that our product will meet any kind of a requirement that needs to be met as far as the aquifer storage recharge wells go. CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Cornell? MR. CORNELL: I just wanted to thank you for a very interesting presentation. I wonder if it would be possible to get a copy of your -- of the slides -- MR. CHEATHAM: Sure. MR. CORNELL: -- the overheads. MR. CHEATHAM: I can do that. MR. CARLSON: I have a question, Mr. Chairman. Page 7 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. MR. CARLSON: You said that you need to supplement this water supply during the dry season and it's supplemented out of the surficial aquifer? MR. CHEATHAM: No, what we're looking at now is to supplement it with surface water. MR. CARLSON: Okay. Well, surface water is plummeting in the dry season without rain. Why would you choose surface water instead of some lower aquifer? MR. CHEATHAM: Okay, what we have been charged by the Board of County Commissioners is not to inject any more wells in the county for irrigation. And we have a source of water at the -- we're looking at right now from Mulepen Quarry. It's a very large mass of water. And we have been issued a permit from the Florida Water Management District -- or South Florida Water Management District to take as much as three million gallons per day out of that lake. And it would not have any effect on the water table around the area, any more than that would, but that's enough -- that water we would take out of there would not have any impact on the water table whatsoever. CHAIRMAN HILL: Is that the quarry on the north side of Immokalee Road? MR. CHEATHAM: Yes. CHAIRMAN HILL: Is that -- okay. MR. CARLSON: During the dry season, sometimes when we go three or four months without significant rainfall, if you pull millions of gallons of water out of that quarry, it's going to have an effect on the surficial water. MR. CHEATHAM: What -- that's been studied by our consultant, and our consultant says we could pull that much water out without impacting the quarry. That's what we've been told, so I have to really rely on their study. But -- MR. CARLSON: And that permit's been issued by the South Florida Water Management District? MR. CHEATHAM: Yes, it has. Actually, we were looking at first to pull water out of the ground near the lake. And that's where the permit is right now is -- the permit's for a well near the lake. But actually, the wells have a high level of iron content in the wells, so the iron is really not good for irrigation because it causes staining on homes or whatever, sidewalks. So pulling the water out of the lake alleviates the problem of the iron. MR. CARLSON: The surficial aquifer around that lake has the highest transmissivity of any surficial aquifer in this county. And anything you pull out of the lake is going to create a cone of influence all around that lake. I would -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you very much. MR. CARLSON: -- really like to see that permit. MR. COE: I've got one question. CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes, Mr. Coe. Page 8 January 5, 2000 MR. COE: What -- I mean, your system is based on the fact that you've got to get rid of the effluent. So in other words, you've got to have customers to use it. What happens, say, in a heavy rain storm or hurricane or something like that where you can't get rid of it? In other words, you know, you just can't keep pumping it out there when there's water already out there. You know, we get 20 inches of rain, what do you do then? MR. CHEATHAM: Well, we have 100 million gallons of storage at Highlands Park, which is located now down near the Highlands Park. We have two injections wells. MR. COE: So how long can you hold out? MR. CHEATHAM: During the hurricane season this year we had a tremendous amount of rainfall. Outflow went up as high as 22 million gallons, and we didn't have any problems pumping into the wells, injection wells. MR. COE: Have you all studied to find out how long you all could last if you had to, say, shut the thing down? MR. CASEY: The deep well that's available to the north plant has a permitted -- THE COURT REPORTER: Your name, please? MR. CASEY: Bob Casey. -- has a permitted capacity of effluent of over 10 million gallons a day, which should meet our peak seasons. The deep well located at the south regional water reclamation facility also has a permitted capacity above and beyond the rating of that facility itself. So we should be able to continue indefinitely, unless there's just some sort of national -- MR. COE: So if we have a catastrophic hurricane that brings 20, 30 inches of rain in here, you guys can just keep on pumping out on these golf courses? MR. CASEY: Well, we will meet a break point at some point in time. MR. COE: Has anybody studied that to determine when that might be? MR. CASEY: Not to my knowledge, no. CHAIRMAN HILL: Appreciate it. Echoing Mr. Cornell's request, if you would supply the council with copies of those slides and perhaps comments on the questions that have been raised. I thank the public for their indulgence. Some of these topics come before the council as we review petitions that are presented for our consideration. We feel that when we ask for special appearances, that it's important that the public hear these things, too. So that's the reason we put these things up at the beginning of the agenda, so you can hear some of the problems that are going on in the county, some of the programs which are in place, and I think it helps the public better understand the process involved, at least in the environmental aspect of the development of Collier County. So we ask for your forbearance. Page 9 January 5, 2000 I will not have a public portion for these presentations, but if you wish to submit any questions to the county staff or to the council, please feel free to. Mr. Pineau? MR. PINEAU: Good morning, commissioners, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ken Pineau, the emergency management director for Collier County. And I was asked to chair a committee to develop a strategy to mitigate technological and natural hazards in our community. We came up with a list of 48 different projects that we'll be working on over the next several years, depending on finances, of course. The members of the committee included representatives from each one of our municipalities, the South Florida Water Management District and several departments here in Collier County. The two items that are germane to the discussion this morning are the -- those that involve lift stations. There is a perceived lack of generated support. Although we have a post-disaster redevelopment ordinance, the plan is to start pumping immediately adjacent to the lift station and working out, but we have several hundred lift stations here in the county and we don't have nearly enough generators at the present time. And I think this is one of the reasons why I'm up here today. So we've identified five -- I'm sorry, two different projects. No. 5, all new developments in the community -- these are PUD's, as well as developments of regional impact -- should have emergency generators at each lift station servicing the development. And these will be at the responsibility of the developer himself. We estimate about $20,000 each per generator. Also, the county's not getting off either. In Item No. 17, Collier County public works should budget for five generators per year to service lift stations until deficit has been reduced to 50 percent in its service area. This is going to go on for probably the next couple of decades, I believe. But we've tried to do things on an incremental basis. Yes, sir? MR. COE: Has anybody looked at the military for their generators? MR. PINEAU: We have. We have gone up to -- in fact, the Sheriff's Office has gone up to Stark. And a lot of those generators there are -- we've talked to our facility management people, and they would involve a lot of work, actually, to get them up to some degree of serviceability. And there are not that many up there at the present time. CHAIRMAN HILL: I assume you have a schedule of places to put these generators so that you're not putting them in a useless position because of what have you downstream. MR. PINEAU: Right. CHAIRMAN HILL: And that's planned out? Right. MR. PINEAU: Right. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman? Page 10 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. MR. SANSBURY: Has any thought put into -- and I have a difficult time with government sitting here buying generators for every lift station that an occurrence is going to occur once every 20 years. If Florida Power and Light or Southern Bell or some of those companies did that, they would be spending money out. Is there not some way to set up a program, or does not a program exist between public works agencies and so forth, so that if there's something, an occurrence happens in Collier County, that you could call the other public works departments in various other parts of the state to have generators brought down to those things, rather than buying so darn many generators that you're never going to use? MR. PINEAU: Well, I don't think we're going to have one generator for each lift station here in the near future anyway. And I think that wasn't our intent. What we're looking at is catastrophic events. For example, the hurricane like Hugo that hit in 1989, if that were to hit in the same location as hurricane Andrew did in 1992, we'd have about 28 counties of the 67 counties in Florida looking for those generators as well. We also have plans to move in 2,000 Port-A-Lets into the community. We have a little over two thousand Port-A-Lets now. And those will be used. But, you know, we're trying to do something with creature comforts. MR. SANSBURY: But I guess my question, is this effort coordinated with the Collier County public works departments, and what relationship they have with other public works department in the state? MR. PINEAU: Yes, all 67 counties, as well as 28 states in the United States, have emergency management compact, as well as a little over 400 communities. But again, the generators are just not out there unless you rent them from Caterpillar, for example, or Pantropic. And those are going to be in very short demand, we believe, immediately after an event. And the federal government will come in with generators as well, but not nearly enough for our needs. CHAIRMAN HILL: In developments which, where applicable, are permitted to have on-site treatment package plants, are they also required to have extra power source? MR. PINEAU: We haven't identified that, sir. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. Unless they are new now and Item No. 5 would require them? MR. PINEAU: That's my belief. CHAIRMAN HILL: That's nice to know, because we -- there are several projects that come here, that it would be nice to know that this is in fact -- or is fact. MR. PINEAU: This was approved by the board on the 23rd of November, before we set -- CHAIRMAN HILL: By the Board of County Commissioners. MR. PINEAU: Board of County Commissioners, yes, sir. MR. CORNELL: What, No. 5? MR. PINEAU: Both. The entire project list -- the entire Page 11 January 5, 2000 strategy was approved by the board. MR. COE: I don't know much about sewers and stuff like that, just -- MR. PINEAU: I don't either. MR. COE: But I ran into a guy yesterday that's involved in a condominium sewage project, you know, because as we know, we've got some private ones that connect into the county. He said that roughly each year when we get rain above four inches he is required to shut down totally, because the county system can't carry all the extra ones that come in. And I know this may be above your level, because you're emergency management. Maybe you haven't had the opportunity -- MR. PINEAU: I haven't heard that. MR. COE: I was shocked. If we're requiring these generators for all these outlying projects that, you know, we're requiring these developers to have these generators, and we shut them down at some certain point because the county sewer system can't handle all the effluent, then what good is it to require the developers to do that? And I don't assume that you know that answer. MR. PINEAU: I don't. MR. COE: I didn't have an answer. And he just kind of chuckled, as I would have, too. Is anyone looking into that at all? MR. PINEAU: I will look into it, sir. MR. COE: I'm just curious. MR. PINEAU: I'll get with the wastewater people and see if that's true. That's the first that I've heard of that. MR. COE: Because, I mean, we've run into numerous occasions where we have heavy rainfall, surely over four inches. And, you know, how long do you last like in the case of a hurricane or what have you? I don't have any further questions. CHAIRMAN HILL: I assume, and maybe this is not in your purview, but what -- can anybody address the integrity of the Collier County sewer system? Do we have inflow IO studies? Is it fairly -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: You've got the wastewater director standing right against the wall. You can ask him. MR. CHEATHAM: Yes, we have studied our inflow issues, and right now we have identified areas that have potentially problems. And we're -- have budgeted about two million dollars per year to repair those lines. They're mainly like clay pipelines that were in the ground since the Seventies. The rest of the system is mainly PVC's, less than 20 years old, and is in really great shape. CHAIRMAN HILL: I'm sorry, I thought you had left. I didn't realize you -- MR. COE: But this is the Collier sewer system you're talking about, not running for irrigation and that sort of thing. MR. CHEATHAM: Just the sewer system, yes, sir. MR. COE: Is the sewer system -- do you all -- does your office have the opportunity to look at and approve these projects that we're going to look at today and that we've looked at over the past few Page 12 January 5, 2000 months? Do you all look at them as to the impact on the sewer system and whether the current sewer system can handle it? MR. CHEATHAM: Yes, sir, we do. We make sure that we monitor our capacity. It's monitored monthly. And as new connections come on-line, we make sure the capacity's there before there's a connection made. MR. COE: That wasn't my question. MR. CHEATHAM: Okay. MR. COE: I don't care about when they come on-line. Before they come on-line, is the infrastructure there for the project? MR. CHEATHAM: Yes, it's inspected, it's videotaped, all the gravity mains are inspected, manholes are inspected, and we never take it over unless it meets county standards. CHAIRMAN HILL: How about county standards -- I think Mr. Coe is asking about quantity. MR. COE: Yeah, maybe I didn't make myself clear. Let's say we've got a 2,500 home project located at the intersection of 951 and 41. They're going to have their own system there. They are eventually going to connect into our system. Is our system currently ready to go to accept all that effluent when it comes in? MR. CHEATHAM: The master plan for the county includes all package plants that will be connected in the future. We'd know when those package plants would be coming on-line. We've identified that. Most of those are in the -- like a 10-year period down the road so -- and capacity is always being planned for on a 10-year basis. So yes, we'd plan for that capacity to come on-line. When it's needed it will be there. MR. COE: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HILL: You are in the process of approval? MR. CHEATHAM: Yes, we are. CHAIRMAN HILL: Prior to it coming to EAC? Or can you answer that? MR. CHEATHAM: I can't answer that. I don't really know if it comes to me first or not, but -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: The Planning Department is the one that sends it out. Ron Nino is here, he could tell you the distribution. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I have a question for Mr. Pineau. CHAIRMAN HILL: Hang on just a minute, Mr. Smith. MR. SMITH: Okay, I'm sorry. MR. NINO: It's all -- land use petitions are sent to our public works engineering department, and that review includes wastewater, transportation, storm drainage. The whole area that falls within their jurisdictional responsibility. MR. COE: Is that done before it comes to our board? MR. NINO: Yes, it is. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you, Ron. Mr. Smith? MR. SMITH: Yeah, Mr. Pineau, I know this is a little bit aside from what we've been discussing, but this may be the only opportunity we get to speak to you for some time here. Page 13 January 5, 2000 I went and reviewed the numerous items that you have here that are your responsibility. I didn't see anything in here in terms of creating new routes for evacuation. There was -- for example, the Pfish concert recently showed to us that there can be some very, very serious problems. I know traveling from Golden Gate Estates that it's bumper to bumper on a daily basis. I hate to think what would happen if we had a major hurricane. What has been done or can be done to have new routes -- new roads that would allow evacuation? MR. PINEAU: Well, I can't really speak to the new roads. I know we have a transportation evacuation plan to get people out of harms way quickly. The Pfish concert, from what I gather from the Florida Highway Patrol, they weren't consulted. But if we evacuate people, it's going to be probably 90 percent, 10 percent. 90 percent going to the other coast, or 90 percent coming this way, depending on where the storm is coming in from. We have pretty much given up on evacuating people north on 1-75 because of the four million people that live in the Tampa Bay area and the additional million people living along the interstate from Sarasota southward down to this area here. So our plan for the last couple of years anyway is to get out early. You can go anywhere you want, but after we issue a hurricane warning, it's going to be virtually impossible to head north or to head into the center part of the state on 27. For the landfall storms coming in from the southwest, we're strongly encouraging people to go on Alligator Alley, U.S. 41, State Road 80 over to the Palm Beaches and get out of harms way that way. You're not going to get out of the wind, but you'll certainly get out of the storm surge, and that's the biggest killer in hurricanes. CHAIRMAN HILL: Other questions? Thank you very much. MR. PINEAU: Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN HILL: We appreciate your help and appreciate your being here. Mr. Mulhere has not arrived, has he? MR. NINO: No. All right, we will delay then Mr. Mulhere's presentation concerning TwinEagles at the appropriate time in between two of the land use petitions. CHAIRMAN HILL: I'd like to move on then to Item No. 4 in the agenda and consider Item 4-A, the commercial evacuation permit for Panther Island Mitigation Bank, No. 59.72. MR. CARLSON: Mr. Chairman? MR. SANSBURY: I have to recuse -- MR. CARLSON: I have to, too. Do we still have a quorum? Mr. Chairman, I have to abstain from this particular item. MR. SANSBURY: As do I. CHAIRMAN HILL: Both of you do. Now we do not have a quorum. MS. BURGESON: We're going to have to continue it. CHAIRMAN HILL: We do not have a quorum to consider Item 4-A. We Page 14 January 5, 2000 could not take an action on this. MR. SANSBURY: Can we refer to the county attorney for just a second on that? CHAIRMAN HILL: Yeah. MR. SANSBURY: The ownership of the -- is there anyone here that can discuss the ownership of Panther Island? I know that Barron Collier Company's a part of a group that owns the land at Panther Island. I don't know if -- if what we're talking about here is, I mean, really a direct benefit to Barron Collier Companies. CHAIRMAN HILL: The question is relevant concerning Mr. Sansbury's abstention. MR. DURHAM: For the record, my name is Tim Durham. I'm with Wilson-Miller, representing Panther Island Mitigation Bank. And I apologize, Mr. Sansbury, I wasn't able to hear your comment when you made it. MR. SANSBURY: I know the Barron Collier Companies has some of the ownership of Panther Island. I -- MR. DURHAM: Yes. MR. SANSBURY: -- don't know to what degree or how -- what we're talking about today, as far as having to recuse myself from this discussion. MR. DURHAM: Yes, the Panther Island Mitigation Bank has permitted and set up Barron Collier Companies are a partial owner in the project and would receive profits from the sale of credits. MR. SANSBURY: I don't know what else to do, sir. CHAIRMAN HILL: The Chair will have to accept the recusing from discussion and action of two gentlemen on the council. We do not have a quorum then to take action. I need advice. Should we eliminate discussion and presentation at that point? MR. SANSBURY: Could we table it to see if anybody else is going to show up? MS. BURGESON: If you wish, you could continue it to the end of the meeting or until -- I don't know if Mr. DiNunzio will be arriving late. We have not heard from him. The other option is to continue it to the next meeting. MR. DURHAM: If I may, Mr. DiNunzio would also have a conflict. His wife works for Barron Collier families in some capacity. MR. SANSBURY: Who else are we missing? CHAIRMAN HILL: McVey. The situation is this then: We have a council of -- for public's information, a council of eight members at this time. One definitely will not be here, which drops us to seven. Three -- in fact, if Mr. DiNunzio did come to the meeting, we would still have three people that would have to recuse themselves from discussion. Therefore, at this point we would not have a quorum at any time during the day -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Excuse me, Mr. Hill? We have a suggestion from the Planning Department that you can hear it and just forward it to the BCC with -- CHAIRMAN HILL: With no recommendation? Page 15 January 5, 2000 MR. CHRZANOWSKI: -- no recommendation. MR. NINO: Without a recommendation. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: But you may ask the attorney. I'm not a lawyer. MR. NINO: Your problem is you've got three people out of eight with a conflict, and I don't know if legally if you can hold up a petition until that bright morning when five people decide to show up. On the other hand, I believe you can hear the petition and it can be forwarded to the board without a recommendation, in view of your inability to have a quorum. MR. COE: I see no reason to hear it if we can't vote on it. It's a waste of their time, as -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Well, let me ask the council's opinion on the matter. MR. SMITH: Are we expecting to have a new board member -- or council member appointed here sometime fairly soon? MR. SANSBURY: We don't know. MR. NINO: Do you have any information on that? MS. BURGESON: I do not know whether it's been advertised or not. When Mr. Mulhere arrives later in the meeting, he can let you know, I believe. Or we can check with Sue Filson. She should have been notified when Dr. Jackson resigned, and it should have been advertised right away. Although I'm not aware that it has been. MR. SMITH: My suggestion is that we wait until that process. It's an important project, very, very important project, and I think it's very important for -- especially environmentally for it to be reviewed. MS. BURGESON: We can check with Mr. McVey to make sure that he'll be at the next meeting, and we can call and poll all of the EAC members to make sure that we will have a quorum for that meeting. MR. CARLSON: What's our attorney's name? Sorry. MS. SCUDERI: That's okay. MR. CARLSON: Just to leave no stone unturned here, the reason I feel that I must recuse is that we are talking with the mitigation bank, although nothing has been decided yet, about potential future management of the site, which would come with a management endowment for perpetual management. So I would assume that would necessitate my abstention. MS. SCUDERI: Right. It says -- the statute states -- Marni Scuderi from the County Attorney's office. The statute states that you shall not vote in an official capacity if this would enure to your private gain or loss, or to the private gain or loss of any principal by whom he or she is retained, or to the parent organization or subsidiary of the corporate principal by which he is retained. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. MR. SANSBURY: I think this is an important thing that -- I mean, I see no reason why we can't hear the presentation and go on record with the board of directors -- I mean, with the County Commission, excuse me -- that -- you know, that we could not take a position on it Page 16 January 5, 2000 because of conflict. So these guys might be hanging out there forever, and this is something that needs -- a project that needs to get rolling. It's critical in the county. CHAIRMAN HILL: I'm in agreement with Mr. Sansbury's comments. MR. CORNELL: I have no problem with that. CHAIRMAN HILL: We will proceed then with the presentation of the mitigation bank. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Good morning. Stan Chrzanowski with development services. The reason you're hearing the project is this project is not going before the Collier County Planning Commission. It's not a conditional use. It's a commercial excavation. Commercial -- while excavations in Collier County are defined as the removal of more than three feet of fill from an area permanently, or removal of less than three feet of fill from an area greater than 10,000 square feet, which is about a quarter acre, this project will remove an average of about one feet and three inches of fill from an area of about 460 acres, which will generate about 850,000 cubic yards of fill, which will have to be removed from the site, which makes it a commercial excavation. The excavation will vary naturally, because they're going -- it's a -- you're -- technically you're not hearing the fact that it's a mitigation bank, you're hearing the fact that it's a commercial excavation. But the issues here presented -- I assume a lot of the people present are people that I've talked to from the Carter Road area and that Six L's area, I would assume that are most of the people here. And they have a concern about the traffic leaving the site. 850,000 cubic yards is going to generate at 16 cubic yards a truck, maybe 55,000 trucks. And depending on what time span they do that over, when you divide that down into trucks per hour, if they do it very quickly, it's a lot of trucks per hour. If you look at staff report, you'll see under the other section, there -- under recommendations, we have water management, we have environmental and then we have other. The other stipulations were given to us by the Lee County Department of Transportation, who has reviewed this project. The engineering aspects of removing that little amount of -- well, it's a large amount of fill but a very small area. It's going to create a greater amount of water retention in the area and they're going to take what is now a farm field and turn it into a wetland. From an engineering point of view, we have no problem with that. The petitioner is here, Tim Durham, if he wants to make any presentation. I tried getting this map here, which is an overall map of the area. I'm not very good at that. This is the 2,700 and something acre project. Up in the north area, which is -- this is the Lee County line. If you look up here, you'll see the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in this area. This is three sections across. Two of those sections are in Panther Island. And this is about four sections down. Two and a half of those sections are in Panther Island, right abutting Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, right abutting the Lee County Page 17 January 5, 2000 line. Ail the digging is going to be done in this area and taken out. Carter Road, which goes up in that direction into Lee County. I've tried on the visualizer -- there we go. I've tried to get this map to sit well, but it -- I'm getting glare from the lights up here. If you look in this area here, I'll point out the mitigation bank area. And you can see the Corkscrew Swamp. The mitigation bank area is right in here. And the Corkscrew Swamp, you can see the slough that runs up through this area and all the way up into Lee County. That's Ed Carlson's area. That's about my presentation. If you have any questions about the engineering aspects, I'll be glad to answer them. Like I said, the petitioner is here to address his portion. CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for staff? MR. COE: What's the length of Carter Road there as it goes up to Corkscrew? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I think it's two miles until you get to Corkscrew. MR. CORNELL: I have a -- let me ask you one question. As I understand this, this is going to be a private activity, almost like a commercial activity. Is that the idea of the -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: My understanding of mitigation banks, and I'm only an engineer, is that occasionally a project being developed close to an area that might be environmentally sensitive wants to take out an area that some environmental agency thinks should not be taken out. And they can mitigate an area in another place -- MR. CORNELL: Yes. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: -- to take that out. And this is a private enterprise that's going to sell mitigation credits -- MR. CARLSON: Right. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: -- to do that. Most of the area, if you look at that area on that aerial photo, you'll see that area is fairly undeveloped. I mean, there's some farms around it. But the area is -- a lot of it's fairly pristine. It's right near Corkscrew Swamp. The few areas that were farmed are going to be restored to a wetland type condition. Actually, the neighbors should appreciate it in about 10 to 20 years, it's just the interim that might be a problem. MR. CORNELL: Is this in the NRPA, as far as we know what the NRPA is up there? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I believe it is. That's why it's not going in front of the CCPC. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. MR. SANSBURY: If I could comment for a minute on wetland banking and not on the merits of this particular thing. I had the opportunity in 1988 to 1992 to serve on the State of Florida Environmental Regulations Commission and chaired it for the last two years. During that last two-year period -- that's the commission essentially appointed by the Governor that sets the environmental rules for the Page 18 January 5, 2000 State of Florida, then the DER and all the South Florida Management districts. The environmental community and the regulatory community came to the commission in 1990 and said that, you know, there is -- in our permitting rules, the requirements to preserve isolated wetlands areas really didn't leave a lot of leeway in whether those areas were functional; and secondly, did not have a method of maintaining and managing those particular areas, and came up with a suggestion of setting up a workshop committee to study mitigation, wetland mitigation banking, that had been done in other states and parts of the country. I served on this committee for two years. Following that period of time, legislation was passed to set up the ability to mitigate wetland areas. What it does is, I mean, we have thousands and thousands of acres in the State of Florida. And as Mr. Carlson knows, the CARL purchases -- Palm Beach County, I'm aware of, we spent 100,000 -- 100 million dollars was spent to purchase environmentally sensitive land. But it has no ability to manage that land, no ability to restore hydro periods, no ability to take care of exotics, nothing of that sort. The land sits there, people go out and dump trash on it. You have these small wetlands within other communities that are questionable as to how they function. Nobody maintains them. You don't have the same hydro period. What this allows is it allows a permanent conservation easement to be placed on this land and two requirements to -- a requirement that number one, it be set back up in its natural state. Mr. Carlson probably knows a lot more about this than I do from a standpoint of hydro period to have the exotics removed, everything of that sort taken out. And secondly, to be maintained. To have ingress, egress, limited, people -- you secure it in some manner so people don't go out there and dump trash all over it and set fires and run their buggies all over the place. And it really is the ability, I think, to maintain permanently wetlands habitat that's functional. Mr. Carlson, I don't know if you can comment, but it's Mr. Carlson's type of group that's going to be managing these type of facilities. So I believe that this is a very, very important type of thing in our whole ecosystem, to establish these banks, to do things that government really can't do. Because government really cannot afford to maintain these areas, and as we've seen in a lot of our purchases. So from the standpoint of mitigating -- mitigation banking, I think it's a very positive, positive thing. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: And don't lose sight of the fact that the only reason this petition is up in front of the EAC is because they are hauling the material off site. If there was no digging going on, no hauling off-site, you wouldn't see the mitigation bank petition. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I have a question. CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Smith. MR. SMITH: I thoroughly agree. I mean, I spent the time Page 19 January 5, 2000 actually and reviewed this project very, very carefully, to the best of my ability, and I find it extremely interesting, if nothing else, and it's obviously a very well thought out and decent, good project. We're faced with some interesting questions, I think, however, because we're talking about a commercial endeavor as part of an attempt to restore some natural habitat and some wetlands. And in that process, I'm wondering, are we violating the final order of June 22nd, 19997 Because that, as I understand it, will not permit any kind of commercial. MR. REISCHL: Fred Reischl, planning services. The final order has a list of prohibited uses. This was a use that was in the code prior to June 22nd, '99, and is not on the list of prohibited uses -- MR. SMITH: Well, I'm looking at the list. MR. REISCHL: -- as a conservation use. MR. SMITH: Okay. I think it was on Page 13 of the final order, Paragraph No. 5. Uses are permitted, except the following uses are prohibited and shall not be allowed: Commercial or industrial development. MR. REISCHL: Yeah, but earth mining is a permitted -- one of the few uses that is still permitted in rural agriculture. This was deemed not to be earth mining by the planning services director. It was deemed to be a conservation use, which is also a permitted use in the rural agricultural district. MR. SMITH: Well, I only wanted to point it out, because we may be setting a precedent for the other way. If ever there's a developer that wants to raise the issue as to whether or not we can bypass the final order, I think that developer would have every right to say the precedent's been set. MR. REISCHL: Well, I think that a developer could bring it up to the planning services director. The planning services director made this decision based on the fact that the basic intent of this is a conservation intent, not a -- there is going to be money made, but it is -- the overall intent is conservation of the land. And that's how the director made his -- MR. SMITH: In other words, the -- MR. REISCHL: -- decision. It could be just appealed to the board. MR. SMITH: -- ends justify the means. But the other thing that I'm concerned with is there's -- in this package, it seems to be that there's going to be absolutely no access by people once these lands are restored. There's nothing in the plans that I saw that made -- that is geared toward making this area, which can be and hopefully will be an absolutely gorgeous beautiful natural area at some point in the future accessible to people and used by people as opposed to here with every indication that everybody's going to be kept out of this. And that concerns me. I think people should be made part of this equation. MR. CARLSON: I am recused, but passive recreational uses for the site are yet to be determined. And that could be very low or could be Page 20 January 5, 2000 very high, depending on future programming. MR. SMITH: Well, I noticed, for example, if I go to Mr. Carlson's facility, it costs me what, $7 now, $147 That's prohibitive to a lot of people to enjoy nature. MR. CARLSON: Well, that's your opinion. But we are a private nonprofit group, and we receive no tax support from any taxing agency at all, so we have to completely -- we depend upon our income for all of our land management and all the good things we do for Collier County in protecting the watershed for you. CHAIRMAN HILL: I have several questions. I know they're outside probably the purview of the commercial excavation, but I'm a little concerned, and I'll go these in reverse order, because one question which has just been raised about the maintenance. If we never have a mitigation situation and no purchase is asked for out of this bank, do we require or have any measure of surety through a bond or whatever that that area is going to be maintained? That concerns me greatly. MR. SMITH: There is a bond, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. I missed that in the documents. Is it sufficient -- MR. SMITH: I reviewed it. To my way of thinking, it is. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. Another question on -- in Section C on the application, Paragraph No. 2 asks for the names of all wetlands impacted, and the answer is unnamed wetlands north of Corkscrew Swamp/Gordon Swamp. If staff or petitioner could address that, I'd feel more comfortable with that. The burning plan. It was difficult to follow all of that. But to me as a resident, nearby resident, the burning plan would be of great concern to me. That bothered me in the whole process. The other thing that worried me is that the service area is two-county. And once this -- if it is implemented, what's the process of mitigation in determining how this point system works? Are there priorities set between the two counties, or is function of wetlands considered in the mitigation process? This is something that has to be answered, I think, ahead of time. Is it one to one, two to one, half to one on the mitigation process? Now, I know, before I'm chastised here, that this is not particularly an excavation -- a commercial excavation question. But these things bother me. And I'd kind of like to hear some answers to them before we proceed. Are there other questions? Can I call on the petitioner? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Right, I was going to suggest -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Fine. As Mr. Durham approaches the stand, if there's anybody in the public that has -- that would like to speak and has not taken advantage of the sheets to sign up, to take this opportunity to do so. Mr. Durham? I guess the petitioner should be sworn in also. Let me ask then if the petitioner and those wishing to speak from the public on this matter, if you would stand to be sworn in, please. Page 21 January 5, 2000 (Ail speakers were duly sworn.) MR. DURHAM: Again, for the record, my name is Tim Durham. I'm with Wilson-Miller. Served as the engineer of record for this project, and also directed a substantial portion of the environmental field work and permitting effort on the site. Interesting list of questions that kind of helped shape what I'm going to talk about today. And I'll try to touch on all the things. A few things I did want to cover first. Panther Island Mitigation Bank is a private entrepreneurial wetlands bank, the purpose of which is to take existing lands to make improvements, alterations to it, and provide perpetual management to it so as to raise the wetland functions on the site. That increase in wetlands function has a unit assigned to it which can be sold. The bank is fully permitted through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, South Florida Water Management District. We went through a 21-month permit process, which was a rather unique process. All negotiations and discussions with the regulatory agencies occurred simultaneously, meaning every discussion that was held had to involve all the agencies. And a quick rundown of that: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- at the time Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, Natural Resource Conservation Service. I hate to slight any agency, but there's a lot of them. Met the 21-month process, arrived at the end with permits issued by the state and the federal government to operate the mitigation bank. By way of just information, this is the state document, which controls the construction and operation of the mitigation bank. It's very extensive. Some of the questions I heard related to a bonding. The way the bank is set up, it's constructed in phases. There are very strict requirements before the project starts. There must be construction bonds put into place. Where credits are sold, there also have to be bonds set up to pay for the perpetual management of that phase of the project. And again, I go through infinite level of detail on this. But suffice it to say, at this point the bonding requirements are very, very strict. That should be taken care of. One thing to understand about mitigation banks, are projects that come used in the mitigation bank must first satisfy requirements that demonstrate their project as unavoidable and minimize wetland impact. And only then can they come to the mitigation bank. This is not a wholesale trade of wetlands for other wetlands in other places, it's just part of the process. I have on my left an aerial of the project site. I can't tell from your position if the glare is manageable. Can you see it well enough? Again, Mr. Chrzanowski gave a good introduction to it. Let me just run through a couple of physical characteristics of the site. The ag. field that you hear mentioned show up as a lighter color at the north end of the site. The site is 2,778 acres, comprised again of those ag. fields to the north. The area in here that you see is primarily hydric pine flatwoods, Page 22 January 5, 2000 meaning pine canopy, wetland vegetation primarily in those areas. They function primarily as a wetland. There's a major cypress slough system here and here, some cypress here and some pine down here. The main -- the mitigation bank's going to do several things: One is reintroduce fire to the hydric pine flatwoods. If you go out on the site today, you can look at this property here, which is Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, where they have had an active burn program in for, gosh, 40 years. And when you go on this property, you get out here and you see pine trees widely scattered with areas of palmetto and open grasses, to put it simplistically. This same type of habitat unburned on this site is so dense you can barely walk through it. So part of the purpose of the mitigation bank was to thin out some of the overgrowth of vegetation and reintroduce a fire management program to the project. One of the other elements of the project was to restore some hydrologic functions. To the north of this site, historically, from 1940 aerials that we have, there were eight sections of land to the north of here which basically drained to this bank site, drained into this corner of the site and then brought water into here. Over time the land to the north has been converted by Corkscrew Road, different ag. operations, et cetera, to the point where today hardly any water comes in this corner. Most of it is brought through an agricultural ditch to the middle of the site. One of the purposes of the bank would be to take that flow that comes in the north -- it's too tall an aerial -- to the north end of the site, reroute it over to here and try and get some more natural flow to here. Also, the agricultural fields, we will be bringing the elevation of those down to match data we have that shows what the groundwater does naturally. Again, six inches to two and a half foot typically is what the excava -- the scrape-down would be of the agricultural fields. The idea is to create a series of cascading marshes with different hydro periods. One of the main focuses there is to create a variety of marsh habitat, so at any given time during the nesting season for the wood stork there would be some good foraging opportunities. The scrape-down of the agricultural fields is a cost to the mitigation bank. And yes, we are in front of you for a commercial excavation permit. That's not the term we would like to use, but that is technically what the county requirement is. It is not a very efficient operation removing dirt from the site. Again, a commercial operation designed to earn money digs dirt with big machinery, keeps the dirt moving; you know, it's really a dirt-moving enterprise. In our case, we're just trying to get dirt lowered and removed to lower those ag. fields. It's not a very efficient operation. We do need to remove the dirt off site. It will cost us money to do those excavations, not a profit generator. But on the bank site, six inches to two and a half foot, spread over almost 500 acres of agricultural field adds up. That's where we Page 23 January 5, 2000 get to the acres we have. The bank was permitted last year. Phase I has already been constructed. Phase I consisted of the restoration of 375 acres of hydric pine flatwood in this area. The initial exotics. The exotics have been removed, weeds and vegetation's been thinned, and fire, three different burns have happened. Several of them were conducted in conjunction with Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary as a good neighbor. So that has already occurred. Credits have been sold for Phase I. Phase II begins the operation of removing some of that dirt from primarily this agricultural field here, which would take it out Carter Road up to Corkscrew Road. I had an exhibit put together which shows you Six L's Road, Carter Road and Corkscrew Road in relationship to the mitigation bank with the county line. If I could please pass that out. CHAIRMAN HILL: While you're doing that, if I may, you're saying that Phase I was approved without identification of the process for Phase II? MR. DURHAM: No, sir. Panther Island Mitigation Bank, the entire bank was permitted by the state and federal agencies for the operation of all phases. What we have done is constructed Phase I, but the whole bank is permitted. It's just being constructed in phases. And each phase is a self-contained, self-sufficient unit of work out there. CHAIRMAN HILL: I don't understand the permitting process then that requires you to -- that took us out of the first portion of the loop and now brings us back in it after it was permitted. I don't understand the relationship there. MR. DURHAM: Could you clarify for me took you out of the loop? That was the part I don't understand of that statement. CHAIRMAN HILL: Well, I don't think the Environmental Council or EAB or whatever was involved in the permitting process for all phases which included a commercial excavation. MR. DURHAM: If I may, the State of Florida has rules set up to permit mitigation banks, and we followed that process. And that process fairly specifically says that in this case the South Florida Water Management District is the state and local entity to do it. We have had meetings with county staff to try and keep people apprised of this project, but it's certainly not our intention to circumvent anybody. MR. REISCHL: Fred Reischl, planning services. This is a permitted use in the rural ag. district. The only permits required so far, I believe, have been a clearing permit which is administratively approved. So there were no public hearings until the excavation permit kicked in. CHAIRMJ~N HILL: So your use of the term permitted bank is just a clearing permit on a portion of the property; is that -- MR. COE: When they start taking dirt off, that's why they're coming here. Page 24 January 5, 2000 MR. REISCHL: Exactly. CHAIRMAN HILL: But the bank's not permitted then. MR. DURHAM: Sir, we have a permit from the State of Florida, an environmental resource permit from the State of Florida, we have a federal mitigation banking instrument document, and we have a federal Section 404 permit. So -- MR. REISCHL: There are many layers of government. The county is just one. MR. DURHAM: Right. MR. REISCHL: And ours was administrative up to this point. MR. DURHAM: It gave me a headache, too. The handout I presented is just trying to explain a little bit geographically some of the issues in front of you. Panther Island Mitigation Bank is -- technically it is in Collier County. We do -- we're right on the county line, as you can see from the handout. To remove the dirt from the site, there's only two options available to us: Carter Road and Six L's Road. We intend to use Carter Road for the eastern portion of the excavation of the site, and for the western portion we use Six L's Road. We had met with Collier County transportation folks months ago. We also went to Lee County, talked to them, said this is an unusual situation, we are actually working in Collier County, but we're going to be using Lee County roads. We were very upfront with them, asked them if there was anything we could do to satisfy folks in that regard. Out of those discussions, Mary Gibbs from Lee County sent a letter to Collier County suggesting certain steps be taken to protect Lee County roads. Her letter was actually the result of some discussions and offers we made to try and keep everybody comfortable with things. We modified our applications with the county to offer up publicly on record our agreement to take protective measures for the road network in Lee County. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: There was some discussion as to whether or not we should include transportation stipulations in our staff report, and it was decided that since the Collier County Planning Commission wouldn't be hearing this, that this was the best time to put it in, and the board would get a little prior notice as to what those stipulations were. And even though I keep going back to the fact that this is a commercial excavation, we know that the neighbors are going to talk about it, and this is a good time to do it. MR. DURHAM: One other thing I just wanted to touch on. You had mentioned the name of the impacted wetlands. The mitigation project on the overall basis will affect Corkscrew Swamp and actually the Gordon Swamp. Particular to the reconfiguration of the agricultural fields, the only wetlands that are really involved are some remnant cypress heads that the agricultural worked around, and those are actually going to be incorporated into the mitigation design, who I think technically is looking for the name of those wetlands, which clearly do not have a Page 25 January 5, 2000 name. That's why they're called unnamed wetlands. CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for Mr. Durham? Okay, I would like then to open this to the public for your comments and concerns. Marni, would you call off those names, please? MS. SCUDERI: I actually don't have them all. They're split between the court reporter and myself. CHAIRMAN HILL: Do you need a break right now? THE COURT REPORTER: I'm fine, thank you. I can give her the names. CHAIRMAN HILL: Or let me have them, either one. I don't care. Mr. Marsiglio? MS. COOPER: Can I talk first? CHAIRMAN HILL: Sure. MS. COOPER: I'm Cindy Cooper. CHAIRMAN HILL: Go ahead. MS. COOPER: My name is Cindy Cooper. I live on Six L's Farm Road. I have to read this, because I'm nervous. How would you like to be sitting at your kitchen table, opening your mail to find a letter from an unknown construction company vice president who tells you that dump trucks will soon be rumbling up and down your street every day, every 10 minutes for the next three years? In your mind's eye, look out your front window and down your neighborhood street and imagine what that would be like. Big, loud, dirty 40-ton dump trucks dropping sand and rocks as they roll through. This is our situation on Six L's Farm Road. However, our reality is a dirt road where the dust from traffic and effective maintenance are already a problem. I wish you could drive down our road a couple times before you make any decisions you have to make. Six L's Farm Road used to be quaint and charming, most of the drivers fairly slow and careful not to dust one another. Nowadays, though, the dust is a continual aggravation to the quality of our environment. If there is any wind from the north or the northeast, the constant kicking up of the road dust sifts through the trees, through the windows and onto our tables, floors and carpet and into our lungs. By midday often the air is so full of dust it looks like mist. If there's no wind, the road -- if there's no wind, the dirt that's kicked up, especially by the big, long farm trucks, hangs in the road like fog, sometimes forcing other pickups and cars in their wake to turn on their lights for safety sake. Often the road develops a washboard effect due to the heavy traffic, and during the rainy season it is of course impossibly muddy and full of potholes. Now, this is the reality the Panther Island people want to invade. Their solution to the dust and maintenance problems is, quote, periodic grading and watering, which Six L's Farm already does with short-lived success. Panther Island letter to us claims there will only be 15 dump trucks every day running in the five-hour time frame between the morning and afternoon school bus schedules. That really means 30 Page 26 January 5, 2000 truck trips, which really means every 10 minutes a Panther Island truck will be rolling up or down Six L's, in addition to the farm and residence traffic that already exists. And who's to say how many really will go in and out of there with no one of any authority to monitor them? Our little road cannot withstand that kind of usage, whether we've got dry, dusty conditions or heavy rains. I of course would prefer that Panther Island project find another access road. If the use of Six L's Farm Road is inevitable, I think they should have to pave it according to county standards so that the road can withstand the weight and volume of their trucks. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. Who else would like to speak? MR. COOPER: The other half of her. I bought the land 24 years ago, 40 acres on Six L's Farm Road. My name is William F. Cooper, excuse me. At that time there was a small road ran through my property, and then later through Wayne Kelly's property back to Six L's. Virtually no traffic on it. Six L's was a small operation at that time. It's now a big operation. We've got groves and many more tomato fields and melon fields and cucumbers and everything else. There's a lot of traffic on the road. The lightly traveled road is now a heavily traveled road. The problem with the dust and the drivers is that they're only interested in getting back to Six L's or getting back to Panther Island, getting their load and getting back. They make money by how many trips they make. They're not interested in being courteous, they're not interested in being safe. And they're neither for the most part. They'll pass you on the road. And I was pretty nearly run off the road just the other day. I had to follow two trucks on down the Six L's and have a talk with them after they passed me. It wasn't a very pleasant talk either. But we don't have any choice. When we call the county -- here's our problem. We call the county and say, "Can you do anything about this? There's no regulations out there." County says, "It's your road, it's on your property, it's a private road, it's not deeded, and there's nothing we can do, you have to do it yourself." But they give us no tools to do it with. You're the only tool we have. The only option we have is to go to someone like you and ask, don't make it any worse. Don't add to a big problem that we already have. We have no other way to regulate this. As far as the paving is concerned, they volunteered to do their fair share of paving the road, if we wanted to do it. If we would do it to the standards that will carry their trucks. Why should I have to pay for a road to carry their trucks while they make a profit from it? I don't think that's a fair thing at all. The project itself has some flaws, to a layman. Now, I recognize that that was a very nice engineering presentation. But those lands Page 27 January 5, 2000 were never low. They're talkin9 about -- the word restore was used by your gentleman over here and used by the presenter, and you have used it, and so have you. But they're not talking about restoring that highland. That part of the project is the only part that we have any objection to, because it involves removing the dirt. But that's not restoration. That land was never low. No one ever carried that dirt in there. He mentioned the wood storks. What about the sand hill crane that walk all over this area? They don't like lowlands, they like highlands. When you consider is this environmentally a good deal, this part of it is a trade-off. It's trading highland for lowlands. And I'm not sure that's a good trade-off at all. The wetlands are adjacent to a strand of wetlands that runs from Route 82 to Route 75, which is nearly 20 miles long and it's two to three miles wide. This minor amount, 600 or so acres that they're going to add, is a minuscule percentage of the total wetlands in that area. When you consider the damage done to us, the people who live there, and rate that against the improvement and the quality of the land, I don't think it's a very good trade-off. I mean, there are -- there's lots of other animals involved with the environment, and certainly the human animal is one of them. And this part of that project is not very sound for us. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? Mr. Kelly, is that right? Would you state your name, please? MR. KELLY: Yeah, for the record, my name's Wayne Kelly. I'm a resident of Six L's about 20 years. I moved out there after Dr.' Cooper. The issue I see here is just like Dr. Cooper said. You know, I'm not a mitigation person. I understand it and I think it works, you know, like Mr. Sansbury said, in, you know, its intended use. But when you're -- I mean, my dad farmed here, I was born and raised here. Those lands -- the farmers always sought out the lands that were the highlands, you know. I mean, you can look at the map and see they didn't farm any of the swamp. It was -- you know, the soils won't do it and whatever. And I think the issue here is really dump trucks, and that's -- this road, I mean, if you went down -- Carter Road's worse than our road. I mean, I'm not going to argue for them, because I live on Six L's. six L's tries to maintain the road and the dust is unbearable. The traffic is -- it's dangerous. And if any of you have been around a dump truck operation -- and I know some people that will speak about that -- dump truck drivers are notorious of being in a hurry. On a gravel road, much less the paved road, just trying to come to a stop, you know, is a big deal. I think there's -- my wife called the county. She's a teacher and there's quite a few school kids that catch the bus at the corner right where they would be stopping. The -- you know, the whole idea of trying to regulate it, there is no dump truck police, there's Page 28 January 5, 2000 nobody out there. We're caught in a situation. You're doing a Collier County zoning using Lee County roads. And when we called down there -- I know Homer Taylor, head of DOT, personally. He helped pave Corkscrew. I mean, we all lived out there when Corkscrew was dirt all the way to 75, so we understand dirt. He said we have no jurisdiction, it's a private road. So we're forced as residents to come to you and say, you know, help us, whatever. I mean, our only other alternative is to get an attorney and fight that. We were told that by Mr. Ray Juda that he had the similar situation. And, you know, we feel like we're just a group of residents, you know, being taken advantage of. I've talked to Tim Durham myself and Rob Miller. Six L's drains to the south. There's about four feet of fall in two miles. I mean, all that water goes that way. The first thing the mitigation people did was came in and built themselves a road in their project without putting a culvert in there. All our water goes down there in sheet flows. We went down and asked about it, and they said, "Well, we don't have enough money to put a culvert in." I mean, I can have several people testify to that. Which I don't think was very neighborly. And, I mean, we're, you know, stuck in that situation. But my real issue is the dump trucks -- the real issue is safety and liability. And if somebody gets killed, it's not worth, you know, one minute of anybody's time to go mitigate or do whatever out there. And, I mean, I feel like we're under a threat for the safety of our children at the bus stops. We're driving -- I mean, if you went out there early in the morning or later in the evening or during the day when they're hauling tomatoes out, you would understand that threat, you know, because you just can't see behind the farm traffic that's there. And you've got to understand that that's their existing business. When you throw dump trucks on top of that, you know, competing to get to the end of the road or whatever, you know, somebody's going to get hurt. I hope, you know, not bad. But, I mean, it's -- something's going to happen. We've fought over the years Section 30, which is right next door and then down behind my house; there was two dirt excavations that we fought over the years. And Lee County will not permit a dirt pit or commercial operation, whatever you want to call this, to go out a dirt road. They just won't permit it. This thing about we'll grade, we'll water it all, who makes that judgment? I mean, is it every day, all day long, we're running our road grader, water trucks, you know what I mean, so somebody can see? Because we're back to safety again. You can't see when -- when one dump truck goes down than road, just one, you know, hauling and all that dust, you can't see to pull out or whatever. You know, that's the real issue there. We haven't carried this too far yet. And I've done a little research with -- I've got a friend in the title company business that Page 29 January 5, 2000 also lives there. We're not even sure about legal access. There is no established easement on this road. This road was built by Six L Farms some 25 years ago, and like Dr. Cooper said, it's gotten wider and wider as they've graded it. But our property lines go to the other side of where the ditch is, you know, all along there. I've researched that a little bit and will carry that further, if we have to. Six L's just got an additional 200 units that they're building down there for migrant labor that they were permitted in Lee County. I mean, you can do that under agriculture. You can have, you know, so many units per acre. And they're under construction now. Well, there's a whole lot more people that are going to be coming in and out of the -- you know, the road and we're back to the dump trucks and the safety issue again. That's pretty much it. But I mean, I'm just on the safety and the welfare of the people out there, I don't -- I understand business, I understand the mitigation part. I don't understand why they have to take the dirt out in order to mitigate this. I mean, the credits that they receive is some $30,000 per acre just if they take out the -- I mean, from what I understand, or can be, you know, taking out the vegetation, whatever, making this wetlands must enhance the profit potential of this or something, is all I know. Thank you. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, can I ask this gentleman a question? CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes, you certainly may, Mr. Smith. MR. SMITH: I wondered, assuming that there is some good reason for them to have to take out the dirt, maybe to meet some kind of federal requirement that there be wetlands created where wetlands are being taken out at some other place, something like that, if the road, Six L's Road and Carter Road were actually paved during this process, when this is -- this project is finally done, I would assume that that would create a very nice environment for living where you are. Is your issue the dirt -- MR. KELLY: That's probably true. I don't believe you can make anyone pave a road. I mean, I guess you can. The commissioners can -- I mean, that's what they did to that Section 30, when they went for a dirt pit, they went in three times, it was three miles back to Alico, Corkscrew was dirt. And they said we'll give you the zoning, you know, in order to dig dirt. Now, no one ever dug dirt there. It's still a farm field, because it was too cost prohibitive. I think you can ask them. I mean, the paved two miles of road on Six L's and two miles of road on Carter Road, I don't think they'd even want to dig that dirt. Mr. Durham said that it's costing them money to dig it. And I would -- I've got some people that are involved in that. That's easy digging, the first few feet. I mean, you can pan it out, stack it up and put it in trucks. And there's a lot of people out here will pay you $1.50 a yard, because it's quick, if you want it. I mean, that's all farm fields, you know. It's not like we're clearing it. That's -- I don't understand about it costing money, because that can come out real quick. Page 30 January 5, 2000 But, I mean, you know, the issue's safety with me all the way down with dump trucks. It always has been with the other pits. I don't want to see anybody killed, and especially one of those kids standing at the bus stop. And they're all day long. And they mentioned that they were only going to run the trucks when the kids aren't there. Well, I think there's, I don't know, high school, middle school, you know, all the different schools. I don't know how many -- you know, close to 30 kids or something. You know, they're trying to run a business. That's impossible to say they're not going to run a truck when, you know, somebody's getting on or off, you know, extended schedules and all. I have to bring it back to reality. You know, there is nobody to police that. Nobody's going to stand there and say you can't run that truck right now. And that's why this doesn't work. MR. SMITH: For the benefit of the council, I used to practice law in Immokalee, and I would take this route occasionally to go down MR. KELLY: When it was dirt? MR. SMITH: Yes. MR. KELLY: Yes. MR. SMITH: And I must tell you that there's a difference between going down a dirt road and going down these dirt roads. Because what you're talking about is when a truck goes by there, you said it, and I don't know that the council members really appreciate it, you can't see anything. MR. KELLY: At all. MR. SMITH: It becomes -- you might as well have -- MR. KELLY: And then you've got -- THE COURT REPORTER: Wait a minute. MR. KELLY: You've got one coming the other -- THE COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, I need one talking at a time. MR. SMITH: You might as well have the thickest fog in the world, because you just can't see. MR. KELLY: Right. And they said they can water it and all. We've been -- Six L's has tried that, you know. I mean, unless you're doing it all the time, by the time they try to water to the end -- I mean, when it's dry, it's dry. And you're back to dust when you turn around with the water truck, you know, because the traffic's blowing it up there. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. Anybody else? MR. CASTER: Hi. Good morning. My name, for the record, is David Caster. I live on Capper Lane, which is accessed through Corkscrew to Six L's Farms Road to get to Capper Lane. I am an excavation contractor. I make my living that way on dump trucks. As a matter of fact, my business license is at my personal residence out there. But I must reiterate what Mr. Kelly said, is that this road is so poorly main -- well, poorly maintained, it's maintained as well as they can do it with the money that they have. But it is so poorly Page 31 January 5, 2000 maintained that I don't take my trucks home at night or any other time during the year because of the damage that would be done to my trucks because of the way the road is kept even with the money and the revenue that we have to do it today. The whole -- I have several questions about this whole mitigation project. And being a fellow that works in the sanitation system of installing septic systems from time to time, and daily water usage and daily water elevations in the sand and in the dirt, everything that my company does from time to time is based upon how high the water table gets in the ground at certain times of the year. And living out there and doing -- I must have done 15 or 20 septic systems up and down Corkscrew Road and Six L's Farms Road. The water table drops tremendously during certain periods of the time that are not in the middle of the rainy season. And these wetlands that they keep talking about I have some real serious questions. I don't think that's what we're here to talk about this morning, because from what I understand of the time I've been here this morning, this is pretty much a done deal except how we're going to make it happen. The only way it seems to me that thing can happen is that if Carter Road and Six L's Farms Road are brought up and made to county specifications so that the county can accept them so that they can provide law enforcement to make these roads safe to travel up and down. And even being an excavation contractor with my own dump trucks, these people must be able to follow the laws and be safe with the amount of children that live out in that area and the amount that are going to be there, especially with Six L's expansion of their migrant camps. Without that happening, this project simply can't happen. You must be able to call the sheriff's office and get someone out there if someone is breaking the law. And the only way to have a law on Six L's Farms Road is to make it be a county road so it has to be followed by state rules and regulations and county rules and regulations. It seems to me that you guys can't really make recommendations, but I'm sure that people talk, and it's got to be conveyed to the people that are going to actually make the final decision that this thing, the only way it can happen is if the roads are brought up to county specifications so that the county can patrol them and write tickets for people who speed up and down, and so that the drainage during the wet time of the year is such that the water will run off the roads and not be puddled in the roads and so that speeding tickets can be issued, if they're needed. That's the only way that this thing can happen, and I think that's the whole crux of what we're here about this morning. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. Anyone else would like to -- yes, sir. MR. ROAN: Good morning, everybody. For the record, my name is Wes Roan and I'm an employee of Six L Farms. First of all, I'd like to apologize to the people who live on the Page 32 January 5, 2000 road for the fact that our tomato contractors who run their trucks up and down the road don't have a little bit more courtesy towards you, and I'll bring that up to the farm manager when I see him the next time. But I just reiterate a lot of the things that everybody said, we do indeed have and are in the construction process for a housing facility for 200 residents, which will be farm labor, and they'll be probably mostly families. There will be families throughout the year as well as then some migrant force during the harvesting season. We did some calculations the other day, just figuring if all of the dirt came off the Six L Farm Road, that you're talking about 50 trucks a day for 365 days a year for five years to move 850,000 cubic yards of dirt. That's an awful lot of trucks. And the safety issue and the -- just the general wear and tear on the road as it is, we do make effort to maintain it. It may seem to be inconsequential, but it is an expense and we do it because we have to have as good a quality road as we can to enhance the quality of the produce as it's moved on to the hard roads in order for it to get to the packing house. Probably on the off-harvest times the road becomes a little more damaged, especially in the summertime when the rain comes and it's real hard to grade because it does puddle up and there's really poor drainage off the road. The fact that they talked about the dust that's created by these vehicles that move down the road, I've traveled that road many times, and they're exactly right, you get behind a vehicle and you just have to back up 500 yards or more so that you can see again. And so there's the risk of -- you put an extra -- we probably put 20 or 30 trucks a day on that road when we're harvesting, and you add another 50 a day to that, that's going to be a tremendous amount of pressure on the road. The road in itself is not designed to handle that kind of weight and load. Some of the comments people made about the improvement of the road is definitely something that's going to need to be done. I don't -- Six L's doesn't have any problem with the conservation area. We as landowners rely on good land stewardship and water management. It's critical to the success of our farms. But at the same time, we're fearful of the quality of the road, the quality of the life that it will create for the people who live on our farm as residents, for the general safety of everybody involved. And I think if we could get the quality of that road improved, possibly even paved, that it would surely solve a lot of the concerns of the residents, as well as the Six L farm operation. Thank you. CF_AIRMAN HILL: Thank you, Mr. Roan. Anyone else from the public? MS. MARSIGLIO: As a mother -- my name is Deborah Marsiglio. As a mother, I'm up and down that road four to eight times a day. I have stood behind the elementary kids that the parents haven't come and picked up with my lights on so the other dump trucks and other big trucks can see the kids walking. Page 33 January 5, 2000 I think it's a hazard with the trucks coming up and down the road, as with the farm trucks. I don't think it's safe enough. If they can pave it, fine. But as a mother, I don't feel it's safe with the dump trucks. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. There's one other hand I saw? Yes. MR. LYTELL: My name's Bill Lytell, and I live on Glades Farm Road, which attaches to the farm, Six L's Farm Road, about a mile and a half back. I agree of course with what's been said here. Having been there about a year and nine months, I've lived there and traveled up and down the road through the seasons. I do realize that the mitigation folks say that they only want to take part of the dirt out this road. I think 150,000 cubic yards of dirt they talked about taking out, Six L's, and the rest taking out Carter, well, Carter's worse than our road. And of course I don't think anybody's here from Carter Road. That's too bad, really. Also, I'm a little disappointed that you folks went ahead with this without having any power. I wish you would have waited or delayed for six months, is fine with me, get a committee here. Because that's why you are what you are. You're supposed to have a -- I feel like I'm getting a warm feeling and that's about it, you know what I mean? Sometimes I feel like a Christian in the middle of an ancient Roman coliseum and I can hear the lions. As one man said, it looks like this is a done deal. I hope not. I hope you men can talk to the other people you know and that are up further that have power. We are residents of Lee County, but we are coming here because we have no other course of action to take. There is no policing mechanism, though I know they're going to say that there is some policing mechanism. You understand the difference between the ideal and the real. In a meeting like this, people can make promises. They can get up and say well, we will police and we'll do this, we'll do that. But the reality of it is, once it's permitted and once it's done and once things settle down, the truckers and the guys doing it, if they want to run 20 trucks a day, they're going to run 20. I have to ask the question, what resident in our community is going to stand out on the road counting trucks? Nobody. We're all working, trying to make a living and raising kids. As far as the safety issue goes, it's extremely serious. There are 33 children, at least, that wait at the end of the road. The times that they're there are from 6:21 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. They are picked up from 2:41 p.m. to 5:22 p.m. The 33 children does not include high-schoolers that are driving back and forth or preschoolers that the parents are taking out and in. It does not include those. The 33 children are the kids who actually are at the end of the road; they're waiting for the bus there. Now, the mitigation folks, and I have their letter right here, said that they would not run a half hour before or after the bus. You realize that brings their time frame of running somewhere between 9:30 Page 34 January 5, 2000 a.m. and 2:15 in the afternoon. That's it. That's all the time they can run, according to their own words. But again I have to say, who's going to enforce that? Who's going to be there with a watch and say I see these dump trucks are going early today or late today? I also agree with the man, I believe Brother Caster there, that mentioned the easiest dirt in the world to pick up is the stuff right on the top. And I don't know how in the world they tell us that it's going to cost them money to take that dirt out. This is a money-making proposition. This is private. This is Barron Collier Company and Collier Mitigation JV. These folks are in this to make money. I appreciate their benevolence to try to help the environment, but I don't think if there was money in it they'd do it. I think there's money in this thing, and we are kind of been hoping that we can get pushed aside somehow or ignored so that they can go ahead and do this. They'll do this over a three to five-year period. Well, when they've destroyed the road, they leave it, and we're still there. If they -- my suggestion is on this that they pave it up to full county standards, lined with a place where folks can -- you know, you've got to be able to walk along the road, walk along the road, have a bicycle path, whatever. That would probably be to the tune of $800,000, I think, for two miles. I think that will pretty much negate taking the dirt out, because they won't want to spend the money. I also would appreciate you advising if they decide not to go on our road because of the amount of resistance, and they decide well, we'll take it all out Carter Road, that you would block that. Because those dear folks on Carter Road are not here. But there are numbers of residents. I have a petition here of nine -- I have nine families that signed petitions, and I'm sure there'd be more. But if you'd like those -- I really need to make some copies, but I have nine petitions that say they absolutely are opposed to hauling of dirt out the Six L's project by the Panther Island Mitigation folks. I don't know if that means anything to you on these petitions, but we'd be glad to give those to you, the signed, addressed, phone number of the individuals who live on there. The -- have you ever tried -- have you ever seen a dump truck try to make an emergency stop on gravel? They can't do it. They can't do it. If my wife pulls out in front of one of those folks -- and it's going to happen. You know, it's dusty, hard to see. If you've ever driven on washboard, there's two ways to drive on washboard. You either drive slowly or you drive real fast. Typically with the suspension that the dump trucks have, it's very hard and very abusive slowly, so technically they drive quickly, jumping over the tops of bumps. And in that kind of environment, which we know people do, emergency stop will be just absolutely fatal for whoever it happens to. As far as I know, you may correct me on this, there are no other material like gravel pits, places where they take material out, that Page 35 January 5, 2000 they have not had to pave the road. Harper Brothers had to pave the road, Youngquist Rock Pit had to pave -- they have a paved road, Florida Rock has paved road. I don't know anything about Collier County, but I would hope that, you know, it probably is true that anybody that's moving that much material out has to pave the road to the county's standards. I realize that would even -- the problems are not all over if that happens, but greatly reduced as far as safety and health. They would still meet -- even if it was paved, I would say that they still need to move during a half hour after the kids are gone and then stop a half hour before, whether it's paved or not paved. I believe that needs to be done. Also, there needs to be an access lane created on Corkscrew Road for turning in. At Youngquist pit, just down the road, Youngquist Rock, which has now been sold out to some other company, they had to create a long entrance to that road, kind of like a side road, you know, to pull over so folks wouldn't be stopping and -- that also is the same, I believe, for is it Harper Brothers down the road on Alico Road? Harper Brothers had to put a big long entrance in there. Those kinds of improvements. Ray Juda -- I'm sorry, Mary Gibbs wrote a letter, which I have a copy, which she suggests that kind of improvement by Lee County; which she sent copies to four different departments of Lee County. I don't know what happened to that any further, but I do have a copy of that letter that she recommends those kinds of improvements. Do we have any assurances? Have they said a word about that? These are the kinds of things. It also, as you can tell by the men who have vested interests in this, there has to be some profit involved in this whole thing. So as citizens without really any power, you folks have the power, you folks have the suggestion, though indeed you have relinquished that, I believe. If you could talk to folks who do have and help us on this, it would be appreciated. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you, Mr. Lytell. Does anyone else? MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I do have a comment. The figure of 33 children just kind of hit me, because that's about the number of Florida panthers that are said to be around. And we spend 16 million dollars without thought in terms of just building some kind of way for those panthers to go back and forth from one side of 1-75 to the other. That's just for one underpass. And there must be about 10 of those, plus fencing, plus everything else. I don't know what the millions of dollars are that we spend for the Florida panthers. 33 children. MR. COE: That's only on one road. That's not including Carter Road, probably named after you anyhow. CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes, sir. Were you sworn in, sir? MR. LYTELL: Yes. I'm Jim Lytell, and I live on Glades Farm Road, which is accessed by Six L's Road. And I just wanted to come to show my support. And I Page 36 January 5, 2000 agree with the things that my neighbors and friends and brother have said. And there were -- a concern I had was if they create all these wetlands, about mosquitoes, how are they going to control the mosquitoes? They're going to have to have all these shallow ponds of water half a mile from where I live. And other concerns. One concern I had was the.-- when you pull out of your lane or your house or your lane from your house onto Six L's Road, the Brazilian peppers and different vegetation that grows right out adjacent to the road where you have to creep out on the road to see down the road, now, we maintain the -- another concern I had was we maintain the drainage ditches periodically on that road to keep the exotic vegetation out of them and stuff. Not very well, I must say. But when the panther mitigation people -- as I said before, they came in and dug a road and kind of blocked our irrigation there. It fell on deaf ears about putting a culvert there so all the water flowing south in the ditches on Six L's Road goes over the road instead of in some kind of culvert where it wouldn't be stopped. And I'm just opposed to running any more traffic for any commercial benefit for anybody on Six L's Road without drastic improvements. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you, Mr. Lytell. Is there anyone else? Mr. Durham? MR. DURHAM: If I could have an opportunity to respond to a couple of comments I heard. I have two children. I understand concerns about children. But I want to make sure we have all the facts clear in front of us today as we talk about this. I heard -- well, first of all, let me start with this: The gentleman from six L's hypothesized how many trucks it would be if they all went down Six L's Road. That's a nice academic exercise, but it's not what we said. We said the majority of it's going down Carter Road. I heard the road characterized as our little road. It is 30 plus feet wide, just so you have a clear picture of it. And I think I probably did a disservice by not bringing some photos here today. Another comment was that we are taking, what's it called, highlands or uplands on the Panther Island site and converting them to marshes. That is not the case. Again, we put -- we did extensive scientific studies. Put monitor wells on site, looked at ground water elevations, looked at 1940 aerials. A long list I can go into. That site that we're converting to marshes historically was a mixture of hydric pine flatwoods and seasonal marshes. The agricultural operations over the years basically created some terrace wetlands on that site. We actually have a four-foot drop across those ag. fields, which is kind of interesting. But suffice it to say, what we are proposing to do out there is restore it, quite clearly, by the state and federal definition of that, by all the scientific data. Page 37 January 5, 2000 Obviously attorneys have looked at it and determined there is legal access established down both those roads through the use over time. We didn't go into this blindly. One thing to be real clear on: What we have offered to do is daily watering and grading of Six L's Road. The net result of that will be an improvement to the existing conditions that are out there now. You heard the comment about washboard effect on roads. I agree with that completely. If you do not maintain a marl -- limerock road like that, you do get a certain pattern on it, and trucks tend to go faster to save their suspension. That is why we are offering to do daily grading and watering on that road. Another mention of school children. Just so you're clear on this, the majority of the school children are driven to the end of Six L's Road to a bus stop on Corkscrew Road. We have a copy of the school bus schedule from Lee County with exact times on here. We have looked at that. We are very comfortable with being able to work around that bus schedule. Recognize that's a current bus schedule. This could be a while before we're out there using Six L's Road, so we'll have to adjust to what that school schedule is then. But at least, you know, looking at the current schedule, we can certainly work with that, and it's our intent to. We have an on-site construction office right there at the end of Six L's Road. It will be full-time managed staff, operations there. We are accountable and responsible. A comment about culverts. Somebody was implying that we somehow block drainage. I guess you could make inference that we caused some flooding uphill. That is not the case. As a matter of fact, on our site there are culverts added, which have improved flow. Let me try and keep this succinct. I just heard a lot of comments. Let me stay on point as best I can. Mosquitoes was another issue that was brought up. The way the marshes are designed, part of the deeper excavations are intended to have permanent water bodies within the marshes to support fish that will eat mosquito larvae. Bottom line is, we've tried to be good neighbors with the folks to the north. We have responded to every phone call we have gotten. We have tried to have good conversations with the folks. I will tell you that as long as two years ago, a year and a half ago now, we had discussions with Six L's and some other folks offering to be part of paving of that road out there. There was some general discussions about people putting money in and getting some asphalt put down. We responded by saying that if that road was designed to county standards, all right, full-blown road, that we would be glad to participate and pay our fair share. Several entities did not respond to that letter. And we still stand by our position. We'll be certainly glad to participate in an effort for a full-blown properly designed and constructed road. We'll do our share on that. In the meantime, again, we're trying to construct this. Our Page 38 January 5, 2000 contract with the contractor calls for improvement of Carter Road. We acknowledge that Carter Road clearly needs some improvement to be used. We understand that. There's a cost associated with that. One last thing. Somebody implied that we were perhaps disingenuous by saying that it was going to cost us money to haul off-site. My point on that was that all -- everything else being equal, we would prefer not to have to move dirt off our site. The moving of dirt off our site is in itself not a revenue generator, because of the inefficiencies of that operation. Certainly Panther Island Bank is supposed to make a profit. I don't know anybody who would enter a business venture with any other goal in mind. I just wanted you to be clear on that. We have gone on writing with our commitments to meet the requirements that Mary Gibbs from Lee County submitted to Collier County staff. We're trying to work with both counties. We're trying to be good neighbors. We've been as responsive as we think we reasonably can be. We propose to be responsive in the future. Beyond that, I can just answer questions. MR. COE: How would you -- how would it be prorated, so to speak, as to how much money each entity would pay for the road? Like would a truck moving along that road have to pay more than, say, an individual resident who maybe goes down the road twice a day; whereas, a truck may go down the road 50 times a day? MR. DURHAM: Sure. The discussions -- there's a gentleman here named Mr. Rob Miller, who is with Florida Wetlands Bank who has prime authority on construction and operation of the bank. I don't know if Rob would like to address that any further. But we did not get as far through those discussions as we would have liked to have. I can't tell you the details. Perhaps Rob could give you a little more on that. MR. MILLER: My name is Rob Miller, I'm executive vice president with Florida Wetlands Bank, and the managing partner of the Panther Island Mitigation Bank. A comment was made that somebody felt that they were being taken advantage of here. I have, over the past year, year and a half, expressed numerous times to the residents of Six L's Farm Road my willingness to sit down with them and to meet with them, our willingness to discuss the improvement to Six L's Farm Road and to Carter Road. We realize that for us to utilize those roads, they have to be improved. We intend, in the normal course of our business, in using those roads to widen Carter Road, to improve the base on both Carter and Six L's Farm Road while we are using it. The illusion that some residents have made that this road is being properly maintained is absolutely false. It is being maintained at a standard, as somebody said, of what they can afford to do. We will be maintaining that road in the proper condition as necessary. If that means that we have to have that water truck there every day, if that means that that road has to be graded every day, then that's what we're going to do. We want to move that material out of that Page 39 January 5, 2000 site in the safest manner possible with the least impact to the residents. Every concern that has been brought to our attention we have addressed. Every time we address a concern, a new concern is raised. If anybody should be standing here feeling like they're attempted to be taken advantage of, I think it should be me. We have offered to pay a proportionate share of the road. Now, we're talking about a road that we're going to be using over a three to four, five-year period of time. The benefit that these residents are going to have from this road is going to well extend beyond that period of time. So to say that for us -- and we're not a commercial rock pit. We're not going to be operating this pit for 10, 15, 20 years, generating millions and millions of dollars from the sale of fill. The fill component of this project is not a revenue generator. It costs us money to dig the material, it costs us money to dispose of the material. We are not going to recoup our cost of digging this material through disposing of it off-site. We won't come close to doing that. That's not the purpose of us removing the fill from the material. MR. COE: You can't sell fill for the same price that -- MR. MILLER: I can't sell fill material for the same price as Corkscrew Mining or as the old Youngquist Pit can. MR. COE: Why not? MR. MILLER: Because I have a haul that's three to four miles longer than they have. Now, you -- the sale of fill, fill costs a certain amount on the open market. The longer the trucks have to travel to pick that material up, the more the material costs. MR. COE: I understand that. MR. MILLER: So you can't be -- MR. COE: Three or four miles is that great of a cost to you? MR. MILLER: It's not a cost to me, it's a cost of the trucker getting to the material. That has to be figured in. When they can go to a Youngquist or a Corkscrew Mining to buy fill and they don't have to travel three to four miles longer, their cost of the material is substantially less. So we cannot sell our fill at what the market rate is for a pit that's right on a major road. We're not on a major road, we're well off of a major road. MR. COE: You could sell it for that, but you couldn't make as much profit; is that correct? MR. MILLER: Sure. MR. COE: Okay, that was the answer I was looking for. MR. MILLER: Yeah, and -- MR. COE: You're going to sell it for the same amount of money, and you're still going to -- MR. MILLER: We don't know that. MR. COE: -- make money, you're just not going to make as much money. MR. MILLER: We had another -- I'm not -- I don't believe that's true either. We had another bank in Timber Pines; we were right on a Page 40 January 5, 2000 major road. We could not sell the material at the market rate and get the material off the site in the time frame that we needed to do it. MR. COE: Then why do you -- MR. MILLER: So we had to give that material away. MR. COE: Then why do you want to do this project? MR. MILLER: We're doing this project to create the wetlands, not to excavate and -- MR. COE: So you're just being good guys here? You're just helping -- MR. MILLER: No. MR. COE: You're trying to say -- MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman, I don't think that's a fair response. That's not what we're talking about here. And I'm sorry, we're going to treat people right. That's not the way we should -- MR. MILLER: You're trying to say that we're generating a profit from the sale of fill. That's not true. We're generating money and profits from the sale of credits. That's where we're generating our money. If you look at the still component of the project, it is not a revenue generator. So to say that that's a commercial operation is not correct. So what I just want to express to this council is that we still have the willingness to sit down with the residents and with Six L's Farm Road; we still have a willingness to share in the cost of constructing and improving Six L's Farm Road, if that's what they choose to do; we will in either regard improve the base and take the precautions necessary to ensure the safe removal of our material from the site. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you very much. Is there any other public comment? I will close that portion. I think we have as a council some serious discussion required in order to handle this properly. For the benefit of the court reporter, however, we've had her walking her fingers for over two hours now, and I'd like to suggest a five-minute break to give her a little respite. We will reconvene at 11:10. (Recess.) CHAIRMAN HILL: We will petition to the County Commissioners next month for a gavel. I'd like to reconvene this meeting of the Environmental Advisory Council. I want to apologize to the public that are here to address the Panther Island Mitigation Bank for the fact that this council does not have for this meeting a quorum which would allow us to take an official action to present to the Board of Commissioners. However, at this point in time, I want to recommend to this council that we do -- or take whatever option is available to us in order to get the public's concern to the commissioners. I understand we can still, because we don't have a quorum, can continue this to February. There are perhaps other options for us, because I think the concerns are significant enough that we need to Page 41 January 5, 2000 look at this long and hard for a variety of reasons: The safety, the health, the two-county operation. All of these factors are significant enough that I think this council has to assume its responsibility and make sure that those concerns are made to the County Commissioners, in whatever forum is available to us. Mr. Mulhere, I think you probably can advise us as to the options that are available. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. For the record, Bob Mulhere, planning services director. I can tell you how petitions for which there was not a quorum have been handled in the past. I can also tell you that I think the applicant has the ability and the right to request that it be heard by the board, regardless of the recommendation, necessarily, of the Environmental Advisory Council. Of course the board will consider that recommendation. That recommendation being there wasn't a quorum, we could take no action. If the Environmental Advisory Council is recommending that the petition be continued until February, the applicant still could insist that we carry that forward to the board, and we would carry the message to the board that the EAC has recommended that the petition be continued until a quorum could consider the item. CHAIRMAN HILL: With an emphasis on the reason for our request for continuance? MR. MULHERE: I think under any -- you certainly could do that, but under any circumstance in the past, an item for which there was not a quorum, the EAC has -- and correct me if I'm wrong, Barbara and Stan, but in my experience the EAC -- prior to that, the EAB -- had always recommended a continuance of an item for which there was not a quorum until a quorum could hear that item. MS. BURGESON: That's right. We've -- in the past, in the 10 years that I've been with the county, no item has gone forward without a formal motion from the board. MR. MULHERE: Now, I just throw the caveat out there that the applicant I think could still request that we bring the issue forward to the board for consideration, but the board's consideration would be whether or not to hear the item without this committee having had the opportunity with a quorum to hear the item and make a formal recommendation to the board. I would also just throw another caveat out, and that is that again, if we look at the Land Development Code and the language that establishes this council, some of the issues, in my opinion, and it's only my opinion at this point in time, are somewhat beyond the scope or the parameter of this council. I believe those are issues that the Board of County Commissioners needs to deal with. In this case, the item doesn't go to the Planning Commission, so the Planning Commission will not deal with it. CHAIRMAN HILL: Such as, Mr. Mulhere? MR. MULHERE: Such as transportation issues. And I say that with the caveat, unless you feel there are environmental issues associated with those transportation issues. I think you have to provide that Page 42 January 5, 2000 nexus to the board with your recommendation if transportation impacts are one of the reasons why you would place a condition or otherwise not support this petition. Because really, the parameters of the EAC are relative to water management and environmental issues. So I think if transportation has some environmental or management impact, then I think you are within your parameters. If hours of operation have some environmental or water management impact, then I think you're within your parameters. CHAIRMAN HILL: Environmental Impact Statement does address traffic. MR. MULHERE: And well it should. CHAIRMAN HILL: And therefore, I think would legitimately come in the purview of the EAC. MR. MULHERE: And I have no problem with that. I just feel it's important -- CHAIRMAN HILL: That's contradicting what you just said. MR. MULHERE: No, I don't think it's necessarily contradicting. What I said was if you make a recommendation, I think you need to provide a nexus as to what the environmental impacts associated with that condition or recommendation are. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. MR. SANSBURY: Just two questions. Number one, to get the discussion that we've had before the County Commission, can we not at the end of the meeting make a motion to forward the minutes of this meeting to the County Commission and with a cover letter from the chairman or something to please review the item, this item was discussed. That would get it. I mean, the petitioner then may petition to go ahead, but the County Commission would have benefit of being able to review the discussion that took place. MR. COE: Well -- MR. SANSBURY: Let me finish. That's number one I wanted. The second thing I have is that we're talking about an issue here that where does the jurisdiction, governmental jurisdiction of this board end? We're talking about an issue regarding transportation problems in Lee County. I know it's generated by something that's happened in Collier County, but are we not somewhat out of our jurisdiction on making a decision on something that's in Lee County? Should this not be the Lee County commission that's hearing this and not this environmental advisory commission -- committee? MR. MULHERE: Well, I think Lee County, both residents and elected officials and appointed government employees, have the opportunity to comment. That's why we notified the -- MR. SANSBURY: No, I don't question that. I don't question that. MR. MULHERE: And again, I don't think that -- and again, this may be a better legal question, but you asked my opinion, I'll give it to you. I don't think that the county can place restrictions on roads in Lee County, but they can place restrictions on the development, Page 43 January 5, 2000 which is in Collier County, which may impact their ability to utilize, for example, hours of operation. That's certainly going to impact their ability to use those roads at certain times, although those roads are located in Lee County. I think they're well within their -- the board is well within their rights to do something along those lines, place a condition that may impact their ability to operate during certain hours. I mean, that's one of the normal conditions that can be placed on such an operation. And yeah, that's going to impact, because they're choosing -- because the routes that are available go through Lee County, the effect of such condition would be that the board was placing a limitation on their ability to function outside of Collier County. I think that they are within their rights to do that. The use is located within Collier County and, therefore, Collier County has the jurisdiction. It certainly is -- requires some interlocal governmental coordination because of the proximity to Lee County and because the use will have an impact on Lee County. Excuse me, I think I said Collier County, I meant Lee County. MR. COE: I'm a little bit concerned, because I question whether the citizens are being -- and I'm including the Carter Road ones, and I know there's nobody here, but I don't know whether they're being -- I mean they're representing themselves but, you know, they're paying taxes to -- of course to Lee County. I guess you all are Lee County. And nobody from Lee County is really coordinating with our county people to -- and with the people that are going to do the development there. And with Six L's trying to coordinate and figure out who's going to pay the road, who's going to pay how much and that sort of thing. Or if that's going to be done. Why not? Why isn't that being done? MR. MULHERE: Well, I would say two things: One, we contacted and sent a notice to Lee County. They responded to us, and their concerns in writing are contained within the recommendation of the county staff. If they -- perhaps you feel they should have gone further than they went, that item I think would need to be brought up between the residents and the reviewing entity for Lee County, or it could also be brought up at the board's hearing on this item by Collier County residents or Lee County residents, or people who live in another state but own property down here. Everyone that owns property should have an opportunity to express their concerns. And if one of those is who's going to pay for the impacts to the roadway, if it was within Collier County, we would charge an impact fee for every trip that would cover the cost of impacts to the road. If that is a condition that Lee County would like to see imposed, they need to tell us that, and what methodology they would propose, so that the applicant can have an opportunity to look at that methodology and respond, whether it's satisfactory or not. As I understand it, they're in negotiations to discuss those very items with representatives of Lee County, but I do not know where that Page 44 January 5, 2000 stands. I think it's a good question. Perhaps the applicant could respond to that, or respond to that prior to the board meeting. MR. COE: Well, the only thing I see that the people can do now is get an attorney. And they're in a catch-22 at this point. The county's not helping them, and we I guess can't help them because their county's not helping them, so they've got to get an attorney and fight it. MR. MULHERE: Well, and I think -- MR. COE: So now everybody's got to get an attorney. MR. MULHERE: And I also think that they have the oppor -- MR. COE: Nothing against attorneys, mind you. MR. MULHERE: But I think that anyone has the opportunity to either in writing or in person make their comments known to the board, who is the body who will make the final decision on this land use item. The EAC I think has a couple of options. I think your recommendation could be consistent with past actions where there wasn't a quorum that this be continued. And then either the applicant will request to go forward or will understand that there's a continuance and that the board will hear that after you have a quorum, perhaps in February. Or you could recommend that it go forward, as I think Mr. Sansbury indicated, with copies of the verbatim minutes and a staff summary of the discussion at this EAC meeting. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I have a comment here. The -- as I looked at the figures here, and I may be wrong about this, but there's a -- the site is 2,778 acres. And the maintenance, annual maintenance, alone is $5,000 an acre. That's $13,590,000 annually. I may be wrong in my math on this, and if I am, I apologize, but there's big numbers involved in this. And I just for the sake of common sense would wonder if the people who are planning this project could weigh the cost of putting out trucks on a daily basis with water running up and down those roads and having to worry constantly about the safety of children and liability and weigh that against the actual, you know, just bite the bullet and put the darn -- I mean, these folks, that's all they want is not to have the dust. CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Cornell, could I relinquish the gavel to you for a minute? Would you accept that, please? MR. CORNELL: Sure. CHAIRMAN HILL: I'd like to move that the Environmental Advisory Council, having heard this petition and public input in the absence of a quorum, are deeply concerned about the impact of this development and this petition, and request that it be continued and brought back before the EAC at its next regular meeting. And if this is still presented to the Board of County Commissioners, that we make every effort to urge the citizens' comments through our minutes or any way possible be forwarded to the County Commissioners. MR. CORNELL: Does the motion have effect? MR. MULHERE: I'm going to defer to the assistant county attorney as to whether or not -- I mean, there's not a quorum, except you're Page 45 January 5, 2000 not making a recommendation on the project, so it's a question of whether everyone can vote on that motion. CHAIRMAN HILL: It's my understanding that we could do that. MS. SCUDERI: To be honest, I'm going to have to call upstairs. That is someone in the office's -- that's what they do. And just to give you a definite answer, I'll need to call my office. MR. CORNELL: Well, now, your motion is to continue the item? CHAIRMAN HILL: To continue -- MS. SCUDERI: As opposed to making a -- CHAIRMAN HILL: -- but with the caveat that if the commissioners wish to consider it at their next meeting, that we make every effort to get before the commissioners the public comments and our concerns MR. CORNELL: Yes. CHAIRMAN HILL: -- which is the reason for continuance. MR. MULHERE: We would do that anyway. I mean, you can certainly make that part of your motion, but the staff would do that on any petition. So I need to say that, too. MR. CORNELL: Well, Barbara -- CHAIRMAN HILL: In the past, I've felt that sometimes not all of our concerns get to the commissioners. MR. CORNELL: I think you said, Barbara, this is typically what has happened when there was not a quorum. MS. BURGESON: In the past with the EAC and the EAB, the preceding boards, all the items have been continued to the next meeting. MR. CORNELL: Sure. Well, that's basically what you're -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Yeah. MR. CORNELL: I'll second the motion. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman, I think the part of the motion of getting the minutes to them serves our purpose. I mean, the discussion here I think is very involved, I think everybody understands the people -- what the problem is that the residents have. And having those minutes in front of the commission serves the purpose. I don't see the purpose of bringing it back again. CHAIRMAN HILL: Well, there was a little strategic reason for that. MR. CORNELL: Other discussions on the motion? MR. CARLSON: If we're about to put this to rest at this meeting, I would like to make a general comment on this, and that is that speaking about just what's happening in Collier County and speaking just from an environmental standpoint, my first experiences on Corkscrew Road were back on the Sixties when you would drive in a typical wet season and it would be under water, as would Carter Road. Because we've used that road for years to access the north end Corkscrew Sanctuary. I have since watched a progressive dewatering of Southeast Lee County. There's just absolutely no doubt about it, the water levels have been lowered primarily because of agricultural activities that discovered a topographic relief that could move the water off Southern Page 46 January 5, 2000 Lee County into Collier County. This project, there's no doubt, and I think -- is it Dr. Cooper, you brought this up, whether there were environmental merits to this. There is no question that there is. It's a good environmental project. The types of wetlands that will be restored on this site are just exactly the types of wetlands that were hardest hit by the drainage of Southeast Lee County. There is no question. You'll be wasting your time going there. You're welcome to do it. But there's no question, there's environmental enhancement, environmental benefits to this project. MR. COP, NELL: Further discuss on the motion? CHAIRMAN HILL: Call for the question. MR. CORNELL: Now, I guess that you two guys recuse yourselves from this vote, or -- so four of us would vote on the motion to -- MR SANSBURY: If we can't vote, you can't vote. MR COP, NELL: Okay. So let's the four of us vote on -- MR SANSBURY: You can't do it. MR COP, NELL: -- the item. MR SANSBURY: You can't do it. You don't have a quorum. MS SCUDERI: I can call my office and ask. There is a fine line between whether or not this is a substantive issue versus the continuous. I'll really need to call to give you the definite answer. There is someone in my office who deals with that specifically. MR. SANSBURY: We're voting on a continuance. I think everybody can vote on a continuance. MS. SCUDERI: That's the question that I want to talk to -- MR. CORNELL: It sounds procedural, but you're the attorney, not me, so -- MS. SCUDERI: -- make sure it's not -- right. I just want to make sure I'm not giving you bad advice, so -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Please. Okay. MR. SANSBURY: Let's hear from Bob. CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Mulhere, we will now proceed to the request for you to address -- MR. MULHERE: Okay. We need to -- do we need to table this item until she comes back and -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Yeah. I'll accept the motion to table this until MR. SANSBURY: CHAIRMAN HILL: MR. CORNELL: CHAIRMAN HILL: Opposed? (No response.) MR. MULHERE: So moved. -- the attorney's representative. Second. All in favor? Okay. And I don't know whether this was -- this discussion that -- I think that was added to the agenda, and then unfortunately, I'm sorry, I wished I could have been here at the beginning of your meeting, but I was in another meeting. And as I understand it, the chairman asked that I come back and Page 47 January 5, 2000 give you an update on the TwinEagles matter. And I've also included in that discussion beyond TwinEagles an update on some of the ongoing efforts to address the Governor's final order and where we stand with those comprehensive plan amendments. As you probably are all aware and read in the paper, in federal bankruptcy court recently, Judge Paskay rendered a finding wherein several -- he adjudicated several issues. First, that the plaintiffs, which were numerous, but included some property owners in proximity to TwinEagles and also Florida Wildlife Federation and I believe Collier County Audubon. His finding was that they did not have standing in this matter, some of those plaintiffs. Secondarily, his finding was that the development was consistent with the Collier County Comprehensive Growth Management Plan in effect at the time of approval. And thirdly, that the approval of the plat, which was the instrument that was being challenged in this case, was that the approval was administerial in nature and that the -- and I guess one -- or I will certainly draw from that finding that the appropriate instrument to have been challenged would have been the rezone from PUD to agriculture and not the subsequent plat approval by the board. If you recall -- just a brief history. If you recall, originally TwinEagles came in the form of a PUD with a number of commitments by the developer. That was challenged. And therefore -- and as a result, the applicant requested the board restore their agricultural zoning of the property, which in fact happened. The original challenge was -- it went away. I guess the term is without prejudice, but I don't know exactly what that means. I'd leave that to the attorneys. But anyway, that original challenge to the PUD, when the PUD was rezoned back to agricultural, went away. And subsequent to the agricultural zoning approval by the board, the board approved a final plat for Phase I of TwinEagles, and that was what was challenged, and it ended up in bankruptcy court and bankruptcy court retained jurisdiction over the matter. And so those were the findings. I do read in the paper -- I have no firsthand knowledge, I can only can tell you, or report to you that there is some discussion of appeal by the plaintiffs to that finding. Whether or not that will actually happen, I do not know. But the issue is really one of whether or not the TwinEagles -- whether or not any individual agrees with the type of development or thinks it's appropriate for that area was not the issue. The issue was, was that approval consistent with the comprehensive plan and was the plat the appropriate instrument to challenge. And the judge found in favor of TwinEagles and also in favor of the county in both -- in all of those items. I wanted to give you a little bit of an update on where we stand with some of the growth management issues that are required by the final order. As you know, the two committees, one for the rural fringe and one for the other rural area outside of the fringe, are meeting on an ongoing basis. We have legal representation from -- by Page 48 January 5, 2000 Nancy Linnan, from Carlton Fields. The first -- one of the first things we had to do for the final order was to repeal the non-compliant EAR amendments that were upheld to be non-compliant by the Governor and Cabinet. And we did that through an amendment which we call CPR-99-1. We did that back in September. And that is being challenged. I do not know what the status of that is. It is being challenged by Florida Wildlife, and I believe also again Collier County Audubon. I do not know what the status of that challenge is. It's working through legal proceedings. Again, the purpose of that, CPR-99-1, it was required by the final order as the first step, and that was to repeal the issues which were found to be non-compliant by the DCA, by the administrative law judge and ultimately upheld by the administration commission. Second thing that we had to do that you probably are a little bit more familiar with was CPR-99-2, and that was establishing Natural Resource Protection Areas boundaries and interim amendments to allow the rural agricultural assessment to move forward. And we did that through what we call again CPR-99-2. And we received word -- I received word by telephone call on this past Thursday. And I have not received written verification of that, though I did read an article this morning in the paper that confirmed the telephone call that I got on this past Thursday that the Department of Community Affairs found CPR-99-2 in compliance. And again, you'll recall that that was the Natural Resource Protection Areas for several special study areas. And there was some controversy as to the boundaries, or some discrepancy. Controversy is probably not the right word, but discrepancy as to what those boundaries should be. However, the Department of Community Affairs did find us in compliance on CPR-99-2. I'm not going to spend any time talking about whether or not that will be appealed. I'll leave that up to the newspaper and other individuals to discuss. Finally, CPR-99-3, which is also required by the final order, separate set of amendments, that was transmitted by the board on November 23rd to the DCA. We have received from the DCA what's called an ORC, which is an Objections, Recommendation and Comment Report. It's really a very standard process. I would tell you that I'm optimistic that we can address the two relatively, in my opinion, minor issues raised by the DCA on that ORC. One deals with providing specific locational restrictions for farm worker housing to ensure the farm worker housing will be located in close proximity to services, transportation, work, education, employment, other types of services. And the second deals with maintaining or reducing hurricane evacuation times and means of evacuation. And again, I feel confident the ORC actually provides some specific recommendations to us. And it is fairly common that we would receive an ORC on a volume of amendments such as those that were contained in CPR-99-3. And the process is that when we transmit the Page 49 January 5, 2000 amendments, we will want to address the two issues that were brought up by the -- oh, excuse me, when we adopt the amendments, we'll want to address the two issues that were brought up in the ORC by the DCA. And that will happen by the board sometime in the next several weeks. So that's really an update of where we stand. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you very much. Is there any question or comment? MR. SMITH: Can we get copies of these ORC's? MR. MULHERE: Sure. And you'll be getting them because I was distributing them to the committees, but I'd be happy to distribute them to the EAC as well. CHAIRMAN HILL: Is that CPR? MR. MULHERE: Yeah. Comp. plan remedial -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation for Collier County? MR. MULHERE: They're just -- everybody uses different letters to track these things, so they don't mean much. The state uses a different letter, the county uses a different -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you very much, Mr. Mulhere. MR. COE: Oh, we need to find out if somebody has advertised for a new member. CHAIRMAN HILL: They have. MR. COE: They have? CHAIRMAN HILL: Yeah. MR. MULHERE: Can I just add one other item that Bill Lorenz is reminding me of, and it's tied into this discussion, is that the EAC has as a standing committee, or subcommittee, a growth management subcommittee. And that's I think an item that really needs to be addressed by the EAC in terms of creating that subcommittee so that we can keep that subcommittee informed on a regular basis and work with them as we develop future amendments. And of course then that committee could in turn keep the full EAC up to date. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. You know, I -- at the risk of extending this any, I'd like to take about one minute to take make a comment which I feel very strongly about. From time to time, the EAC is accused of overstepping its boundary in considering things out of the purview of the environmental aspects of any petition. That may be true. And if we're violating our charge, then I apologize on behalf of the council. However, it seems to me that this group is one very viable component in the Collier County process of growth management planning, et cetera. And if we have to operate with very focused blinders on, then I don't think we can do our job properly. As long as we don't use the aspects out of our purview to influence a decision. But I think it's imperative that every county agency look at the full scope of everything associated with the petitions that come before us. And I think it's somewhat unfair to tell this council that we can't ask certain questions because they happen to be perhaps beyond our purview. If we can't function as an integral part of the Collier County process, then I think it's time to look elsewhere. Page 50 January 5, 2000 Having said that, I'm not going to have any discussion, I'm going to -- Marni, have you got a decision for us? MS. SCUDERI: I do, actually. I've spoken to David Weigel, who is the county attorney, and I explained the entire situation to him. What he told me is that a continuance in this situation really will not work, due to the fact that Mr. McVey would be the member that we would need here, that he has not heard everything that has occurred today, that there is a record in this now, and that basically everybody here would have to start from scratch in front of Mr. McVey again. And I believe that is the member who we need for the quorum at this point. He did see the problem, the possible problem, with having a vote with the members who have already said that they cannot vote getting in the vote for passing the minutes on. What he did say is that if this goes to -- when this goes to the County Commission, that staff actually can just forward the minutes, because they are a public record. So that the vote does get problematic at that point due to the fact that we really do not have a quorum for any type of a vote. CHAIRMAN HILL: So what you're saying, the motion is somewhat out of order, but that part of it will in fact be realized by staff forwarding the minutes; is that correct? MS. SCUDERI: Right. He stated that it is a public record and staff can just forward the minutes to the Board of County Commissioners. CHAIRMAN HILL: In that case, if the seconder will -- MR. CORNELL: I will. CHAIRMAN HILL: -- take back his second. MR. CORNELL: I will. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Just for the information of the petitioner, I've been told that it takes two weeks to get the minutes. They would have been on the board hearing for the 24th or 25th, which means by next Wednesday I would have had to have the packet ready. That's going to push them back to the first meeting in February. MR. MULHERE: Unless -- and we will look into attempting to have those expedited and absorbing the cost of that, whatever that is. CHAIRMAN HILL: Maybe a partial -- is a partial set sufficient, or do we have to'set the entire minutes? MR. MULHERE: I think we can make arrangements to have the transcription expedited so that we could have it in the board's package. MR. COE: She's not smiling. CHAIRMAN HILL: She can handle that. MR. SANSBURY: Yeah, she can do it. CHAIRMAN HILL: She can handle us, she can handle that. +++I would like, with the board's permission, to begin consideration of 4-B, apologizing again to the public for this lengthy meeting to this point. That's only two out of seven. What I'd like to suggest, so that the public knows, is that we go as far as we can with 4-B up to an adjournment at 1:00 for lunch, Page 51 January 5, 2000 reconvening -- wait a minute -- no, okay, we'll have a quorum. With that in mind, could we hear from staff on conditional use CU-99-27 on Little Palm Island? Would you swear in those of the public that wish to address? And I have three people here who apparently want to, at least three. (All speakers were duly sworn.) CHAIRMAN MILL: If you would sometime today fill one of these slips out for our records, please. I have three of them. MR. REISCHL: Good morning, council members. Fred Reischl, again, planning services. This is a combination of two petitions: A special treatment development permit and a conditional use for cjuster development in the RSF-3 zoning district. It's for 86.67 acres of property, which on the visualizer you can see is located in the northwest corner of the existing Palm River subdivision. To orient you, you'll see Immokalee Road to the south, Palm River Boulevard, one of the access points, with heading west on Viking Way. The other access point is Cypress Way East, which its connection with Immokalee Road is off that map. The proposed density of this project is at 1.8 dwelling units per acre. As I stated, the underlying zoning is RSF-3; therefore, the maximum permitted density would be three units per acres, so this is below the maximum permitted density. The project is consistent with the Future Land Use Element of the Growth Management Plan. And before I turn this back over to Barbara, I'll just explain a little bit about cjuster development. It's a conditional use that applies to the underlying zoning, designed to reduce building setbacks in order to have a more usable pattern of open space in the project. And once again, on the visualizer you can see in general a close-up of the project. The pink area is the area that's proposed for cjustering. The blue lots are lots which meet the RSF-3 standard. MS. BURGESON: For the record, Barbara Burgeson with planning services. The project area covers 86 plus acres; it includes 68 acres of uplands and 10 acres of wetlands, 7.9 acres of previously created surface water. The uplands, particularly the oak scrub/scrubby flatwoods on-site, are high quality gopher tortoise habitat. I'll put something on the visualizer for that. The area that's marked in solid yellow is the highest quality scrub habitat for gopher tortoise. The area -- I'm not sure how easily you can see it -- immediately north of that solid yellow area is marked with yellow striping. And that is good quality habitat. A great number of tortoises are occupying that area. The blue is identifying the redefined field verified ST boundary, which originally on this property, as shown on the zoning overlays, was 20.2 acres. Having gone out in the field and having had South Florida Water Management District accept the smaller line, that ST boundary has shrunk from 20 acres down to roughly 10 acres. Page 52 January 5, 2000 During our site visits, staff's discussion with the consultant, environmental consultant and the engineering consultant, was to relocate all tortoises up into the area that I've identified as green on the property, which is all the way up to the north end of the project and over the canal. That area staff is going to require be identified as a gopher tortoise preserve. A total of 165 -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Repeat that -- pardon me, Barb, repeat what you just said? MS. BURGESON: The area at the very north end of the property, which is green on the map that I've just put up on the visualizer, is currently a flatwoods, highly invaded with exotics. The petitioner's ~- discussion with staff with me while we were out in the field was that we would require the gopher tortoises to be protected, and that would be the area that they would remove exotics. We would require at the next level of review, which would either be a final plat in subdivision, or a final site development plan review, that we get a gopher tortoise relocation management plan, which requires them to enhance or recreate gopher tortoise habitat, hopefully successfully in that area, and relocate all of the tortoises into that area. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. MS. BURGESON: There's 165 active and inactive burrows identified on the site by the consultant. The total number of burrows is over 210. They're all located -- another map to show you where they are located. They're located all within the -- what was on the previous map, the dark solid yellow and the striped yellow areas. Those burrows will be excavated at the time prior to any activity on the site, any site development activity. All the active and inactive burrows will be excavated and the tortoises relocated to the north preserve area. MR. COE: How many acres are they currently located in? MS. BURGESON: Currently -- MR. COE: And how many acres are they going to be relocated in? MS. BURGESON: Okay. Currently the solid yellow area of the site is 17.6 acres. That's the highest quality. The next high quality on the site is six acres. So you've got 24 plus acres of habitat they're existing in right now. And they'll be relocated into a portion up at the north end of the property, which is 5. -- I think it's 5.6 acres. MR. COE: Is that consistent with state law? MS. BURGESON: If they were going to get an approval from the state to relocate them on-site, the state recommendation would be two tortoises per acre. The consultant told me yesterday afternoon they anticipate between 41 and 55 tortoises actually on the property. So that would require anywhere from 20 to -- MR. COE: 25 acres. MS. BURGESON: Right, acres of preserve. That's if they were going to get an official relocation permit. They will, however, be obtaining an Incidental Take permit from the state, which pays for the taking of the habitat of the -- I'm not sure if it's the higher Page 53 January 5, 2000 quality 17 acres of the entire roughly 25 acres. What the county requires is the protection of the tortoises beyond that Incidental Take permit. We don't have the ability at this point through our Land Development Code or Growth Management Plan to request a particular area of the project be set aside for preserve. We have tried in the past through presentations -- Bill Lorenz has made several presentations to the Board of County Commissioners to adopt what was a habitat protection ordinance, which would have given us the ability to do something of that nature. But that never had been approved. So we looked to the petitioner to provide that area where the tortoises are being relocated and accept that and work with them to the best of our ability to get them to make that actual habitat. We are concerned on this project that with the number of tortoises on-site, with them being relocated from high quality to what is not gopher tortoise habitat, we are concerned for the survivability of the species on this site. But we will work with the petitioner to try to get them to recreate to the best of our ability that five-acre portion to the north that we will identify as a preserve. CHAIRMAN HILL: You mentioned a figure of tortoises on-site. Is that based on observation of tortoises, or on what they call active burrows? MS. BURGESON: It's based on the consultant's experience with gopher tortoise burrows identification and final results from when -- when you identify active and inactive burrows, both the active and inactive burrows are under current use. Active obviously immediate in use, inactive can be used at any time. And they use a calculation by South Florida Water Management -- I'm sorry, by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to calculate what they -- an estimated population. On this particular property, the consultant expected that there would be between four -- if there's 165 active burrows, somewhere between -- I think it was three and four -- every third or fourth burrow they would hope to find or expect to find when they excavate a tortoise in the burrow. CHAIRMAN HILL: About 40 to 50 -- MS. BURGESON: 55, right. CHAIRMAN HILL: -- population. MR. SMITH: Barbara, I have a question. MS. BURGESON: Yes. MR. SMITH: It looks like Lots 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 are not going to be allowed to be built by the -- you know, the original plans call for those lots, and then now the county's not going to allow those to -- MS. BURGESON: Well, let me get through the rest of my presentation. MR. SMITH: It relates to the tortoises. I was wondering, is there any way that the tortoises could be moved to those lots. MS. BURGESON: Those five lots that we're requesting be removed are all wetlands lots, and tortoises will not survive in that area. Page 54 January 5, 2000 The subject property has a special treatment overlay, identified on the zoning parcel; as I mentioned before, at approximately 20 acres. However, in doing field surveys of that, we've reduced that to roughly 10 acres on that boundary. In your staff report, we've included a fairly -- actually, a verbatim paragraph on what the ST intent is for Collier County reviews, and that is to -- the purpose of the overlay district is to assure preservation and maintenance of these areas in their ecological relationships and their integrity as a wetland. Therefore, staff has recommended that the redefined accepted wetland boundary, which five lots impact on that boundary, we recommend because of the ST portion of the Land Development Code, that those five lots be removed from the site development plan. The petitioner has proposed compensation for the anticipated allowable impacts to the wetlands, with enhancement to the remaining nine acres. If through the petitioner -- the petitioner is going forward, with the petitioner requesting that those five lots remain. Their anticipating mitigation for that would be supplemental plantings to the 4.5-acre gopher tortoise area, where the tortoises will be relocated to the north, and enhancement of the remaining nine acres of wetlands. The preservation requirements for this site are 25 percent of the existing native vegetation on-site for this property. That would be 17.4 acres. The EIS describes nine acres of wetlands that they will be preserving, 6.33 acres of uplands. This takes into consideration that they would be allowed to use those five acres -- or those five lots. That's where these numbers are coming in right now. That would leave 2.1 acres that would have to be provided in addition to what they've given us right now at the time of the next submittal. So in addition to the wetlands and that gopher tortoise preserve at the north edge of the property, they would have to provide us an additional 2.1 acres of either existing native vegetation or recreated in all three strata by planting larger plant material. MR. CARLSON: And that's not been identified? MS. BURGESON: No, it hasn't at this time. Two listed species were observed on site. The gopher tortoises, as we've discussed already, and common wild pine. Staff recommends approval of the petition for the conditional use, as well as the special treatment petition, with the conditions as identified. And I'd like to add one additional stipulation to that. Being that the site plans that we've had identified in our packages continue to identify that northern area as a -- I believe a conservation -- not a conservation, but a recreation or open space area, the last stipulation I'd like to add to the package would be that the PUD master plan shall be amended to rename the passive recreation area as a gopher tortoise preserve. The appropriate protective covenants Shall be placed on the preserve at the time of site development plan, construction plan approval. Page 55 January 5, 2000 And if you have any questions, the consultants are here, they can maybe more -- in more detail explain the project. CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for staff? MR. CORNELL: So, Barbara, you're sticking with the stipulation that the petitioner remove Lots 53 through 58; is that what I understand -- MS. BURGESON: That's staff's recommendation in addressing the ST area. MR. CORNELL: Yes. MS. BURGESON: Your -- you have the ability to go a step beyond what I can do. I can only recommend what the review allows me to do. MR. CORNELL: Right. MS. BURGESON: If you feel that it's not a very large impact to do that, you might request that in lieu of that some other mitigation or some other protection area be set aside. CHAIRMAN HILL: I have two questions relative to staff report on Page 2 under water management. Major issue six. I've read this three or four times. And the last sentence in paragraph one says the two existing lakes and canal will not be incorporated into the water management system. The next paragraph says that the lots -- back of lots will drain to the lakes and the wetland on the east edge of the property borders the -- one of the existing lakes. And then it ends up by saying, "Will discharge to the existing canal." I'm confused. Hi, Steve. MR. SEAL: Hi. Steve Seal, development services. I believe there's two existing lakes, and there's a couple proposed lakes. And I believe the development will drain into those proposed lakes. But the petitioners' engineer is here, he can elaborate on that? CHAIRMAN HILL: The canal feeds one of the existing lakes, right? MR. SEAL: Well, according to the petitioners, they aren't going to utilize those lakes, as far as their water management system, only the new lakes. CHAIRMAN HILL: But it says they won't use the canal either. MR. SEAL: Right. They're going to discharge into the canal, though. CHAIRMAN HILL: The other existing lake is just -- it borders on the wetland area to the east. And those lots bordering that will drain into that, right? Can you distinguish between that existing lake and the wetland area? MR. SEAL: David, could you elaborate on that. MR. FARMER: First of all, good morning, commissioners. For the record, my name is David Farmer. I work for Coastal Engineering. I represent the petitioner, Keystone Custom Homes. Today I have with me the environmental consultant, Mike Myers with Passarella and Associates; I also have our land use attorney, Perry Peeples, with Annis Mitchell; and the client is also here, Paula Davis, who is the president of Keystone Custom Homes. I guess to answer your question directly right now regarding the way the water management system is designed to operate, everything Page 56 January 5, 2000 stated in the staff report is correct. But I can understand how it can be a little nebulous. There's an existing lake up in this northeast quadrant, as well as the existing lake that you identified at the south of the wetland. Those areas were chosen not to be incorporated into the proposed water management system. It gets complicated when you start flood routing waters off-site of your project with runoff going into them. It's hard to quantify. So the South Florida Water Management District agreed in that we do not have to incorporate those into our system. To answer your question about the lots that back up to the wetland but then ties into the lake, there is a structural buffer, as we call it, otherwise known as a berm and a swale. And the swale will intercept the water from the rear yards of the proposed lots and divert the water into our proposed lake system, and then after it's been treated at that point, discharged through water control structures into the north canal. Does that answer that question? CHAIRMAN HILL: Is that buffer, that area which is not identified, is not crosshatched, it's -- MR. FARMER: It's actually a -- CHAIRMAN HILL: -- right along the edge of the lot. MR. FARMER: Yes, sir, it's the rear -- I believe it's 12 or 15 feet wide, and it provides for the rear of the lot to drain into the swale. And then there's a catch basin system that picks all that up and runs underneath the road and discharges into our proposed lake system. And that will prevent untreated water from then draining the wetland. The wetland itself, without getting into Mike's territory, is pretty much supplemented with water by the existing lake and the surrounding golf course system, the way the system's been operating for the last 15, 20, 25 years. If I could, I'd like to make just a small statement, and then move -- not dodging any of your questions, but move forward from there. At this time I'd like to thank the staff for their helpful insight and guidance over the last 12 months in developing these plans. We've gone through many, many iterations, and had to jump through a lot of design criteria to make sure we comply with federal and state regulation. We're very pleased with the staff report prepared by staff, and we agree with all the recommendations, with the exception of recommendation No. 9, which is the removal of the lots that intersect with the ST overlay. Based on many hours of on-site field work by our ecologist, Mike Myers, myself, the South Florida Water Management District and the Army Corps of Engineers, we feel the proposed area to be impacted no longer meets the intent of the original ST overlay area, due to basically drainage from development around it, and the existing canal to the north. The South Florida Water Management District and the Army Corps of Page 57 January 5, 2000 Engineers are ready to issue permits that allow for these lots to remain and to be incorporated into our proposed development. To discuss the particular vegetation within the proposed area, because we feel that is important, because as you know, all wetlands are not created equal, I have Mike Myers here to discuss further what the areas look like and what their quality is of the area proposed to be impacted. MR. MYERS: Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Mike Myers. I'm a senior ecologist with Passarella & Associates, and I'd like to make just a few quick comments about the wetland impact area and the ST overlay. But before I do that, if I could, I'd like to pass out a hand-out. CHAIRMAN HILL: I believe everyone got a copy of the extra material that was presented. MR. MYERS: What I'd like to mention is that the ST overlay district, when it was originally designated in this area, was -- correct me if I'm wrong, Barbara, probably back in the late Seventies, early Eighties. And I think at that point in time it was probably applicable. But when we take a look at the purpose and intent of the ST overlay and -- by doing that, I mean the language, which is on the first page of the handout that I gave you. If I may, I'd like to read just the first four or five lines. Under 2.2.24.1, purpose and intent: Within Collier County there are certain areas which because of their unique assemblages of flora and/or fauna, their aesthetic appeal, historical or archeological significance, rarity in Collier County, or their contribution to their own and adjacent ecosystems, make them worthy of special regulations, such as protection and conservation. If I may just comment a minute on all of those aspects. In your handout, on the second page I've given you kind of a general description of some of the vegetation of -- the dominant vegetation that occurs on the various strata that occurs in this wetland impact area that we're proposing to build upon. And I think -- I don't know all of your backgrounds, but I think many of those plants you're probably familiar with, Mr. Carlson. And the important column is probably the right-hand column. And if you can see that, about more than half of the plants that are listed there are either exotic or nuisance species. The assemblages of the flora in this area aren't unique or pristine. And their aesthetic appeal -- I think this area is probably on average invaded greater than 50 percent by exotics, such as melaleuca, Brazilian pepper, silk tree, which is something I've seen nowhere else except on this site, and Old World climbing fern. The historical or archeological significance of the site: In your EIS document, we've received a letter from the State Historical Society, indicating that they don't see any archeological significant sites within the project boundaries. Rarity in Collier County: What we're proposing to impact is a disturbed cypress area. And I don't believe there's a shortage of Page 58 January 5, 2000 those within Collier County. And then the last item is their contribution to their own and adjacent ecosystems. Again, I believe at this point in time the affect of this area, if anything, is probably negative, given the degree of exotics that have invaded the wetland. They provide a seed source, not only to the immediate area but to the adjacent ecosystems. Having said that, and Mr. Farmer already indicated that we have made application to the District and the Corps, and we are in the process of receiving those permits. They have been on-site and reviewed these areas and did not see any problems with impacts being proposed to the area. We are proposing mitigation to offset these impacts, which would include the eradication of exotics over the entire site, and supplemental plantings in the gopher tortoise relocation area that's being proposed at the upper northwest corner of the site. And in light of this information, we hope the EAC will grant a request to keep Lots 53 through 58. Having said that, I'd be happy to open up to questions. CHAIRMAN HILL: Sansbury. MR. SANSBURY: What would -- the 4.19 acres in relocation area, what are you going to do with the rest of the gopher tortoises? MR. MYERS: The gopher tortoises. What the petitioner is planning to do is we've submitted for an Incidental Take permit. And I guess the concept, much like the project that was before us a little while ago, there are mitigation banks established, and money is paid to the bank to purchase land -- gopher tortoise habitat elsewhere. And the money is for the taking of the gopher tortoise and its habitat. And the petitioner at this point in time, we're looking at approximately a fee of over $60,000 that would go towards estate fund to purchase lands elsewhere in Southwest Florida for gopher tortoises. CHAIRMAN HILL: As proposed? MR. MYERS: Yes. MR. COE: And then what happens to these extra turtles? MR. MYERS: That's a good question. MS. BURGESON: All of the tortoises will be relocated into the five-acre preserve. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I have a question -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Carlson? MR. CARLSON: Yeah, looking at your list of nuisance and exotic plants, if we included almost half of those Caesarweed, muscadine grape, poison ivy, we could justify Corkscrew Sanctuary was not a special treatment area. MR. MYERS: I understand. MR. CARLSON: These are common plants. Also, compensating for the wetland loss in the ST area by planting in the gopher tortoise reserve seems like double dipping to me. Seems like you should have to do that anyway. Should be unrelated to mitigating for wetland loss. It should be mitigation for relocating tortoises. Page 59 January 5, 2000 And finally, I mean, there's a map somewhere with these ST areas on it? MS. BURGESON: Yes. MR. CARLSON: Do we just arbitrarily at these meetings decide what is an ST or what is not, or do we have a review of these maps and update these maps and have some formal process for this? MS. BURGESON: A copy of the ST map should have been included in your package. If not, I've got a copy here and I can put that on the screen for the original ST boundary. MR. REISCHL: Could we have the visualizer, please. MR. CARLSON: Well, my point is, isn't there an official process for amending the ST map instead of just us deciding to do it here at this meeting? MS. BURGESON: The only way to actually remove the ST overlay is to go through a rezoning process. The conditional use process is not a rezoning process, and so we cannot remove the overlay. However, it's been staff's policy to field verify what is currently an existing boundary of wetlands. We -- the original ST overlay was put on in 1974. It is considerably larger than what staff is recommending. The -- actually, the ST overlay will remain over the entire property. It cannot be removed. And that ST overlay will remain over 20 acres. But as we're redefining the best and the jurisdictional wetland, that's the area that staff is recommending follow the intent of the Land Development Code in that there be no impact to that. In actuality, the ST will not come off of this property, and you will have ST overlays on 20 acres of this property. So there will be people in homes living in an ST MR. CARLSON: area -- MS. BURGESON: MR. CARLSON: MS. BURGESON: CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. -- on our maps? Yes. Mr. Smith, I think you have -- MR. SMITH: Yeah, Barbara, I have a question. But for the ST overlay, would you have made a recommendation that these lots be removed? MS. BURGESON: I really can't answer that. I -- we do not consider the exotic invasion in that area to be of much consequence, because it is a requirement of Collier County, all of our permitting process, for those exotics to be removed. So we try to look in terms of what that area can offer, once those exotics have been removed, and what within a short period of time. And usually within a year or two of its 50 percent exotic invaded, that area will come back to a fairly decent habitat as what had been there prior to that. It may have been that because the ST overlay is there that I've got a little bit more ability to recommend those to be removed, and whether I would have recommended them without that, I really can't tell you right now. MR. KELLY: If I may, can I make an additional comment as far as the quality of the ST overlay? Page 60 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: Sure. MR. KELLY: The area in question, not only is the exotics a concern in that area, but I think the area has also been severely hydrologically altered. As Mr. Carlson mentioned earlier, there's a cone effect, and there has been one created by the canal to the north. The area we're proposing to impact is at the very northern end of the wetland. And there has been a draw-down effect on the water levels within that wetland by that canal. I've been walking across the site on and off for over two and a half years and have yet to see water at the northern end of that wetland. MR. CARLSON: I have another question. CHAIRMAN HILL: Go ahead. MR. CARLSON: Are the lakes in this process necessary for fill to be used on-site, the proposed lakes? MR. FARMER: Yeah, David Farmer again. The proposed lakes actually serve two purposes: One is to provide fill for construction that reduces any unnecessary on-site trips, but through importation of fill. And then the other benefit is then it also provides for retention for stormwater. MR. CARLSON: Will all of the fill from the lakes on the project be used on the project? MR. FARMER: Yes, sir. I have not done actually a full calculation to see if we'll make a break even, but we will use at least as much as what's coming out of those lakes. MR. CARLSON: Did you consider looking at the piece of land up at the north end that's proposed for a gopher tortoise preserve and excavating their -- and changing your configuration here a little bit here and keeping a gopher tortoise preserve where you propose lake now? MR. FARMER: Well, I'm going to state that the canal is existing. The land to the north then abuts other residences and a golf course, and we chose not to go through and take out that land, because it also helps serve as a part of our retained native vegetation. So we're not -- we didn't want to alter that northern end if we didn't have to, other than removal of exotics and -- MR. CARLSON: You wouldn't rather retain vegetation in the heart of the community? MR. FARMER: I guess that came out the wrong way. We felt that leaving that area to the north was the best course of action. And as far as designing this project and providing a usable pattern for the lots and for the lakes and the water management system. MR. MYERS: If I can, I'd like to try and -- Mike Myers, for the record -- comment on that a little bit. At first blush, I guess my feeling was I'd prefer to see a gopher tortoise preserve more within the community. But based on my experience of these type of areas, once they're up and running and the community has been built, gopher tortoise preserves that have been established within a residential community tend to suffer mulching from neighbors, tree pruning, and another threat that some people Page 61 January 5, 2000 don't consider is neighborhood pets. I've had an opportunity to dig up a number of tortoises that have been used by -- or used as a chew toy by dogs, and missing front flippers, the edges of the shells being removed. So I can appreciate your comment, and -- but given the configurations of this site, and a northern area with the canal acting as a natural barrier, I think to those kind of activities from any community to the south should be viewed as a plus and not necessarily a negative. In addition, the area that we're talking about, right here, has a canopy of slash pines and a heavy monoculture of Brazilian pepper in a sub-canopy. But what that sub -- what that pepper is resting on is some old sandy spoil piles, which I don't know if they're from a neighboring development or the canal. But these areas, I believe, with supplemental plantings could be utilized by the tortoises. CHAIRMAN HILL: I have several questions. One, to the north is Imperial Golf Estates, right? MR. MYERS: Correct. CHAIRMAN HILL: Just north of your proposed recreational area or gopher tortoise preserve, is that a preserve area of Imperial or is that a residential area? What is that backing up to? MR. MYERS: I think it's golf course. MR. SANSBURY: It's a golf hole. MR. MYERS: There's a golf hole right there? CHAIRMAN HILL: The other question -- MR. SANSBURY: It's on the right-hand. CHAIRMAN HILL: Back to my original -- go over to the chart just to -- no, the plot plan. Just to the right of Lots 59 through 66 is an area which is undesignated (sic) as far as the description on your legend. What is that? It's a -- it's not a buffer area. MR. MYERS: Yes, it is. CHAIRMAN HILL: With that ragged edge? MR. MYERS: Yeah. Well, the -- CHAIRMAN HILL: See, that's where those lots are draining, right? You're saying that's the buffer? MR. MYERS: No, the buffer -- this is a natural buffer, which would be -- which would contain natural vegetation. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. It's not marked on your legend and it's not clear what that area was. MR. MYERS: The South Florida Management District, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, like to see upland buffers where possible to the wetlands, and they have a requirement of a 15 foot minimum, 25 foot on average. So that's what that represents as an open buffer. CHAIRMAN HILL: The other question on Page 9 in the Environmental Impact Statement, Paragraph D. It says the natural drainage pattern has been changed due to the adjacent developments such as Palm River and Collier's Reserve. Several ditches have been cut through the property to relieve standing water from Palm River. The next paragraph says that Palm River Estates is going to have Page 62 January 5, 2000 to do something about that. And you're saying that will be redirected to the canal? MR. FARMER: Without just rereading this portion, I think I actually wrote this portion of the EIS with the intent -- I'll just try to explain in many more words what we're doing. Right now Palm River does not have a permitted outfall to the west or to Collier's Reserve in that area. And what we chose to do in looking at it in a holistic system, not taking a snapshot at just ~his area or just this area, but taking a look at everything around us and trying to really address what's the best thing to do, we came up with the idea of actually intercepting that water that now discharges onto the -- picking up the water that discharges from Fairway Circle and Cypress Way, Cypress Way West, I believe it is, and presently it discharges through here and part of it goes through down and cuts through part of Collier's Reserve, and part of it just kind of stays on-site. What we're going to be doing is -- and this is with the blessing of the water management district, is picking that water up and running it along in a swale in the right-of-way up to the north and then through our project through a pipe network system that's completely dedicated, run it straight to the north to discharge into the canal. And that will provide much better outfall for the homeowners in this vicinity of Palm River. CHAIRMAN HILL: So that does not require any construction on Palm River estates then? Since -- MR. FARMER: Within -- CHAIRMAN HILL: -- owning the right-of-way. MR. FARMER: -- right-of-ways, yes, sir. There's no intention to go on any private property and do any harm or anything. CHAIRMAN HILL: Other questions for the petitioner? MR. SANSBURY: I thought Collier County had a requirement for a 20-foot maintenance easement around all lakes. MR. FARMER: What I've -- we do have 20 feet around our lakes. MR. SANSBURY: So they're outside the lots. They're on the back of -- I notice the rear setback on the lot was 10 feet. That was at MR. FARMER: Right. Well, what we've done is the lots that are up against the lakes, we have used a portion of the rear yard setback as a dedicated lake maintenance easement. MR. SANSBURY: You've got 10 and 107 MR. FARMER: Basically there's 15 feet on the -- past the rear lot line and then five feet actually within the lot, so 15 and 5 makes 20, so we do provide the full access to maintenance. CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Seal? MR. SEAL: Yeah, when that's platted, there'll be a 20-foot lake maintenance easement around the lakes. That will be shown on the cross-section of the lakes during permitting. CHAIRMAN HILL: Other questions for petitioner? MR. CARLSON: I've just got one last question. Wouldn't the removal of the lots that staff is proposing Page 63 January 5, 2000 contribute to your need to come up with more preserve area? And wouldn't that actually help you? And if you want to retain those lots, where's the additional preserve area going to come from? MR. FARMER: Well, right now what you're required to present and what we have presented is a conceptual plan; albeit that it's pretty much refined at this point. But without actually talking with Barbara and not showing -- her showing me what she's looking at, I don't know how she came up exactly with her calculations. I know it was from the EIS. But on my plan, what I've gone through is, I've gone through and delineated -- not delineated, but I've calculated what areas were required and shown that we have provided it. Again, it's not crosshatched, but there are several upland areas down towards the south that I'm not sure of. I don't believe they were actually included in Barbara's analysis, and that's of no fault, I'm sure. Again, if you look on my plan, I've got the table that actually goes through that calculation. Now, I do propose some mitigation, and the mitigation is because some of the areas that are convenient for -- to be used as buffers are not vegetated, and so I think .66 acres we're going to vegetate with the lower mid and upper canopy with oversized material to compensate, which is frequently done in Collier County. Does that answer your question, sir? MR. CARLSON: It probably did, but I didn't understand it. MR. COE: I've got a couple things. I'm still concerned about this -- you know, I hate to sound like a torn tugger or whatever -- MR. FARMER: No, no, that's all right. Please. MR. COE: -- you want to call it. I just -- somehow or other planting 25 acres for the turtles into -- really, you can call that five and a half acres, but if you look at the way it's configured, it's about four and a half acres, unless you want 'em walking around the back yards of the houses to the north. Take a look at how that -- look at the area that you're developing in. And that area is almost all tortoises. And you're going to cram in that skinny area up there. And I didn't pick it up until I got ahold of the aerial photograph. I'm used to that, because I remember using it to bomb things in Vietnam. And I noticed that there was all kinds of developments up there. So what we've done is we've crammed these tortoises in, they can't get back across the canal, so they're not going to be involved with you all. But we've crammed them up there so the people to the north have got to deal with them. MR. MYERS: I think it's important to reiterate that the petitioners' intent is to apply for a gopher tortoise Incidental Take permit, which does allow for the taking of the on-site turtles and its habitat. And in lieu of that, you know, $60,000 will be contributed to a state fund to purchase gopher tortoise habitats somewhere else. And to put this in perspective, in most counties around the rest of the state, that is typically all that is required of the developer. MR. CARLSON: Okay. Does that include relocation of some Page 64 January 5, 2000 tortoises from here? MR. MYERS: No. In Collier County, the petitioner has agreed to excavate all the active and inactive burrows on the site, over and above getting the gopher tortoise Incidental Take permits and relocating them to the north. MR. CARLSON: Okay. MR. COE: Well, I guess it's nothing against you all, I just -- I don't understand the law. In other words, if it's two tortoises per acre and you've got five acres up there, and you can put 10 tortoises, what do you do with the rest of them? MR. MYERS: I think we're confusing two different processes here. The gopher tortoise relocation program that Barbara had mentioned in her initial remarks is one type of process, okay? That process is typically delegated to larger projects, 300 acres and above. Those type of gopher tortoise relocation permits usually are applicable to sites that have 25 acres or greater of area they can set aside as a preserve for a breeding population of gopher tortoises. We're not proposing a gopher tortoise relocation on a project this size. It's just not feasible. MR. CARLSON: So the fee that you're paying assumes mortality? MR. MYERS: That's correct. MR. CARLSON: You expect them to die. MS. BURGESON: Let me -- before you say anything -- MR. CARLSON: Okay. MS. BURGESON: -- I've had discussions with Jim Beaver. The state's position on what an Incidental Take permit means is that they do not condone tortoises being entombed or harmed. The incidental portion of that is that during construction, if a tortoise is incidentally taken, that's what the fee or the permit covers. But Jim Beaver has spoken with me and told me that they are supposed to, well, move them out of harm's way, so to speak. But because they've paid for that Incidental Take permit, they don't require it as a part of the permit. MR. CARLSON: Okay. So -- MR. MYERS: Can I comment on that? MR. CARLSON: -- what you're saying -- let me just follow up. Then what's happening here is you're putting too many turtles in too small a preserve and you expect mortality, and that's just the way it is. MR. COE: But you paid your $65,000, or 60,000, whatever it is, and it's permitted by the state. It's allowed. I don't want to make it sound like a criminal act here. MR. MYERS: Thank you. MR. COE: But the state law permits you -- you pay up the money and you can knock off a bunch of tortoises; is that what I'm supposed to understand? MR. MYERS: Unfortunately, the harsh reality -- MR. CARLSON: I volunteer to help find homes for these turtles. I volunteer publicly on record. Right here. I will help. MR. MYERS: I've -- God, I empa -- I've had this conversation Page 65 January 5, 2000 with so many people. And as far as Barbara's comment, I've had this same conversation with Rick McCaan, who is Jim Beaver's boss out at Tallahassee. And what he has told me, as in many other parts of the state, that once the gopher tortoises Take permit fee is paid, they are free to clear the land. There is no requirement to dig up the turtle and move them out of harms way. MR. COE: What does this fee pay for? Land someplace else? MR. MYERS: Yes. It's pooled in a state -- previously Hickey Park -- Hickey Creek Mitigation Park in East Lee County was the last gopher tortoise preserve area. The last time I had talked with Kim Driedon (phonetic), they're pooling money to purchase -- MS. BURGESON: Right, I don't think they've identified any -- MR. MYERS: Right. MS. BURGESON: Right now there are no gopher tortoise mitigation bank areas. MR. MYERS: Just like -- MR. COE: If we had the bank, we could just put these things in your pickup truck and haul them out there, right? MR. MYERS: Well, I'm afraid you're getting into a whole new can of worms. Gopher tortoises are susceptible to something called URS, upper respiratory syndrome. And it's kind of like a bad cold in you and I, but it can be fatal in gopher tortoises. So -- and the old school of thought used to be pick up these turtles and move them somewhere else. Well, when you move them somewhere else, chances are you're going to move them to suitable gopher tortoise habitat. And how do you know it's suitable? There's other gopher tortoises there. Well, if you take an infected tortoise from your site, move them over to a healthy population, you really haven't provided a service; you've now infected a healthy population. MS. BURGESON: Prior to the Incidental Take permit, which came in about -- like about five or six years ago, my guess, Collier County in most cases had gopher tortoise preserves on site. For instance, what was at the time Southampton PUD, which is up behind Greentree, Stone Bridge property, relocated their tortoises into adequate habitat and no permit was required in terms of taking or harming the tortoises. That's how most of the properties were developed at that time. A lot of change in development theory has happened since then. MR. SANSBURY: But Barbara's right, I think. We just -- I have a six-acre gopher tortoise habitat. What we had to do is relocate them off one piece of property, put them in a holding area. During the time they were in the holding area, we had to fence about six acres within the golf course. We had to plant 500 prickly pear cactus, 500 gopher apples, some type of a grass, move all the exotics, move everything out of there, replace them. It's been a year since we've done that. Of the 12 that we've relocated, we've identified I think nine that have survived the relocation program and are living in this area and have active burrows. What we had to do for the permit was that when they went and Page 66 January 5, 2000 viewed the photos, they found 48 active burrows. We had to place a letter of credit with the state under a permit on the basis of $6,500 an acre for the land with two gopher turtles per acre. And then when we actually got there and had our consultants dig them up, we only found 12 of them. We've relocated. We're now in the process of going back to the state and asking them to come in, and the county will come in also, take a look at our preserve, see if we've done it right, and hopefully get some refunds on our -- MR. CARLSON: At the last meeting, we dealt with the church project -- MR. SANSBURY: Same thing. MR. CARLSON: -- where the turtles were located. Was that more expensive than the $60,000 cost of this Incidental Take? MR. MYERS: How many turtles? MS. BURGESON: I -- obviously I can't remember. MR. CARLSON: There were a lot of turtles. MS. BURGESON: A large number in five acres. I think they -- in fact, the consultant is here for that. I think that -- my guess is there probably were 25 tortoises on that site expected. Probably less than that. I think maybe 20 or 21. That consultant has agreed to relocate them off-site and obtain a relocation permit. So they will be going through the state agency to find appropriate habitat to relocate those tortoises off-site. MR. CARLSON: And do you know what that will cost them? MS. BURGESON: From what I understand, it's fairly close to the c6st of the Incidental Take permit; however, a little bit more complicated and time consuming to actually find habitat to relocate them to. You'd need to find upland habitat. The state may be at this point preferring that it's upland habitat without gopher tortoise population in existence so you're not contaminating an existing population by relocating them. And then that area gets put into a conservation easement and the tortoises get relocated. So maybe 10 years ago, if you were looking for upland habitat -- for instance, there were areas used in the North Golden Gate Estates area outside of Orangetree, say eight or nine years ago. They would find palmetto area, they'd recreate it to habitat and relocate tortoises into that area. At that time you could probably have gotten five or 10 or 20 acres in the Estates for less than what an Incidental Take permit would cost. Today it may be a little bit more to relocate them, but it's probably fairly close in cost. It's hard to say. It depends on what the current real estate of an upland qualified parcel would be. CHAIRMAN HILL: At the expense of sounding sarcastic, why don't we move them to the high ground into panther mitigation bank? One question. You were talking about the retained -- the preserve was the 17 acres of retained native vegetation. Is that a -- MS. BURGESON: I'm sorry, it's 17 acres? CHAIRMAN HILL: On the land use table that you have on your -- Page 67 January 5, 2000 the retained native vegetation is spread out among the lots; is that correct? MR. MYERS: That's correct. CHAIRMAN HILL: Does that qualify as a preservation of -- MS. BURGESON: What they -- what I've been able to identify up front easily is that the nine acres of wetland would be preserved. The 6.33 acres of scrub at the top, that area -- it's actually five acres that was identified for gopher tortoise relocation. I'm not sure that the entire 6.33 could be recreated, because you've come down to it's only like a 10-foot strip along the north boundary. And whether that could actually be used and recreated as a habitat, I'm not sure that would be functional. But there are areas that you could use along the southern edge of the property that just were not identified to us as areas for preservation, but they could be used towards the 25 percent. And we expect that to be shown at the next level of review. CHAIRMAN HILL: Is there not a maintenance right-of-way along the canal? MR. FARMER: Yes, there is an existing -- I'll guess here, but I think it's a 20-foot wide easement. MS. BURGESON: Okay. Then none of that area outside of the five acres could be used towards gopher tortoise relocation, if there's a maintenance easement. MR. FARMER: And the easement is on the south side. MS. BURGESON: Yeah. MR. FARMER: And we've been in negotiations with John Boldt's office to relocate that easement as necessary around our upper lots as they change, so that he has adequate access and the lots function well. CHAIRMAN HILL: That's a significant portion of the width of that area. MR. FARMER: No, we're talking just to the south, sir. Here's the canal. It's hatched, I believe, on your plan. The easement runs along the back of these lots. CHAIRMAN HILL: Just one side of the canal? MR. FARMER: Yeah. CHAIRMAN HILL: Oh, okay. MR. FARMER: They have -- CHAIRMAN HILL: I'm accustomed to having it on both sides. MS. BURGESON: When you get a little bit further to the east on that, David, where you've got the lots that are identified right there, you'll have an easement behind those lots against that canal. MR. FARMER: Yeah, yeah. The agreement I made with John is that I would not get any subdivision approval until he was happy with what we were offering, so CHAIRMAN HILL: Any other questions for the petitioner or staff? I'll open it up for the public then. MR. FARMER: I would just like to reserve the right to come back and -- Page 68 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: Sure. MR. FARMER: -- answer any further questions. MR. PIRES: Good morning, members of the council. My name is Anthony Pires, the law firm of Woodward, Pires and Lombardo. I represent the Palm River Homeowners and Civic Association, who represent approximately 1,600 homeowners who live adjacent to or in the area or vicinity of this particular proposed project. A number of the residents are also here today, and you'll be hearing them speaking. Some of them may be more passionate than others about the issues because of what they perceive as the overly done by -- on the part of the developer as far as his proposed site plan and trying to maximize the usage and not minimize the impacts on the development. You will hear some comments with regards to endangered creatures or species of special concern; an individual who has photographs of a bald eagle sighted as recently as a week and a half ago on the easterly portion of the property near Cypress Way East. Red foxes, silver foxes, possibly fox squirrels, other animals and creatures that you haven't heard about yet this morning, that the cold black-and-white text of an EIS or a staff report may not convey, as opposed to what would be conveyed by the comments by the residents. Additionally, there are a number of other issues that we have that would be brought forth later on before the Planning Commission and the County Commission that address other issues that aren't necessarily possibly within the realm of the EAC. Transportation, buffering, landscaping, other health, safety and welfare issues that we will be bringing forth to the Planning Commission and the County Commission. I think one thing that's really important also to remember is that this a conditional use application for a cjuster development. Pursuant to the Land Development Code -- and I have handouts of the cjustering section of the code dealing with cjuster developments -- I don't know if I should hand them to the vice-chairman. MR. CORNELL: Sure. MR. PIRES: -- for the members of the council is that in Section 2.6.27.1 of the Land Development Code dealing with cjuster development, it says the purpose of a cjuster development is to provide a unique and innovative alternative to the conventional residential development. And it goes on to talk about other aspects. And then on the last part of it, it says, "and encouraging the conservation of environmental resources." I think you've heard a substantial discussion in one of the issues that was noted by the residents and ourselves with regards to the gopher tortoise situation. The proposal is to take the prime high quality gopher tortoise habitat, take the gopher tortoises out of that area, those that can be relocated, move them to an area where there is not a high quality or even a quality gopher habitat; try to recreate that to a habitat where there are no gophers indicated or burrows indicated by the EIS or the petitioner. I find that is not innovative. I don't believe, in my opinion, Page 69 January 5, 2000 that encourages the conservation of environmental resources. I think it does quite the contrary. You also may hear the petitioner say in rebuttal, as he's indicated in his application, that gee, we could build 205 single-family lots, but no, we're proposing much less because we're going this villa route. What they don't tell you, as part of that, is what Mr. Farmer finally basically mentioned today, is that they need those lakes for two reasons: The fill for the lot and broader management for the project. So that takes out a substantial number of proposed single-family sites that they would otherwise say they could develop at the density of three units per acre. Additionally, you have the wetlands that would eliminate a number of the single-family homes that would otherwise be just three units per acre. What we have is a villa project that we have other concerns with regards to the criteria contained with the Land Development Code for conditional uses dealing with cjuster development. Section 2.6.27.4.5, at Page LDC-2:200 -- and I've underlined some of these sections for the convenience of the council's review -- it says, "All reductions in the minimum lot area, lot width and yard requirements below that which would otherwise be required within the district in which the cjuster development is located shall be required to provide an equal amount of common open space within the same phase and general area of each cjuster of homes." Now, there is a 60 percent open space requirement that we believe staff has indicated has been achieved. What I have not seen is any calculation or any presentation of this additional common open space required by Section 2.6.27.4.5. By way of example, the typical RFS lot size, minimum lot width, is 80 feet. The proposal on the site plan indicates that some of the lot widths in this area will be reduced to 50 feet. Now, I don't see a calculation for reduction of 20 feet by -- or excuse me, 30 feet by "X" for the square footage of this reduced single-family lot going to a smaller villa lot being made up anywhere as common open space. I believe that's a flaw in the site plan, and that's why this application is premature for this board's consideration. Additionally, in that same section dealing with cjuster development and conditional uses, in Section 2.6.27.3, at Page LDC-2:199, it requires that there be an overall -- a conditional use conceptual plan which shall at a minimum depict the following: The overall development plan of the site, showing individual lots, which it does, and their square footage, which it does not, because it gives a minimum; setback and yard relationships, doesn't show that, it has a box showing minimum yard setbacks; buildings and their square footage. The only building I see -- unless my eyes are going bad, and these progressive bifocals have a tendency to make me look kind of funny at times -- is a recreational facility; nothing on any of these sites showing the relationship. So we believe that from a planning perspective, although it may Page 70 January 5, 2000 not be totally within a purview of the EAC from a planning perspective, we don't have the conceptual site plans necessary for any further review. Now, staff may disagree. I don't know if there's been any formal interpretation on that. But I think the black-and-white language of this code is you have the concept of cjustering to be more innovative and encourage preservation of environmental areas. You take an 80-by-100 lot, or maybe, say, minimum 10,000 square foot lot, and reduce that in size. In order to encourage that, you have to make that up elsewhere as common open space. I don't see that calculation. I don't see this anywhere in the materials that have been submitted by the petitioner or anywhere in their presentation. Now, Mr. Farmer may say he has that in his materials. I think it would have been helpful to have that before the staff, before this council and for anybody interested in reviewing the particular application. We also believe it's appropriate for this council, before it makes a recommendation of approval, if that's to be the case -- we recommend denial -- any recommendation of approval, that they have all the information before it as to any Incidental Take permit. There is a possibility that all the gopher habitat will be destroyed. That's what this plan calls for. All the gopher habitats' going to go away. However, he we don't know that may occur. This conceptual plan, therefore, isn't really finalized until such time as permits, if any, are agreed and obtained from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission -- which I still may call the Game Commission after all these years -- but we don't know that. It could alter the proposed conceptual plan. Therefore, we believe this application is premature. In following up the comments of some of the board members, we also believe that the amount set aside for the gopher habitat is not quality habitat, is not in keeping with the ratios, borders a residential community that would have the same effect as Mr. Myers indicated they were trying to avoid by let's take them out of the middle of the project, put them up north, but they're putting them next to a residential development that has dogs, people and those kind of impediments to, you know, sustainable gopher existence, I guess you would call that, that he said they were trying to achieve by moving it to the north. So I think that that's disingenuous as far as that particular argument. You'll hear other comments from other members of the community, once again. We believe that this project is inappropriate as proposed, as designed. We also concur with the staff recommendation that Lots 53 through 58 be removed from the site plan. We also recognize the conduct -- the comment made by one of the board members that there's a double dip or double credit with regards to the gopher habitat. They say they will try to utilize that as part of the wetland mitigation and also utilize that as part of the gopher tortoise. I think they're inconsistent because gophers don't live in the wet stuff, as I understand it. Page 71 January 5, 2000 Therefore, we request that this advisory board -- and you may hear other comments that the -- number one, not recommend approval of the proposed petition as submitted; that this board require that petitioners show the amount of required common open space to be calculated and shown to accommodate and account for the reduction in lot width, lot size, setbacks and the other criteria that they're asking to be modified from the standard RSF-3 zoning requirement. Also request that the gopher habitat be retained where it is, and/or additional gopher habitat be required to be set aside. That before this board makes its -- any final recommendation now, other than denial, that they have to review any Incidental Take application and permit, if issued, by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; that in all events the land under the proposed Lots 53 through 58 be removed from the site plan as developed areas. Once again, we don't believe this concept is unique or innovative. We think what's happening here is that they recognize that they cannot utilize the site for a single-family project as they wish to because of other constraints for drainage, site requirements, and so they're trying to reduce the lot size. They're not being innovative; they're pushing it up against the residential development, they're eliminating viable, high-quality gopher habitat and, therefore, running contrary to the concept of a cjuster development to encourage the conservation of our environmental resources. We're available for any questions that you all may have, and once again, we hear a number of residents who are concerned and may be impassioned about what can happen to the flora and fauna, unique species that are up there. They live in that area. They've seen it. They don't visit it just occasionally over a couple of years or two and a half years. Thank you. C~AIRMAN HILL: Thank you. Questions for -- anybody else from the public? MR. BELT: I was going to say good morning, but it's good afternoon, commission members. I'm John Belt, for the record. I'm a member of the board of Palm River Homeowners. And of course I agree completely with what Mr. Tony has said to you along the way. It bothers me, and I'm just neophyte in this type of work, that people would come before you and then ask for your approval of something that has been lined up, subject to a recommendation later on when they make a new site plan. It seems to me that what they should have before you to determine is a regular site plan of what they're proposing. And it says in here, they talk about Collier County group management plan and that they -- that the environmental resources permit rules subject to review by the current planning environmental staff. To me, I can't understand why they would come up and ask this be done and then say well, we're going to have something from the Florida Wildlife Commission and that may change it. Why didn't they get that in the first place? I do agree, one thing they mentioned that we're talking about, Page 72 January 5, 2000 five lots. Well, if you go by the numbers from 53 through 58, that's really six lots that they talk about removing. And we recommend that that be removed along the way. It disturbs me a little bit when I heard today for the first time that the site plan or the 22 acres or 21 acres that is laid out, the overlay, that will still be in existence, and there will be homes in the middle of the overlay. I thought the overlay was to protect the environment and keep that thing lined up along the way. To me, I don't think that they're doing anything when they say well, they're going to give $60,000 to remove those turtles. From what I heard today, it's not very convenient to move turtles. It's certainly not going to be convenient to move what we've had for a number of years in habitat to a four-acre tract and say well, if they move them, we'll just pay you for land somewhere else so somebody else can move them. You talked earlier today about a man making a lot of money about taking ground off of the area so that they can sell habitat replacement areas, as I understood it. Maybe I didn't understand it right, but that's what they were providing for, is that somebody could go in and buy that land, or buy the rights to change the mitigation that they're talking about doing here. I feel that they should not be approved at the present time, and I'm hopeful that you'll give that consideration. Any questions? CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you, Mr. Belt. Is there anyone else? MR. GREIVELL: Yeah, my name is Mark Greivell, I'm homeowner on CHAIRMAN HILL: Repeat your name, please. MR. GREIVELL: Mark Greivell. THE COURT REPORTER: Did you sign in? MR. GREIVELL: I did not. THE COURT REPORTER: Would you spell you name, please. MR. GREIVELL: G-R-E-I-V-E-L-L. And my wife and the neighbors have put together a booklet here with some pictures, bald eagles and other animals that live in that area. There's been bobcats sighted, grey and red fox sighted in that area just recently. I've got a note here and I'd like to hand it over to you all to look at, review it. I'd like Barbara to see it also. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. MR. GREIVELL: And just a word in, that that whole area prior to any development was the Big Cypress slough prior to 1-75, prior to Willoughby Acres, the whole shot. And it's turning out that this is pretty much the last piece of land that's untouched in that whole slough. And when it comes to rain water, it comes to stormwater management and the whole subject, we're -- the more impervious area we produce there, the more problems we have with water runoff there. We also have pictures of the drainage issue, which isn't part of this meeting, but we'd like to see the last little piece of development there preserved and possibly the county take it over or take it -- put it into a park-like setting of some sort and not be Page 73 January 5, 2000 developed. That's all I have to say. MR. SMITH: I do have a question for you. Would you be willing to have a taxing district in Palm River where you would tax yourselves the money necessary to buy this land? MR. GREIVELL: I don't think that would be out of the question. MR. SMITH: Okay. MR. CARLSON: And wouldn't we -- if we had a county-wide green space acquisition program, wouldn't this be a nice piece of land? CHAIRMAN HILL: Anybody else from the public? Yes, sir. MR. HEATHERINGTON: Ken Heatherington. H-E-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-G-T-O-N. I'm a resident of Palm River Estates, 145 Viking Way. I'm also a certified transportation planner. My resume is on record with the county. What we haven't determined, whether traffic is an issue with the Environmental Advisory Council. Very briefly, I'd like to present some information regarding the intensity of the development. Using Institute of Transportation Engineers Land Use Code for this development, single-family detached and residential condominiums, the 157 units would generate approximately 131 peak hour p.m. trips, or 1,312 average daily trips. Currently in Palm River Estates, we have one entrance in and out viking Way. It is a 20-foot neighborhood street. This adds a tremendous amount of capacity to that street and does again concern the health, safety and welfare of the residents of that area. And I defer to Ron on this issue as far as the traffic analysis requirement. And this was out of, I believe, one of the amendments to Land Development Code. If the proposed land development or subdivision will generate traffic volumes in excess of 1,000 average daily trips, or 100 vehicles per hour, peak hour, peak season, whichever is more, then a traffic analysis prepared by professional engineers shall be provided by the developer. My question is, has that analysis been prepared at this point in the discussion? Again, our concern is the impact of -- particularly the -- what they have called cjuster development. And I concur with Mr. Pires, that that is using that term loosely, that the residential condominiums on that end of the subdivision will generate a great deal of traffic on viking Way and is a concern to the residents. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HILL: Anybody else in the public would like to speak? Yes, ma'am. MS. HEMMING: Carol Hemming. H-E-M-M-I-N-G. I live in Palm River on Viking way. And I guess I would kind of like to just reiterate, this is not a complete plan. There is no indication of the size of the homes that are going to be built. We have 50-foot wide lots indicated. We received the letter in the mail from the developer saying that the things being built in there were going to be 2,000 to 3,000 square feet in size. The site plan indicates minimum sizes of 600 to 1,000 square feet on the site plan map. I'd like to know, is this going to be a gated community? As Page 74 January 5, 2000 other people have stated, we have very narrow roads. Viking Way is narrow, Cypress Way is narrow. There are supposed to be two entrances; however, right now our only way out of Palm River, a lot of us in Palm River, is over an internal bridge that crosses over the river. If this is a gated community, that means that if anything happens to that bridge, we are all in big trouble. And I think that that is an environmental issue. There are -- we are also, some of us, in floodplain on viking Way, myself included. And there were issues -- I believe there are drainage issues that needed to be addressed seriously, especially if they start digging things up. I guess that's about it. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. Anyone else from the public that would like to address this petition? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HILL: Then we'll close the public portion and ask the council for their pleasure. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. MR. CARLSON: They want to rebut. MR. SANSBURY: Oh, they want to rebut? MR. MYERS: Yeah, is it possible to comment? CHAIRMAN HILL: Certainly. I'm sorry. Yes. MR. MYERS: I just wanted to follow up on a couple of comments that I heard. One of the conditions of gopher tortoise Incidental Take permit, it's subject to local approval. So just so you all understand, it's not possible for us to be here today and hand you a copy of a permit. It's conditional upon us receiving local approval. So this precedes us getting an Incidental Take permit. Again, I would like to emphasize the fact that any kind of preserve within this area would likely be smaller preserves and probably surrounded by development. High -- or individual single-family homesites, as opposed to what we're proposing up here is abutted by a golf hole. It's not single-family homesites. So I think as far as impacts to an existing gopher tortoise population, there would be fewer, if they were located to the north, versus within the heart of the community itself. And lastly, I wanted to comment on the wetland mitigation that has been proposed. For the wetland impact or the impacts to the ST overlay area, it totals 1.01 acres. And based on the South Florida Water Management District's criteria, our enhancement of the remaining nine acres is more than sufficient to offset those wetland impacts. So what we are proposing -- when we proposed additional plantings to the gopher tortoise preserve to the north, that is over and above what is acceptable mitigation for those wetland impacts, so it wouldn't really be double dipping. Thank you. MR. SMITH: I had a question, Mr. Chairman, if I might. CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. Page 75 January 5, 2000 MR. SMITH: The Lots 53 through 58. I'm looking at a map here. The designation in sort of a freehand type of methodology in terms of showing what might be part of wetlands to the -- this would be to the north part? Yeah. Now, it's hard to -- I don't think that's represented on the map that you're looking at, but it is on the one that I'm looking at here. You might want to come grab this and see what I'm talking about. This shaded area in here? MR. MYERS: Yes. MR. SMITH: Okay. As I look at that, and you may want to look at this map, or you may be totally familiar with it and not need to. The removal of those lots would mean that about a third, as I see it, of that land is not -- would not have been part of any wetlands anyway. It's just being removed from the -- is that correct? MR. FARMER: If I'm understanding what you're saying, yes, that's correct, it's not all wetlands in those lots. MR. SMITH: And about a third of it is not. MR. FARMER: That is correct. MR. SMITH: Yeah, okay. MR. MYERS: Thank you. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes, Mr. Sansbury. MR. SANSBURY: Okay, just a few things that -- I have several problems with the plan and proposal. The first one being the presentation to us with things such as showing a parcel to be a passive recreation area and then telling us it's going to be a gopher turtle relocation area. I mean, if he's going to give us a plan, I'd like to see what it's really going to be. I have a problem with Lot 50 through Lot 58. I understand the treatment on Lot 59 through Lot 66 with the native vegetation, a band behind the lots. I don't believe that Lot 50 through 58, talking about berming up the back of the lots, I don't think that works. Number one, I don't think that's the way you treat the edge of a wetland. I have a problem when I see a plan that tells me I've got native vegetation of 17.76 acres and I ask the question where is it? Well, it's spotted on different places around the community. I just -- I have a problem. I really would recommend to this board that this petition be rejected on that basis. MR. COE: Mr. President, I'd like to make a comment. CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Coe. MR. COE: I feel along the same lines, is that, you know, if there's going to be a preservation area, I don't think it should be located between two buildings that are 10 feet apart. That's not preservation to me. I want to see an area that's preserved in its natural habitat. Cut out the melaleuca and the rest of that stuff, plant some other decent stuff in there and let's get on with it. But this project here, and I agree with the presentation, is not to the level that I would expect to be presented to the board. I had to actually dig through, really dig through, and finally came up with Page 76 January 5, 2000 that map that was an aerial view to realize that there was a community to the north, even though it was kind of casually mentioned. But to realize that not only is there a community there, but, I mean, there's a big community there, a big golf course there. And this little strip of -- we're talking about five acres or whatever it is, this little strip up there, you're going to put 40 to 55 tortoises? Not that I'm a tortoise lover or anything like that, but it's ridiculous to cram that many up there. You know you're going to kill them, why don't you just run over them with a bulldozer? It's a lot easier, cheaper. I just -- I have some real misgivings about the whole project, primarily because I feel that maybe somebody's trying to wool my eyes. And I could be wrong, but that's my personal feeling. Anybody else got any? CHAIRMAN HILL: Any other comments from the council members? MR. SMITH: Well, I do have a comment. You know, this is not going to make me popular with the people in Palm River, I'm sure, but private property rights need to be recognized. The people who own this land own this land because they paid good money for it and they paid good money to have the project reviewed, and they spent a great deal of time, obviously, to try and put together a plan that complies with the laws. The staff reviewed this and the staff's recommendations are that the project go forward with certain changes to be made to it. For -- you know, I understand that it's nice to preserve things and to look at nature and have it available. But in that process, let's remember that we should put the burden for that, the weight of that and the cost of that not on persons who own the property but, rather, on ourselves. Are we willing to tax ourselves? Are we willing to pay for this? We don't have it in place right now. We haven't set up something to pay for this, so why should we tell the private property owners that he has to pay for it? It's not constitutional, in my opinion, and it's not right. CHAIRMAN HILL: In rebuttal to that, Mr. Smith, I agree with you, that property rights are important. But that does not guarantee that the owner of a piece of property can cram the maximum amount of residential lots on that property at the sacrifice of environmental considerations. MR. SMITH: Well, just in brief response, the staff has reviewed this, and to my way of thinking, they're very qualified. They've done a very good job in reviewing these. And, you know, it used to be years ago that people would go forward and do all this stuff and the environment be damned. The environment is being preserved. What's on that property now, once this development is done, will be much of a boon to the environment, and not a detraction. I just don't buy this stuff that we have the right to sit here and tell people this is what we want, therefore, you can't use your property. There has to be some legal basis for that, and these folks have met the legal requirements. Page 77 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: Other comments from the council? MR. CARLSON: Just to respond to Mr. Smith, if every staff report was the end of the line, then there would be no need to have us and our input. And if you would like to dissolve the board and just let the staff have the final say with their report, then you shouldn't be here. MR. COE: Also, the public shouldn't be here either. There's no reason for them coming down here if the staff's just going to rubber stamp it. MR. SMITH: I'm not suggesting that the staff rubber stamp it. MR. COE: What are you suggesting? MR. SMITH: What I'm saying is review what the staff has done. If we find that the staff has violated some kind of regulation and is not in compliance with the law, then it's our duty to point that out. But for us to sit here and listen to the public and say okay, you don't want that there? Fine. We have the authority, we have the power to stop this project. Be damned with the constitution and be damned with the private property rights. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. I will entertain a motion for action from the council. MR. FARMER: Could I just suggest a couple more things? I won't drag this out. But first of all, Mr. Coe, I don't want you to feel like we're trying to pull the wool over your eyes or trying to hide anything. We've -- honestly, we've tried to be as forthright as possible about this whole project and presenting it in a timely fashion. You're right, our plan does not delineate the exact location of all of the preserve areas. But I will tell you that none of the retained vegetation exists between single-family houses. It just doesn't work right. You know, what happens is you sell the lot, you sell the five lots next to it, and then the developer's gone, the neighbors come in and they're just going to cut down the trees. So our retained native vegetation is not located between the lots. As far as the staff's requirement in accordance with the LDC that we will provide 17.4 acres of retained native vegetation, we agree to that. We will do that. And we will provide a detailed plan when we come in for our construction plan approval. To prepare those types of plans at that level of detail at this point in time can be very cost prohibitive to developers. I know you're probably thinking well, that's fine, you know, spend all the money, but we need certain reassurances along the way that okay, it's worth keeping putting our money into this to refine and improve and produce more and more detail. So from me to you, I don't want you to feel that we're trying to pull anything over on anyone. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Sansbury. MR. SANSBURY: Being someone in the business, I completely disagree with that last statement. Show us now what you're going to do with it. We can do it, you can do it. Page 78 January 5, 2000 MR. FARMER: Well, as long as you recommend approval with the stipulations intact, with the exception of No. 9, we're agreeing. We will provide the 17.4. MR. SANSBURY: Show it to us. CHAIRMAN HILL: Well, back to your comment that it would be costly to do so at this stage, I disagree totally with that. It would be probably cheaper to identify 17.5 acres of preserve on that property, certainly no more expensive than drawing in lot lines. And I think that is a very critical point at this stage of the process, to know where that preservation's going to be. And I think it's totally incomplete from that standpoint and also from the gopher tortoises. I think things are up in the air. MR. COE: Let me explain to you why I have a little conflict here. And it's nothing personal, obviously. MR. FARMER: No, nothing personal. MR. COE: But I want to explain to you where the rest of the board is. And I'm just going to talk to you from a personal standpoint. You don't know me from a hootenanny, but a few of people know. I'm just an old retired Marine. I don't know squat about this. I know a little bit about birds and trees and stuff like that because I lived out there for a long time. When you come up here and you present something to me, you've got to tell me. I may not have ever been out there in that area. We've spent two hours and a half digging this information out of you. Hour and a half, is that what it is? CHAIRMAN HILL: Hour and 15. MR. COE: That's what we've done. We've had to dig this out. Presentation. Get up here, say it, show it. Tell me what's up north. Tell me this strip's up here. We know it's a little bit small, we know we're going to be cramming these tortoises. We shouldn't have to dig this out of you. Come up and tell us. Be forthright with us. We're part of the community, just like these people are and just like you are. But when I've got to dig this stuff out -- and it's particularly frustrating when I don't have the background and the knowledge. I've got to dig it out to find out what the state laws are and the tortoises and all that kind of business, it gets frustrating. Now we get, you know, down the road an hour and a half later and you're saying hey, you really need to approve it and we'll come back with a better plan later on to them, but we've already approved it, by the way, you know, I'm shirking my responsibility if I approve it. So I've got to be honest with you. CHAIRMAN HILL: May I ask for action by the council? MR. CARLSON: Mr. Chairman, I move that we deny this project, based on a basic sensitivity to the environmental qualities of the site, which are supposed to be addressed under a cjustering community under the county plan. MR. COE: I'd like to -- MR. CORNELL: Second. MR. COE: -- second that. Page 79 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: Any discussion? Is the motion clear? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed? MR. SMITH: Nay. CHAIRMAN HILL: Let the record show nay by Mr. Smith, and the motion passes 5-1. I said lunch at 1:00. I'm 16 and a half minutes late. We will reconvene at 2:10 p.m. Is that -- hold on a minute, folks. The room is needed at 5:00, though is it? 5:00. MS. BURGESON: Yes, it is. The Board of County Commissioners has it at 5:05. CHAIRMAN HILL: I know Mr. Smith won't be back.- Is there anybody else with a time conflict? MR. CORNELL: At 3:30 I've got to go. CHAIRMAN HILL: 3:30. Can we eat by 2:00? Be back by 2:00? We'll reconvene at 2:00. (Luncheon recess.) (Mr..Smith is not present.) CHAIRMAN HILL: I'd like to reconvene the January meeting of the Environmental Advisory Council. And to be in fairness to the public, it looks like we may get through at most C and D, Whippoorwill Pines and La Sienna. I don't see us getting through more than that, because we do have one person that needs to leave in an hour and 20 minutes, so -- MR. CARLSON: We'll try. CHAIRMAN HILL: -- we will give it our best shot. MR. SANSBURY: Give it a shot. CHAIRMAN HILL: Whippoorwill Pines. PUD-99-16. (All speakers were duly sworn.) MR. MURRAY: Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Don Murray, I'm a principal planner with planning services department. This PUD, Whippoorwill Pines, is located approximately a half a mile south of Pine Ridge Road off Whippoorwill Lane. It's bordered by Night Hawk Road and also by Pet (sic) Ranch Road on the east side. Whippoorwill Lane is on the west side. They're all private roads. This PUD is also surrounded currently by undeveloped rural agricultural properties. And the recently -- some of these properties have been submitted as planned unit development petitions. Last year the property to the south called Whippoorwill Woods was approved for a density of 5.5 units per acre. Just to the north of that is another PUD that is currently being considered by the Board of County Commissioners this month and that's Whippoorwill Lakes, with a density of six units per acre. This PUD, if approved, would have 180 residential units at a density of about six units per acre. Staff has reviewed it for consistency with the Growth Management Plan, and has found it consistent in itself. Also, the type of development that's proposed would be compatible with that that's also being proposed for the area and the other PUD's. Are there any questions at this time for staff? Page 80 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for staff? MR. SANSBURY: What is it? I don't see any residential units. I don't see it here. Am I missing something? MR. CARLSON: Well, they don't specify. CHAIRMAN HILL: There's nothing -- there's no plot plan, site plan or -- MR. SANSBURY: Anything. CHAIRMAN HILL: -- layout, is there? No. MR. MURRAY: This is it. This is the conceptual master plan. At this time they're not showing where their lots will be. This is not a plat plan. MR. COE: Are they going to have to come back to us, or what? MR. MURRAY: No. MR. NINO: No. Appreciate -- Ron Nino for the record. PUD's do not require site development plans. The master plan is conceptual and merely identifies development tracts versus non-development tracts, and a very schematic road layout. Those things are all determined at subsequent permitting stages under an SDP or a platting process. What you're looking at basically is the location of the environmental resources, the preservation of the environmental resources, and are they consistent, where in fact they are, and in the amounts that they're supposed to be, irrespective of any specific land use plan. We never have submitted land use plans. And Grey Oaks is a conceptual plan. I mean, Pelican Marsh, all of our large community developments. You have one on the agenda today before you under Ronto Livingston. We just -- they are never -- never been required to go to that level of detail. MR. LENBERGER: For the record, Stephen Lenberger, development services, planning services section. The subject property is about 30 acres. And as Don mentioned, it's in the southwest quadrant of the interstate. I have an aerial on the wall here. This is 1-75, Pine Ridge Road, and this is Whippoorwill Lane, comes down. You can see the properties surrounding the subject parcel are primarily undeveloped. There's a single-family home on the site right about in this location. And there are a couple on the areas around it. There's one over here, then there's one on the south end, and there's a big burrow pit over to the east. As you can see, the property is vegetated. Pretty much all pine flatwoods. There are some exotics. A lot of them quite a bit on the east side. But other than that, the habitat's pretty good. There's no wetlands on-site, it's entirely uplands. And the petitioner did do a protected and endangered species survey and they did not see any protected species, although we do know that there are fox squirrels in the area. The petitioner has a PUD master plan. This is it on the wall. I highlighted in green the preservation area. Basically they're going to use the area on the perimeter of the project as a buffer. And they're required to preserve a minimum of 7.23 acres of preserve area, Page 81 January 5, 2000 which are indicated in green. MR. CARLSON: How wide would that preserve area be? MR. LENBERGER: We haven't made those calculations, but we would do that at the time of site plan submittal. MR. NINO: Mr. Chairman, I've had -- Don, would you fill the members in on the developments that have been approved in the surrounding area? Because there have been a number. MR. MURRAY: Go back to the overhead. There we go. In this area, like I mentioned before, Whippoorwill Woods is one of the PUD's that was recently submitted. Whippoorwill Lakes and Whippoorwill Woods, which was approved last year. Other PUD's that had been submitted near this is Balmoral, Livingston Village, Alexandria, I believe. And then one that is going to be submitted is the Alexandria Lakes, which is this large piece here. So as you can see, these all came in just this year. So we do have some concern about the transportation and so forth in the area. It's more of an area-wide issue, though. MR. COE: How's that going to be dealt with? I mean, just for me not knowing anything, it looks like Livingston Road eventually is going to have to be six-laned. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: If you remember the PUD's in this area, we've gone through this area before, and transportation department and the South Florida Water Management District have concerns. I don't believe those concerns have been ironed out. But Ron went before the BCC, and I believe they are approving some sort of section-wide study implementation plan. MR. NINO: Let me -- because of all the activity in this area, we decided to go to the board and ask them for specific direction in terms of imposing a holistic -- attempting to impose a holistic plan on this area; one of which is that Whippoorwill Lane will be made a public road in a north-south direction and an east-west direction along the south line. Well, number one, we wanted to establish a public road so that all of these PUD's would hang together and could access the shopping facilities that are planned to be up at the Whippoorwill Lane and Pine Ridge Road, rather than encumber the Pine Ridge Road/Livingston Road intersection. We wanted to diffuse that traffic. Two, there is a stormwater management plan that involves the Kensington Canal, which is on the -- right, along that line -- in part, and a drainage slough way that the Water Management District has already conceptually approved that deals with the stormwater management issues there. In addition to the fact that the lake along 1-75 serves to -- also serves to accommodate some of that water management plan. Any of the costs that are over and above what is normally intended to water management responsibilities on an individual plan would be -- in other words, if we need a larger outfall under 1-75, one of the standard stipulations you'll note in your package there is that all these developments will proportionately share in all of those over-sized facilities that result from the interaction of all of these Page 82 January 5, 2000 developments on this area. And there's a standard set of stipulations that we're asking the board -- you've already looked at it on one occasion, and we'll look at it again on the llth of January -- that will be imposed to all these developers. And that goes for sanitary sewers and potable water supplies, as well as in the event that there's a transmission line that has to be 15 inches, where normally it would be 12 inches, that three inches as additional transmission line would be proportionately shared by all the property owners. We're going to the board with this holistic attempt to get an integrated plan here. Even though we're dealing with these things on a piecemeal basis, each and every one of these approvals will have the same set of developer commitments to infrastructure. MR. COE: Now, back to Livingston Road. You know, I'm not worried about it, but I would assume with projects this size that the road is already overloaded, since we planned for the roadway back then. And now we see what's really going to be developed as a result of putting the roadway in. Livingston Road is not there yet. It's being MR. NINO: constructed. MR. COE: MR. NINO: MR. COE: MR. NINO: MR. COE: That's right. Hopefully with -- But see, we planned for the road way back here. Yeah. They're doing their planning for the developing now, and that could overflow the road before we even build it. MR. NINO: Yes, we -- your premises is correct. If all these developments happen at the same time, without Livingston Road in place, Whippoorwill Lane and Pine Ridge Road intersection would become a nightmare. However, the Growth Management Plan does provide a window in which levels of service can operate at deficient levels if the planned improvement that would eliminate that degrading of level of service is committed and in the capital improvements budget. So approval -- approval of these projects, we can support approval of these projects because they fall within that window, when we know Livingston Road will be in place and consequently there should not be a level of service deficiency at the intersection of Whippoorwill Lane and Pine Ridge Road. At least that's the premise that we're following in the 500 units that talks -- the maximum 500 units that is in Don's report would only remain if the board do not agree that we should impose a public road status on Whippoorwill Lane and acquire by eminent domain, if necessary, its east-west connector. Because then we have, you know, no assurance that that intersection has an alternative system of getting to it, i.e., the Livingston Road/Pine Ridge intersection. You know, with two intersections in place versus -- reverses all of that development coming up Whippoorwill Lane to Pine Ridge Road. So that east-west connector is very critical. And quite frankly, we're confident as a result of the first discussion of the board that they've acknowledged that and they've said yes, we think the advance planning was well taken, we're supportive of it. And I'm convinced Page 83 January 5, 2000 that at the January llth meeting they're going to direct us that we initiate steps to acquire Whippoorwill Lane in both its north-south configuration and east-west configuration. CHAIRMAN HILL: How much vacant property is left that will feed into this system that hasn't been approved? MR. NINO: No, the only approved project is Whippoorwill Woods, which happens to be the most southerly project. And ironically, we should have been on top of it. But Whippoorwill Woods, we weren't in tune with what was happening when Whippoorwill Woods came in. The Whippoorwill Woods is the only project that's approved at this point in time, even though Don showed you seven or eight projects that are on the board and will be coming to you. CHAIRMAN HILL: What I guess my question is, road-wise and sewer and water transmission lines are going to be sized based on the projected full implemen -- or full development of this entire area -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Yes, the utility -- CHAIRMAN HILL: -- utility and water management on these also -- THE COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, I heard two of you talking at once. Would you repeat that, full development of this entire area between? CHAIRMAN HILL: I'm sorry, now I've forgot what I said. Full development of this area, period. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: The utility department has been part of these discussions, and they know that they have to upsize the main spur, whatever amount of residential is going in there. And I'd like to remind you that the Water Management District was here for a few of these, and they have agreed not to permit any of them until some type of site section-wide water management overall scheme is come up with. CHAIRMAN HILL: Well, this is one of their projected basin studies that they have, right, isn't it? The Kensington Canal and that whole area? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Yeah, I think it's already been studied. There's a few entities involved because of the Livingston Road widening -- actually there the construction -- Collier County public works is involved, and I'm not sure, like Ron is, if the study is done. But it's being studied. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. Questions for staff? Is the petitioner represented? MR. NINO: He didn't give his report. MR. LENBERGER: The petitioner's agents were here. The environmental consultant and the engineering consultant. They both had to go to meetings. They could not stay. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. MR. COE: I'd like to make a motion for approval. CHAIRMAN HILL: Is there anybody from the public that would like to address the council on Whippoorwill Pines? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HILL: I'll close that portion and ask the council for their pleasure. Page 84 January 5, 2000 MR. COE: I'd like to make a motion for approval. MR. CORNELL: I'll second that. CHAIRMAN HILL: It's been moved and seconded that PUD-99-16 be approved as stipulated in the staff report, and I assume with their recommendations. Any discussion? Those in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. So 5-0 in favor. MR. CARLSON: I forgot to ask, do they have any whippoorwills? MR. NINO: I don't know. CHAIRMAN HILL: A few bob whites. MR. SANSBURY: Night hawks. MR. COE: I'll tell you what, have you ever seen one? CHAIRMAN HILL: I've never seen a whippoorwill. MR. CORNELL: A bob white is a quail, isn't it? Or is that -- MR. COE: Right. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay, item 4(D), PUD 99-26, La Sienna Estates. MR. DUAl, E: Mr. Chairman, excuse me. If I may, I know your agenda is crowded today, and I wanted just to disclose at the outset of this hearing that I do have a signed contract with the Panther Island Mitigation Bank to do my off-site mitigation. I don't know if that's going to affect how -- the way any of you vote today, so I wanted to put that on the record. Again Robert Duane, representing the petitioner. CHAIRMAN HILL: La Sienna? MR. DUANE: Yes, sir. MR. BELLOWS: Do we have to swear in? CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. Any of the public that would like to speak, if you'd stand and be sworn in, please. (All speakers were duly sworn.) MR. BELLOWS: For the record, my name's Ray Bellows, principal planner with current planning. The petitioner is Robert Duane of Hole-Montes. He's requesting to rezone the subject 40-acre site from agriculture to PUD to be known as La Sienna Estates. As you can see on the visualizer, the subject site is located within the Olde Cypress PUD. Boundaries circled here. The site is basically the square donut within the existing PUD. It's currently zoned agricultural. Its access is off the internal PUD roads from Olde Cypress. Petitioner's requesting a residential PUD that contains 161 residential dwelling units, a density of four units per acre. The Growth Management Plan allows for four units per acre in this area, so it's consistent with that. The master plan, as you can see, it's designed with its access off of Olde Cypress. It's designed around several lakes, centrally located lake and lake at the periphery. There's some open space, a recreational site. Page 85 January 5, 2000 I'd be happy to answer any questions. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman -- MR. BELLOWS: Yes, as I previously stated, it is consistent with the Growth Management Plan. MR. SANSBURY: This is a typical situation. I'm looking at this again as the side setbacks, it looks to me, are used in the calculation for buffer space and re-vegetated area. Is that normal to use the side setbacks in those calculations? MR. BELLOWS: To use the side setbacks in what? MR. SANSBURY: I'm looking at the lots, and it looks to me like -- and I don't know where the calculations come from, but it's got the same symbol, the side setbacks, of the individual lots. It's got -- it has the same symbol as the landscape buffer. And I'm saying, is it -- are they used in the calculation for buffer space and re-vegetated area, the 6.97 acres? MR. BELLOWS: Well, setbacks are measured from the property line. An easement -- or buffer easement can be within that setback area. MR. SANSBURY: Okay. MR. NINO: The answer to your question is that all -- MR. SANSBURY: Impervious? MR. NINO: -- pervious -- impervious land area is eligible for the 60 percent open space requirement, but not the 25 percent, necessarily, the 25 percent. CHAIRMAN HILL: I assume the figure 161 in the staff report dwelling units is in error? MR. DUANE: That is correct. CHAIRMAN HILL: It is 617 MR. DUANE: Yes, sir. MR. BELLOWS: 61. CHAIRMAN HILL: But if you look at the small map, there aren't 61 in here, are there? Are there 61 on that map? I thought there were 50 some. MR. DUANE: Mr. Chairman, there are 58 lots depicted, and there's the option to depict three more on that recreation tract, should we so choose. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. Questions for staff? MS. BURGESON: For the record, Barbara Burgeson with planning services. I'll give you the environmental background on this property. The subject property is an undeveloped 40-acre parcel within the Olde Cypress PUD. 100 percent of the site is claimed as jurisdictional wetlands. It will be impacted approximately -- let me see, 92 percent of the wetlands will be impacted, leaving the remaining eight percent in perimeter edges and in interior pieces. Wetlands will be mitigated for off-site through the South Florida Water Management District ERP permit process. And as mentioned earlier by Bob Duane, it's anticipated that the mitigation will be accomplished through purchase of credits from the Panther Island Mitigation Bank. The existing vegetation is impacted with exotics varying from Page 86 January 5, 2000 approximately 50 percent on-site to as high as greater than 90 percent cover. The majority of the 36 and a half acres on-site is cypress/pine/cabbage palm canopy, with melaleuca and cypress in the mid-story. Two soils found on-site were both hydric, as defined by the Collier Soil and Water Conservation District. The hydrology of the 40-acre site has been altered by the development of a surrounding residential development of Olde Cypress. The wetlands are now totally dependent on rainfall and groundwater for the only source of water for this 40-acre parcel. The combined effects of the canal and the surrounding development maintained water levels throughout most of the year below the surface of the ground. However, during heavy rainfall events, that surface water -- or the water just comes up to the surface of that parcel for brief periods of time. The preservation requirements for this parcel are 25 percent. The petitioner is proposing a small portion of that, 3.4 acres, to be existing wetlands and to be retained around the perimeter of the property, as identified on the site plan. The remaining vegetation will be replanted in small areas, 20-foot wide strips between the lots and adjacent to lots or lake areas. A minimum of 8.2 acres of native vegetation have to be retained on the site or recreated for this PUD. A listed species survey was done by the consultant. The only species that have potential for this site and we saw when we did a site visit out there not too long ago would be the Big Cypress fox squirrels. And they will be doing a more thorough investigation of the 13 squirrel nests that they located on-site to identify whether they are indeed Big Cypress or whether they're gray. And we recommend approval of La Sienna Estates in Olde Cypress PUD, with the stipulations as stated in the staff report. CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for staff? Petitioner? MR. DUANE: Yes, for the record, Robert Duane again. We are in agreement with the staff recommendations. We agree with all the stipulations. I have Craig Smith, my associate from Kevin Erwin and Associates, who's prepared to assist me in answering any questions that you may have. MR. CARLSON: I have questions. MR. DUANE: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN HILL: Mr. Carlson. MR. CARLSON: Reading from this application for planned unit development document? MR. DUANE: Yes, sir. MR. CARLSON: Help me go through the sequence of events here. There's some mention in here about agricultural pumping from the north into this property that was permitted by the Water Management District, which I assume would have hydrated the property. If you look at the second paragraph on one of these unnumbered pages. Oh, boy, there's no numbers on these pages. Page 87 January 5, 2000 MR. DUANE: You're talking about in the EIS document? MR. CARLSON: I'm talking about Environmental Impact Statement, inside your PUD application. Go in there about seven pages. Anyway, the gist of where I'm going is that there's some comments in here made about how historically there was substantial agricultural pumpage (sic) into this property. And I would assume that it had a pretty good hydrology. Then at the bottom of the page it says fill associated with Olde Cypress Development has completely blocked the sheet flow from the north that has helped sustain the wetlands on the La Sienna property so that the blockage of the water is self-induced by this Olde Cypress project. It created its own altered hydro period. Am I understanding that? MR. DUANE: Well, I think -- and I'll let Mr. Smith step in. I think it was giving you a historical perspective. As it stands today, the project is completely surrounded by a golf course. In our meetings with the South Florida Water Management District and the Army Corps of Engineers, they thought there was no practical benefit of trying to do any on-site preservation. In fact, they actually encouraged us to do just the opposite, which is why we're trying to contribute to the Panther Island Bank. And they seem to feel comfortable with that. We've endeavored to provide -- at least meet your minimum requirements for habitat preservation. I think we're providing about 8.3 of the 40 acres, albeit some of it is a combination of preserve area that grade and some are some strips that we're creating between the lots. But I think Craig can elaborate further the hydrology that was dramatically altered on this site and around this particular property. MR. CARLSON: Well, I'm having a huge problem, kind of like a religious problem here, with 90 percent of the jurisdictional wetlands being cleared of fill. I'm having a huge problem with that. On the next page there's a paragraph that much says regional permit alterations of surface water and groundwater flow preclude the long-term ecological viable preservation of functional wetlands on the site. Therefore, the typical application of wetland impact avoidance and minimization is not applicable for this project. Who decides that the sequencing does not apply to this site? I mean, who decides that? Did the court decide that? MR. DUANE: I -- every indication -- our Corps permit has not gone to public notice, but based on the pre-application meetings, the submittal that we've already made to the district, our submittal to the Corps, no one has raised the issue that we should be trying to preserve wetlands on this site because the consensus is that they've lost their functionality. And I -- we've got some hydrographs and I'm prepared to make a detailed presentation here to show that we're really dealing with a different creature than we were before Olde Cypress was around. Now, I believe you're intimately familiar with Olde Cypress. MR. CARLSON: I'm really not, but -- that predated my presence here. Page 88 January 5, 2000 But -- so where is the agricultural -- where is the water from the north going now? MR. SMITH: My name is Craig Smith, for the record. If I can -- if you look at this aerial here, Section 21, which contains the La Sienna out-parcel, is located down in the lower left-hand corner. Historically there was a broad sheet flow across this whole area, as I'm sure you're aware of, back before many modifications were made. One of these are the agricultural fields that are along Bonita Beach Road. Those fields generally discharge to the south through the woods towards the Cocohatchee Canal, which is along the north side of Immokalee Road. Basically what has happened over the course of many years, bermings associated with the ag. operations with Mulepen Quarry have basically funneled that water down through a relatively few places for it to escape. And one of those places was all of Section 21. This area was developed or -- let me grab another exhibit. In the early Eighties an entity by the name of Macalpin and Park Lanes (phonetic) started to assemble parcels in Section 21 to come up with a residential golf course development that would eventually be called The Woodlands. This shows basically the size and locations of all the parcels they were able to obtain. One parcel here they tried to obtain but couldn't is now La Sienna. Based on the permitting at that point in time, going through the DRI process, the DRI -- the approved DRI plan in the mid Eighties looked like this, where again here is La Sienna Estates. The idea at that point in time was to preserve the major slough here, plus some other scattered wetland preserve areas across the site. That happened mid-Eighties or so. The late Eighties is when we entered into the permitting process with the Army Corps of Engineers, the DER and South Florida Water Management District. By that point in time, we had more time to think about what would actually happen, looking at things such as the regional conditions, the Cocohatchee Canal to the south, which tends to drain the site, being offset to some degree by the pumping from the north. And the developers of The Woodlands actually spent a lot of time out flying around trying to figure out where all this water was coming from. And if you look closely on here, you can see little red dots which were all the pump stations that pump a tremendous volume of water south. We were actually on-site two or three weeks ago doing some monitoring in the slough over here for Olde Cypress, and the water levels came up eight inches during the course of the day. And you and I both know that's not a normal increase in water levels. And undoubtedly, it was from pumping from the north. MR. CARLSON: I think this is my point. I mean, we're working hard to protect, you know, the major watershed upstream, and the water flow is being constricted as you go farther south and west. And so here we are with a project with wetlands that -- I mean, they're Page 89 January 5, 2000 wetlands, they're jurisdictional wetlands. This could help alleviate the constrictions and be part of a flowway, but we're saying it just -- you know, the standard avoidance minimization just doesn't apply here and we're just going to mitigate for it and -- I mean, I'm having a hard time with the logic here. MR. SMITH: Typically I would agree with you on that. One thing to look at, and you may be familiar with some of this, because I believe some of this information actually came from -- may have come from your shop. MR. CARLSON: Yeah, I did that graph on the right. MR. SMITH: These are hydrographs of more or less undisturbed hydric flatwoods or cypress communities. These are the hydrographs that were taken up in this corner of Section 121. Here's a hydrograph taken over here near the property line. And some actually recent water level information from down here. And the comparison between these is that the hydro period is very spiky. When it rains or it pumps from the north, it gets wet. As soon as ~hose pumps go off, the water drops. Water -- when it's not raining or pumping, water is three, maybe four feet below grade. And I'd even be willing to bet if I had five years to monitor wells out here, some of that stuff won't be jurisdictional. But in the sake -- for the sake of time, we didn't go through that five or 10-year process to try to collect enough data. What happened during the permitting process when the Water Management District realized the hydrographs out there, the site plan for The Woodlands, what has now become Olde Cypress, was modified to do exactly what you've recommended; basically moved all development over here to create -- or all the preserve over here to create a flowway, to create an outfall from the Corkscrew area, as opposed to having it fragmented. What that did, and what people realized didn't make any sense, was to try to preserve small little wetlands over in the corner that was isolated from the main source of water and that did not have long-term viability. And they realized that no matter what we did on this wetland, it was not going to be a functional wetland post-development. The groundwater just wasn't there anymore. MR. CARLSON: So is the map on the right a current plan? MR. SMITH: This is the currently approved plan for Olde Cypress. This is what the original DRI in the mid-Eighties approved. And we had a preserve over here, which you can actually see, half of which is what is now La Sienna Estates. And during the permitting process, which lasted two or three years, it evolved and we came to the understanding that it made more sense to put all the value over here where we could manage the land, where we could capture that off-site sheet flow and use it to help restore these wetlands in exchange for these smaller preserves over here that really weren't going to work long term. MR. CARLSON: And is that flowway on the east side, is that something that has an easement on it that is a flowway in perpetuity and -- Page 90 January 5, 2000 MR. SMITH: That is a conservation easement associated with it, with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Water Management District and possibly DEP. But it's basically -- it's conservation. Everything in dark green here, which is both -- mostly wetlands, but some uplands, is all preserved in perpetuity and will act as that connecting piece from Corkscrew eventually down to the Cocohatchee Canal. CHAIRMAN HILL: The pumping will continue? MR. SMITH: The pumping will continue, but there is a perimeter berm that comes across the top of this project, through here where this development is. So the only thing that was keeping this wet was the ag. pumping. Now that that ag. pumping can't get here anymore, it's subject to the influences of the canal and Long Shore Lakes. MR. CARLSON: So where's the water going? The pumping, the agricultural pumping. Is it going east or west or -- MR. SMITH: It's going through here now. It's going through the slough that was preserved. And that was the intent of this permitted plan was to direct that water through the slough. There's actually a structure right here under this access road to help regulate that water. Then again, over here at the Coco III structure. MR. CARLSON: So where the water was coming out in torrents and cutting those gullies north of Immokalee Road is at the end of that slough? MR. SMITH: It used to all across through here, yes. There were channels maybe five feet wide by 20 or 30 feet back up into the woods, two or three feet deep, where it used to -- the water really flows through there. MR. CARLSON: Well, it still did -- it still does. MR. SMITH: Yeah. CHAIRMAN HILL: No water currently from Olde Cypress crosses La Sienna? MR. SMITH: No. The way this was permitted was that the stormwater management system doesn't -- it doesn't either discharge water into La Sienna, nor does it allow additional water to pond. So basically the only source of water is rainfall. And since the water table is low up in there, it -- other than say when Hurricane -- Tropical Storm Harvey comes through, there's no standing water. MR. CARLSON: And is the Olde Cypress water management plan to have their runoff go into the slough on the east side? MR. SMITH: No, all the surface water from -- excuse me, from the La Sienna? MR. CARLSON: Olde Cypress. MR. SMITH: Olde Cypress? No, all that drains down this way and eventually out this corner down here. The idea was not to get that stormwater into the slough, but to use all the water that's coming down from those several thousand acres to the north. CHAIRMAN HILL: When I was out there last week, I think your documents say that access is through Olde Cypress infrastructure. And the individual I talked to seemed to indicate that that was not factual yet. Is this true? MR. DUANE: Our plan is to have access through Olde Cypress at Page 91 January 5, 2000 the present time, just as we have submitted the application. If for any reason that should change, then we'll have to modify the plan. CHAIRMAN HILL: So you do not have a commitment from Olde Cypress at this point? MR. DUANE: We have a general understanding that we are going to work with each other on matters of mutual interest. And if for any reason the plan for access will change -- would change, then I would have to make revisions to the master plan. CHAIRMAN HILL: Well, it bothers me, not only from the 100 percent or 92 percent wetlands given up, but -- and you've somewhat explained that -- but you've got a landlocked piece of property there, which bothers me a little bit. MR. NINO: Correct me if I'm wrong, Bob, but the owner of that property has a -- don't they have a historical easement all the way out to Immokalee Road -- MR. DUANE: Yeah, there is -- MR. NINO: -- which is -- MR. DUANE: -- another easement -- MR. NINO: -- concurrent -- THE COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, one at a time. MR. NINO: Which is concurrent with Olde Cypress Way, for all practical purposes. I mean, they do have legal access to Immokalee Road by an easement. MR. DUANE: That is correct. We're just not opting to use that easement at the present time. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. Any other questions for petitioner? MR. NINO: Let me speak to that again. I was under the impression that when Olde Cypress -- when we revisited The Woodlands and called it Olde Cypress that agreements were made between the two entities that the easement would be replaced with what in fact would be the alignment of Olde Cypress Road. MS. BURGESON: Ron, the PUD shows access -~ MR. NINO: Right, that's what I'm saying. That was an agreement in the restructuring of Olde Cypress, that you would provide -- Olde Cypress was providing access on their now formally declared road system in view of giving up the easement. MR. DUANE: Well, I think that's another issue, Ron. That easement is on the other side of the property. I'm talking about on the eastern edge of Olde Cypress. It really doesn't relate to the access of this particular tract here. MR. NINO: In any event, suffice it to say that Sienna, to the best of our knowledge, the owner of that hole in the donut, has legal access to Immokalee Road. CHAIRMAN HILL: Anyone from the public like to address the council on this petition? I'll close that portion and ask the council for their pleasure. MR. SANSBURY: Mr. Chairman, I move approval in accordance with staff recommendations. MR. CORNELL: I'll second that. MR. CARLSON: Mr. Chairman? Page 92 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN HILL: Yes. MR. CARLSON: I'm going to -- I have a real problem. I don't want to set a precedent here of taking these hydrologically altered sites and writing off 90 percent of the jurisdictional wetlands. But this case, I'm going to rack this up to a very odd sort of situation, very unique. And I probably will vote for it, but I just think it's so unusual because of the development surrounding the property and what's happened. But I want to go on record as saying I have a real problem with the assumption that altered hydrology of a jurisdictional wetland exempts it or that minimization and avoidance does not apply, as written in this document. CHAIRMAN HILL: Yeah, I echo your sentiment, and I was about ready to vote against it. Anyway -- MR. CORNELL: Is it possible that the Land Development Code could be improved in that regard, Ed? Is it possible that the Land Development Code could be improved in that regard? MR. CARLSON: Improved? MR. CORNELL: Improved. In the regard that you're speaking of. I mean, is it possible that we could address that concern -- MR. COE: What do you do? This was addressed years ago, and you've got kind of a weird situation. MR. CORNELL: Well, I'm not saying that you can do it now. But I'm just thinking, that is part of our objective, is it not? Part of our mission as a group is to suggest improvements to the Land Development Code, and maybe it's improvable. MR. NINO: If I could participate in that discussion -- I don't want to prolong your meeting, it's been going on long enough -- you know, I keep hearing Commissioner Carlson saying that if there's any destruction or diminution of wetlands, he's not going to vote for it. And I admire that position, but that position is inconsistent with allowances within the Growth Management Plan. MR. CORNELL: Right. MR. NINO: And that's one of your functions. One of your functions is to take that whole set of regulations and revisit it, and attempt to do something that's more consistent with your agenda. MR. CORNELL: Yeah, absolutely. MR. CARLSON: Well I've voted in favor of projects that have destroyed wetlands. But 90 percent or 80 percent, come on. I mean, that's tough to do. MR. NINO: I hear you. MR. CARLSON: Real tough. MR. DUANE: Just to reiterate, we comply with all of your regulations to the letter. I understand your concern and I -- I'm not sure that I can disagree with Ron. If you want to make some changes in your regulations, that's certainly within your purview to record those to the board. And I might also add that we're providing the better part of a million dollars of mitigation for our impacts of this non-functional Page 93 January 5, 2000 wetland. And I hope that that offsets our impacts, given the existing conditions on the property. And I think you can also appreciate that kind of contribution, Mr. Carlson. Thank you, sir. CHAIRMAN HILL: There is a motion on the floor. Was there a second? MR. COE: It's been seconded. You bet. CHAIRMAN HILL: Discussion? Further discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. 5-0. I don't like it. Well, looks like we will get one more. Item 4-E, conditional use 99-31 for the Cocohatchee Nature Center. (All speakers were duly sworn.) MR. REISCHL: Fred Reischl, planning services. Once again, this is a combination of petitions; a special treatment development permit and a conditional use. This time the conditional use is for educational/recreational facility, in this case a nature center. It's a 2.19-acre parcel. And the visualizer is on. The parcel's located -- this is U.S. 41 north at the Cocohatchee River. The most recognizable landmark is that on the eastern portion of this now separated island, it's the Pewter Mug Restaurant. This is the western portion of what used to be the island that was broken by the construction of U.S. 41. I must add that this great graphic was supplied by the petitioner. This is not a county generated graphic. Once again, you see U.S. 41. What they're proposing, as I said, a nature center, would be boat tours at the dock up here. You see the boardwalk through part of the upland, part of the ST area. Parking area, including bus parking. Part of their development scheme is to provide school trips, trips from retirement communities, things like that. Educational facilities/amphitheater type building. And the administration building. This is consistent with the Future Land Use Element of the Growth Management Plan. It is within the urban area; therefore, the Administration Commission's final order is not applicable. And I'll turn it over to our environmental professionals. MR. LENBERGER: For the record, Stephen Lenberger, planning services section, development services division. The subject property is located adjacent to the Cocohatchee River. And as Fred said, it's a little over two acres in size. The property is mostly covered with mangroves with leather fern in the understory. There are some areas of Brazilian pepper and melaleuca in the upland areas adjacent to U.S. 41. Let me go to the visualizer. If you'll look at the exhibit on the monitor, you'll see that the area for wetland impact are crosshatched on the exhibit. Basically this dark area in here. And the ST line originally was drawn straight across in this region. And after the jurisdictional determination was done, you can see the wetland line roughly follows this area right here. Page 94 January 5, 2000 Most of the impacts were limited to the upland area. And that's pretty much it. There's no protected species on-site. Listed species survey was conducted. CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for staff? Is the petitioner represented? MR. HAGEN: For the record, my name is Chris Hagen, from Johnson Engineering. I'd like to thank staff for working well with us to try and come up with the least impacted plan that meets all the health, safety and welfare issues with regards to access, minimum parking, et cetera. What we intend here is for a very straightforward project with a minimal impact, having environmental education, or eco-tourism type site here. It's really very straightforward. And I think I'd like to just leave it to answering questions so that maybe you guys can get another one in today. CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for the petitioner? Is there any public present that would like to address the council with respect to Cocohatchee Nature Center? I'll close the public portion then and ask the council for their pleasure. MR. COE: I'd like to make a motion for approval. CHAIRMAN HILL: It's been moved by Mr. Coe for approval, as recommended by staff. MR. SANSBURY: Second. CHAIRMAN HILL: Discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. MR. CARLSON: Hey, I just approved 90 percent wetland, so aye. MR. SANSBURY: You and I voted together on something else, that's a heck of a note. CHAIRMAN HILL: All those in favor, aye. Is that an aye down there on my left? 5-0, in favor. MR. HAGEN: Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay, 4-F. PUD-99-9. And I guess it needs to be pointed out that we will lose a member in 25 minutes and we'll be down to below a quorum. (All speakers were duly sworn.) MR. NINO: The petition that is before you has two components to it: One, it is a development of regional impact; therefore, it has a special -- it enjoys special status and has a special development regulations order to it, unlike a PUD, which is the zoning instrument. The development order addresses those regional concerns that came out of the regional review. Ronto Livingston is a project on the -- lying between what would be the extension of Livingston Road and 1-75, immediately across from the Mediterra development, which is under construction. Perhaps Brian, you'd do me a favor and point those areas out. That's the Mediterra development. And you're -- the boundary of your property is east of what would be the Livingston Road extension. Page 95 January 5, 2000 And on the south side is Pelican Strand. The Pelican -- as a matter of fact, in Pelican Strand on the south side, that's pretty well bounded by Pelican Strand's golf course development. For your information, you should know that the county's long-range transportation plan proposes a road along the north side of Pelican Strand, which would be the south side of Ronto Livingston, as well as the park -- you know, there's a commitment to build Livingston Road, and that should be under construction. As a matter of fact, I imagine it is under construction, because the Mediterra development organization are in the process currently of developing the Livingston Road facility. In any event, this petition consists of 1,380 mixed residential dwelling units, and it's within a golf course preserve, open space type of environment, much like Mediterra, Pelican Marsh and all of -- Grey Oaks and all of the other large PUD communities that we have in Collier County. Now, appreciate that because it's a DRI, there is a heightened level of review here. I mean, the south -- the Regional Planning Council is the coordinating agency for this federal and state reviews. So there is -- all of the agencies, the state and federal government that are in the business of regulating our environment, land development and highways, have reviewed this project under the coordinated effort of the Regional Planning Council. That process ends up in the development of a long laundry list of recommendations. They call them recommendations, but in fact, if you don't adopt them and include them in the development order, which I believe you have, you will likely incur an appeal from the state -- or both the state DCA and the Regional Planning Council to have the appeal powers in terms of development of regional impacts, and you're likely to engender one if you don't include in the development order that the county is responsible for adopting all the recommendations that have been approved by the Regional Planning Council. Those recommendations are in this document. The developer has not challenged them as adopted. Within your PUD document, we address the local concerns. And the PUD and the DRI have been reviewed by all related county agencies, and their requirements are reflected in the PUD document at the local level. The plan -- so land use and density are consistent with the Future Land Use Element of the Growth Management Plan. This development is 2.9 some units per acre. They were authorized to 2.4, I believe. So it's something less than the maximum density that's otherwise allowed. Analysis for all other related elements that's going to be hooked to county sewer and water system has been reviewed for stormwater management. Considerations and all that will fall within the jurisdiction of the Water Management District. And they've already looked at this, obviously by virtue of the recommendations that are in the development order. So the review of this development for its consistency with related elements of the Growth Management Plan, we've determined that Page 96 January 5, 2000 in fact it does that. And I would ask Barbara to give the environmental report. MS. BURGESON: For the record Barbara Burgeson, planning services. The subject property covers 460 acres, over 300 of which are farm fields, either currently actively being farmed or recently having been disked for planting. 40 acres of uplands exist on-site; the vast majority of which are pine flatwoods with slash pines, saw palmetto, wax myrtle, rusty lyonia, wire grass and -- as most of the predominant species. There are 84 acres of Collier County jurisdictional wetlands on-site, identified in four separate isolated wetlands areas, two of which have potential for some future connectivity to off-site wetlands. The petitioner imposes to impact 33.5 acres of the least viable wetlands on site, which represents 28 percent of the wetlands on-site, and to offset impacts for the 33 and a half acres. The petitioner proposes to enhance both hydrologically and vegetatively the remaining 48 acres, and to provide a combination of on-site and off-site mitigation to ensure that there is no net loss of wetlands pursuant to the Collier County Growth Management Plan Conservation and Coastal Management element. The environmental consultant identified 122 acres of native vegetation on-site to be in compliance with the Collier County preservation of 25 percent. The site would need to commit to a minimum of 30.6 acres on-site. However, they have provided 59 acres, or 49 percent of the existing native vegetation in conservation areas. The development of regional impact material that I had a chance to review identified, however, that a minimum of 44.96 acres shall be retained. So even though 30.6 is what would be the minimum for the county, because the Regional Planning Council has recommended a higher number than that, we are adopting that as the minimum so that in the future, if the project wishes to come in and develop any of the 59 acres that's set aside for preservation, they cannot go below the 44.96 acres of wetlands and uplands that are identified through the DRI process. A total of more than 40 hours were spent on-site conducting necessary protected species surveys. Had field work done in May of 1999 by three of the biologists on staff with the consultant. And although a fairly extensive list of species was provided, as observed on-site, no protected species were actually evidenced using the site. In addition, Geza Wass de Czege of Southern Biomes, has completed a more extensive red-cockaded woodpecker survey for this property, indicating that the property is north of an old RCW colony that was known back in 1988 and '89. Recent surveys conducted by Southern Biomes on adjacent PUD's in this area for RCW's indicated that they no longer are colonizing or utilizing the wooded areas in this -- on this parcel or in the immediate vicinity of this parcel. The consultant provided a copy of a June 7th, 1999 letter Page 97 January 5, 2000 received from Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. That letter stated, and I quote, "The project has the potential to impact the occurrence of a number of listed species, including the Florida panther, Florida black bear, Big Cypress fox squirrel, wood stork, red-cockaded woodpecker, little blue heron, snowy egret, tri-colored heron, white ibis, gopher tortoise and American alligator." And in being consistent with the Growth Management Plan and the Land Development Code with that statement from Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, we've added stipulations to the PUD in trying to protect or require that more future surveys be conducted or that they contact and work with those agencies to make sure that there will be no impacts to these species through the approval of this project. We recommend approval with the stipulations as stated in the PUD. CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for staff? Are the two documents -- and I have not had a chance to combine both of them. Are they consistent, the DRI and the PUD? MS. BURGESON: Not the two documents that you received to review. CHAIRMAN HILL: They are not consistent? MR. CARLSON: No. MS. BURGESON: No. One of the stipulations in the staff report is to require that the Development of Regional Impact package be revised to accurately reflect the master site plan, preservation areas and all other environmental and water management sections that staff has approved through the approval of the PUD document and associated plans. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you. Any questions? Petitioner? MS. BISHOP: Good afternoon. Karen Bishop, agent for Ronto Development. I really don't have anything else to add to what Barbara and Ron have said. We are in process now of going through the ERP applications with South Florida Water Management, and that's why our master plans were different between the DRI and the district, because we were approved at the DRI level and took in their comments, as well as the district comments, and have implemented change in the local plan. So we do anticipate, and always did, to make the plans the same. And we show from the original plan versus new plan, we are actually -- we have more land in preserve. And I have my biologist here, if there's any questions you guys may wish to ask. CHAIRMAN HILL: Questions for the petitioner? MR. COE: I've got a question for you. I don't know if you can answer it or not. The native vegetation requires 25 percent? MS. BISHOP: Yes, sir. MR. COE: But if you've got farmland out there, there's no native vegetation, so that really doesn't count. Page 98 January 5, 2000 MS. BISHOP: Yes, sir, doesn't count. Just what actually is vegetated. MR. COE: Understand. So you could have broccoli out there, but that doesn't count. MS. BISHOP: That's -- yeah. I call those veggies, but I don't think that's what they had in mind. It's not native veggies. MR. COE: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HILL: Anybody from the public wish to speak? I'll close the public portion and ask for council's pleasure in deliberation. MR. CORNELL: I'll move we recommend approval, subject to the stipulations. MR. SANSBURY: Second. CHAIRMAN HILL: Discussion? I find it difficult to approve something that's inconsistent with another document that's in support of it. MR. NINO: I'm not sure I follow that inconsistency. There was a map -- are you referring to a map? Because the development order really doesn't address things that are in the public document. The development order addresses those regional recommendations, and they are -- there's nothing inconsistent about those regional recommendations versus what's in the PUD other than the issue of native vegetation. And this document -- if this document is more onerous or more restrictive than this document, then this document -- this document prevails. CHAIRMAN HILL: Which is which in which hand? MR. NINO: This is the DRI. The DRI. Actually, it -- actually, whichever is the more restrictive, whether it's the regional document -- it's really not a regional document, it's regional recommendation, that we've now made our recommendation. Any -- the more restrictive regulation in either document always applies. So I don't -- Chairman, I don't see it as an inconsistency. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay, I appreciate your comment. I guess it's the first time this has come before council while I've been on it. It seems strange to pick up a development order whose first sentence says -- or second paragraph says, "Has obtained all necessary approvals from Collier County agencies." Is this written in anticipation of final approval? MR. NINO: Yes, sir, it certainly is. It's our -- when our legal staff prepare these documents, it presumes that all these things happen. As a matter of fact, you'll see the blank space here for the board's approval, yes. And if it doesn't get that approval, it doesn't go anywhere. CHAIRMAN HILL: Well, I agree with that. Any other discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed? Aye. CHAIRMAN HILL: Show 4-1. MS. BURGESON: That's not a motion then. The quorum needs to be Page 99 January 5, 2000 five for an approval. and hopefully five. particular project. CHAIRMAN HILL: 5-0. MR. SANSBURY: MS. BURGESON: MR. SANSBURY: MS. BURGESON: MR. SANSBURY: MS. BURGESON: So you'll need to come up with another motion You need to have a unanimous approval for this It has to be five, no matter how many numbers are Okay, I'll change my vote to aye. Make it show It doesn't have to be a majority -- No. -- to vote the quorum? No, it has to be five. It's -- Where did that come from? Environmental Advisory Council ordinance in the Land Development Code requires five. MR. SANSBURY: I thought it had to be a majority. MR. COE: We've got about seven minutes. You want to try to get this done? MR. SANSBURY: Yeah, let's go ahead. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay, Golden Gate Commerce Park. (All speakers were duly sworn.) MR. BELLOWS: For the record, Ray Bellows. The petitioner is requesting to amend the currently approved Golden Gate Health Park. The amendment will allow for the addition of commercial retail uses within the existing approved health park facility. They also propose to eliminate some of the health related uses, as outlined in the staff report. They're also going to increase the number of approved residential units from 273, and the correct number in the staff report should be 588 dwelling units. The petition is consistent with the Collier County Growth Management Plan and the Future Land Use Map. The property will be within activity center number nine on the Future Land Use Map when the EAR growth management plan amendments are found -- are deemed to be in compliance with the DCA. The project then will be in an interchange activity center, where commercial and industrial land uses are recommended. Based on staff's review of the Future Lane Use Element and the Growth Management Plan, the proposed commercial uses and the residential density of 12 units per acre is consistent with the EAR Growth Management Plan amendment. As you can see on the site plan, the property's located on the west side of County Road 951, just south of Golden Gate Canal. It has primary access off of County Road 951. Access road number two follows along the south side of the property line where there's two access points, or proposed access points. Staff is recommending that these access points be kept open, public through the commercial tract to serve traffic from properties to the south. Steve Lenberger is here to handle all the environmental questions and concerns. Page 100 January 5, 2000 MR. LENBERGER: For the record, Stephen Lenberger, development services. Subject property, as Ray stated, is 74 acres, located immediately south of Golden Gate Canal, south of Golden Gate City, and it's on the west side of State Road 951, about a half mile north of 1-75. The property is all wooded. There are numerous trails on-site; most of them at the north end. There's also quite a few at the south end, and some of them across the property. The property has palmetto prairies that show up on the aerial as light areas. In this area and this area here. There's also an herbaceous prairie on the northwest portion. There's a fairly large one in this area. And the remainder of the site is pine flatwoods; pine flatwoods with palmetto understory, primarily on the east side, and pine flatwoods with herbaceous understory primarily on the west side of the property. The site is 100 percent uplands, and petitioner did do a protected species survey. They paid particular attention to RCW's and gopher tortoises. And the only listed species they found were gopher tortoises. I think there were about six active burrows, six or seven, and there's like 36 inactive burrows. And all the active burrows are pretty much on the Southern Biomes portion of the property. And that's in one of the exhibits in the EIS. The preservation requirement, 25 percent. The petitioner is proposing to retain 25 percent of native vegetation, either retain it or re-landscape it, in the native vegetation in the landscape buffers. A portion of that is on the PUD master plan on the visualizer. If you look at the visualizer on your monitor, you can see the portion of native vegetation proposed to be retained on the PUD master plan, as indicated on the southwest corner. MR. CARLSON: How does that relate to the location of the gopher tortoise burrows? MR. LENBERGER: There's a couple of active gopher tortoise burrows in that location. Exhibit G, I think it was, on the EIS show the locations of the burrows on-site. MR. CARLSON: Will other tortoises -- will there be an attempt to relocate them to the preserve area, or are they supposed to find it on their own or -- MR. LENBERGER: No, they'll be relocated, and there will be areas of pine saw palmetto to relocate them. MR. CARLSON: Is there any scrub habitat on this property? MR. LENBERGER: None that I saw, no. MR. CARLSON: It's all pine flatwoods? MR. LENBERGER: Well, no, there's quite a bit of saw palmetto prairie and the -- MR. CARLSON: Not quite flatwoods. Oh, saw palmetto prairies. MR. LENBERGER: Prairies, yes. Light areas on the aerial. Palmetto prairies are of this large area in here. And there's palmetto prairie here. You can see the preserve area will be roughly in this location here. This is pine flatwoods with saw palmetto understory, and this is a palmetto prairie in here. And this area Page 101 January 5, 2000 here was herbaceous prairie. MR. CORNELL: So is most of the 18 acres -- no, that's not all preserve. In other words, that's just the total native vegetation that's being preserved, right, the 25 percent? MR. LENBERGER: Right. The petitioner has to retain 25 percent of the native vegetation on-site. MR. CORNELL: Okay, so that's 18 and a half acres, but that's not all -- that's not largely down in the southwest corner, that's all over the place. MR. LENBERGER: Well, they've only -- right now they've only shown the proximate location of a portion of that on the southwest corner. At the PUD stage you don't want to be committed to the exact location. Build the site later on. We did put a stipulation in the staff report that they do it at the time of next development order submittal. MR. CORNELL: Okay. MR. CARLSON: I'm a little confused. What's the size of this preserve area in this document, in this corner? MR. LENBERGER: Anita? I'll let the petitioner handle that. MR. YOVANOVICH: For the record, Rich Yovanovich, representing the petitioner. It's about 3.9 acres shown right now. MR. CARLSON: And your requirement is for how much? MR. YOVANOVICH: Of native vegetation would be 18. -- 18 acres. MR. LENBERGER: 18 acres. MR. YOVANOVICH: 25 percent of the site. MR. CARLSON: So why are we holding back on locating that? MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, at this -- it's a little premature for us to identify exactly where it's going to be. We'll do it at the first development -- MR. CARLSON: How about the entire area affected by gopher tortoises? MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, they're spread out over the site. If you have any specific questions, Linda Sullivan can answer those kind of questions for you. But -- did you want to speak to her, or -- MR. CARLSON: Sure. MS. SULLIVAN: For the record, my name is Lisa Sullivan. Gopher tortoise burrows are scattered throughout the property. I believe that there were seven active, 36 inactive burrows. And the applicant has also made a contribution of approximately $37,000 to the native habitat fund for the gopher tortoise relocation effort. We will relocate the gopher tortoises on-site. They will be a preserve during the construction process. We believe that they will be located in the southwestern portion during construction. After construction the fences will be removed and the gopher tortoises will go to the rest of the property and whatever other areas of native vegetation that will be retained on the property. MR. CARLSON: Is there a map of where the burrows are? MR. LENBERGER: Yes. Page 102 January 5, 2000 MS. SULLIVAN: Yes, that would be -- MR. LENBERGER: It's the next to last page in the EIS. MR. COE: Exhibit G? MR. LENBERGER: Yeah, Exhibit G is next to the last page. It's the large pull-out one, and it shows the location. MS. SULLIVAN: The black dots are the active burrows. MR. CARLSON: Well, it looks like all the active burrows are on the south end of this property. Wouldn't that be a logical place to have the preserve? And it looks like you've got enough preserve requirement to take care of these tortoises right on-site. MS. SULLIVAN: Yes. MR. CARLSON: So why can't we do that? MS. SULLIVAN: At this stage, we identified the appropriate habitat. I mean, there was sufficient habitat throughout areas that -- in addition to where the actual burrows are right now, as Stephen mentioned, that there is habitat in the southwestern portion along the Southern Biomes portion of the property, too. Some of those areas will be retained as native vegetation. They're just not shown on the plan at the moment. MR. CARLSON: Why can't we do that? Tell me the reason we can't do that. MR. YOVANOVICH: At this point the plan is not finalized for the exact development of the property. The burrows are spread out on the property and they're not in one centralized location. If we're looking at Exhibit G here. MR. CARLSON: We are. MR. YOVANOVICH: And we're just not at the point of having to identify that, nor are we required at this point. The PUD master plan is a conceptual plan. And we will, when we come in for our first development order, identify exactly where the native vegetation will be. MR. CARLSON: So why wouldn't you try to create a gopher tortoise preserve and avoid paying than Incidental Take fee? MR. YOVANOVICH: We've already paid it at this point. MR. CARLSON: Well, why? MR. YOVANOVICH: It was paid in 1992 when the previous PUD was approved. MR. LENBERGER: Can I -- I want to help answer that question. The petitioner's proposed a residential or ALF assisted living. And they can have single-family, multi-family or assisted living facility. And my guess is that they have some flexibility in what they're going to put in there, and I guess what marketing demands called for at that time. The next developmental order submittal, which will probably be the preliminary subdivision plat, we will know what the preserves are. MR. CARLSON: So in the staff report on the bottom of Page 4, "Suitable palmetto prairie and pine flatwoods habitat will be preserved on portions of the project site to which gopher tortoises can be relocated." Can. That word can is kind of vague. Is the plan to preserve gopher tortoises on a preserve area in Page 103 January 5, 2000 this project? Is that the plan? MR. YOVANOVICH: We will relocate them. If you want us to change the word can to will relocate them, we will relocate them. MR. COE: On-site? MR. YOVANOVICH: Yeah. MR. CARLSON: Okay. Okay. CHAIRMAN HILL: I probably should know the answer to this, but the densities bother me. Is the upper right-hand northeast corner, is that the hotel? At any rate, if you add up these we're talking with the hotel, the residential and the assisted living facility, as it maxes out at 988 units. Hotel of 150, residential of 588 and assisted living facility of 250. MR. YOVANOVICH: Well, for one, the hotel is part of the commercial and not the residential. As far as the residential goes, it's 588 units. If we do decide to build ALF units, there is a reduction in that 588 units for each roughly 26 ALF units. CHAIRMAN HILL: So your legend here is a little bit misleading then. You're not proposing that you can build 588 residential units and 250 -- MR. YOVANOVICH: Right. CHAIRMAN HILL: -- ALF? MR. YOVANOVICH: The nexus of the PUD makes it clear that there is a reduction for dwelling units if we do build ALF. MR. BELLOWS: Yeah, basically staff has always required that for every acre of residential tracts converted to nonresidential uses, the permitted density is reduced, say, 12 units per acre. In this case it's reduced from the total amount of residential uses permitted. So that's subtracted from the 588. So therefore, we don't double count property and density. CHAIRMAN HILL: Has traffic been investigated that close to the interchange with tremendous -- MR. BELLOWS: Yes, the project was reviewed by the transportation services department and by planning service department staff for consistency with the traffic circulation element. This project is an amendment to a previously approved PUD where the traffic was found consistent. The proposed amendment and the changes are also found consistent with the traffic circulation element; will not have an adverse impact. MR. COE: Have you been out to that intersection lately? MR. BELLOWS: Yes, I've been out there. MR. COE: What do you think? I mean, you're not a transportation expert and neither -- MR. BELLOWS: No. MR. COE: -- am I. What do you think? MR. BELLOWS: There is some concerns about access off of 951. But there's also proposed access off access road number two to the south to help distribute the trips. Staff is also requiring that these points of access into the site be made public to allow for improved traffic circulation for future Page 104 January 5, 2000 development to the south. When -- the property to the east, the City Gate PUD, their access will align with this project access with a signalization. MR. COE: Okay, I'll -- MR. BELLOWS: Traffic signal -- MR. COE: -- go back with what I originally said. 951 and 75, that kind of intersects into that little thing there? MR. BELLOWS: Further south? MR. COE: Yeah, south of this project. You've been through that intersection, haven't you? MR. BELLOWS: Yeah, this project north of there. CHAIRMAN HILL: I drive through there a lot. It could be a mess. MR. SANSBURY: You haven't gone through there during the Pfish concerts. MR. BELLOWS: And definitely there are improvements for 951 for this project. The turn lanes will be required by the transportation services department. Access improvements here aren't required of this project. MR. NINO: But the point is that pursuant to traffic circulation requirements, there is no level of service deficiency on 951; nor will this project impact 951 over and above the thresholds that are allowed in the traffic circulation. It may be busy, it may be a problem with people, but it's not inconsistent with the traffic circulation elements. And if that fact is there on the table, there's no basis to deny an application -- a rezoning based on traffic. CHAIRMAN HILL: In my mind, Mr. Nino, it wasn't a basis for approval or disapproval. I was just curious. We talked about -- in the Whippoorwill, we talked about planning ahead with transmission lines and flowways and everything else. I think this is something where the traffic transmission on that highway or that street at that intersection is something that should be considered right now. MR. BELLOWS: And basically if they -- MR. NINO: I think it's pertinent to ask that question. CHAIRMAN HILL: Yeah, and I agree, it makes sense to look at all those issues. One different thing about this project versus the other is this is an approved project with approved trips assigned to the roadway, based on its approval in '92. So what we're looking at is a change in uses; how will the trips be affected by the -- MR. COE: That was my point exactly. You must have missed it, Ron. We're not talking about '92, we're talking about 2000, eight years later. MR. BELLOWS: Yeah, the project will generate additional traffic as a result of additional commercial uses in relation to currently approved health park uses. MR. COE: And you have looked at that? MR. BELLOWS: Yeah. MR. COE: That's what your -- MR. BELLOWS: Definitely have. Page 105 January 5, 2000 MR. COE: Okay, thank you very much. MR. BELLOWS: That's it. CHAIRMAN HILL: We'll close the public portion and ask the council -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Excuse me, there is one more item. CHAIRMAN HILL: I'm sorry, Stan. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: The second water management stipulation at the configuration of the north side easement, bike path buffer be resolved prior to this project being sent to the BCC. The memo that I handed you before the meeting is from Marla Ramsey. She's head of Parks and Rec. And according to Marla, they have reached an agreement with Anita Jenkins that Ray is going to incorporate it into the -- you can either leave that stipulation in there or take it out. At this point it makes no difference. The agreement has been reached. We have Joe Delate here from Parks and Rec., if anybody has any questions. CHAIRMAN HILL: Okay. Council's pleasure? MR. SANSBURY: Move approval. CHAIRMAN HILL: Second? MR. NINO: Excuse me, does that include an additional stipulation? MR. CORNELL: Yes, right. MR. SANSBURY: Right, with the additional stipulation. CHAIRMAN HILL: Is there a second? MR. CORNELL: Sure. MR. COE: Second. CHAIRMAN HILL: Discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HILL: 5-0. MR. YOVANOVICH: Thank you. MR. BELLOWS: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you, gentlemen. Before you go, Tom, let me ask -- we ought to do this in the future. If when you receive the packet information you sense a possibility of conflict, it would be helpful to notify staff and/or me ahead of time so that we -- MS. BURGESON: Right. That way we can automatically continue items that don't have a quorum. Also, one other thing that was brought up earlier in the meeting in a question regarding the position that was vacated by Dr. Jackson. I spoke with Sue Filson. She forwarded a memo to Vince Cautero, our administrator, on December 20th. We had two applicants for that position: Michael Simonik and Jack Baxter. I guess I will be getting that information or request from Vince to summarize those two to get those back to Sue, and then they will probably be heard by the board. My guess will be next month. CHAIRMAN HILL: Have they passed a conflict of interest question Page 106 January 5, 2000 or not? MS. BURGESON: I haven't looked at both of the applicants, but -- CHAIRMAN HILL: Thank you, Barb. I assume we had a motion that I didn't hear, and second and voted on for adjournment. There bein9 no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 3:40 p.m. ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISORY COUNCIL WILLIAM HILL, CHAIRMAN TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY CHERIE' R. LEONE, NOTARY PUBLIC Page 107