Retreat Blog

THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2006

FROM THE JULY ABA JOURNAL
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW
 

UP AGAINST THE SEAWALL
After Last Year's Hurricanes, a New Storm Over Property Rights and Beach Protection
Engulfs Florida's Coast

BY JOHN GIBEAUT

Emmett F. Hildreth Jr. already has the headline written. “D-A-D: The Day After
Dennis,” he suggests as he stands on the beach near his home in the Florida Panhandle
and describes the damage from one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike
the area.

The first 2005 storm to make landfall as a hurricane, Dennis slammed into the Panhandle
at 2:25 p.m. Sunday, July 10, 2005, a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds
of more than 125 mph and a storm surge of up to 10 feet.

Though the eye of the storm passed near Pensacola Beach, some 50 miles west of Hildreth’s
beachfront place in Walton County, the damage in Walton nevertheless was awesome.

Eleven seven-figure homes along the county’s 26-mile coast had fallen into the
Gulf of Mexico, along with a half-dozen swimming pools and a garage. Another three
dozen single and multifamily dwellings were in danger of collapse because the storm
surge had undermined their foundations.

But another storm still rages a year later, as state and federal agencies, the county,
environmentalists and the beachfront property owners argue over more than 100 seawalls
and other erosion-control structures the residents erected after Dennis to keep
their homes high and dry.

“It’s all walled, as far as you can see,” Hildreth says as he faces landward
from the water’s edge, his arms outstretched. Before Dennis came to town, Walton
County had only a handful of seawalls.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection says some of the walls—all of
which lack the necessary state permits—almost certainly will have to be removed.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the walls threaten the nesting grounds of
endangered sea turtles. It can sue or criminally prosecute owners who don’t take
steps to reduce potential damage to turtle habitats. Environmentalists want to get
rid of the walls altogether.

The only issue the groups don’t argue over is that the administrative proceedings
and litigation to straighten out everything will take years.

But the tale of Florida’s and Walton County’s experience with the seawalls is
anything but a cautionary one. Similar scenes play out from Maine to Hawaii as questions
of law and public policy arise over the wisdom of rebuilding or fortifying homes
in delicate coastal areas after storms and other disasters.

“There are legions of stories around the country of landowners in coastal areas
desperately trying to hang onto disappearing beachfront property,” says John D.
Echeverria, executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Institute at
Georgetown University Law Center.

RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The 2005 season was one of the most destructive on record, and forecasters predict
more numerous and stronger hurricanes in the years ahead. Despite the dangers, many
local and state governments—Florida’s among them—remain in the business of luring
development to the coast. It’s rarely a question of whether people should be able
to rebuild after storms. It’s simply a matter of when.

“Except for the shortage of money, I don’t see any limitation on any of this stuff,”
says Charles Pattison, executive director of 1000 Friends of Florida, a watchdog
organization that keeps tabs on the state’s growth.

While coastal development is largely a matter of state law, a series of federal
proposals to speed up the recovery from Hurricane Katrina drew raised eyebrows from
the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. Particularly troubling was
a broadly worded bill introduced by Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., that would allow
the Environmental Protection Agency to issue 120-day waivers of any statute or regulation
if needed “to respond, in a timely and effective manner, to a situation or damage
relating to Hurricane Katrina.” By spring, however, the bill remained in the Committee
on Environment and Public Works, which Inhofe chairs.

The section supports the use of waivers under existing law, but opposes new ones
proposed last fall after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.

“Some of the proposals were of such a broad sweep that this controversy over the
seawalls just wouldn’t happen,” says Irma Russell, a visiting law professor at
Pace University in White Plains, N.Y., and author of the section’s comments on
the bill and other federal proposals. The permitting authorities “simply would
say, ‘Go away. We don’t want to listen to you anymore.’ ”

In the states, the fight over reconstructing the coast features on one side developers
and property owners, who hold the threat of Fifth Amendment takings claims over
government officials who restrict their ability to build in fragile areas. On the
other side stand various advocacy groups that say increased coastal development
threatens not only the environment, but also public health and safety as growing
populations fleeing storms overrun already inadequate roads, bridges, shelters and
other facilities.

Stuck in the middle are state and local governments, which must balance property
rights against environmental and public safety concerns and try to reduce exposure
to liability.

“They’re on the end of the spear as far as the takings issue is concerned,” says
Pensacola lawyer George R. Mead II. He represents a homeowners association fighting
Walton County and the state’s denial of its application to install geotubes—long,
sand-filled cylinders that are supposed to keep the beach from washing away.

All the while, emotions seethe as property owners say they have a right to protect
their homes, while critics say the owners really just want to keep the public beach
to themselves.

“It’s hard to find a middle ground on this,” says Robert H. Thomas, managing
attorney for the Honolulu office of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest
law firm that backs property owners. “Every time someone sneezes on the shoreline,
it’s front-page news.”

Though Florida hardly is unique, its 2,276 miles of coastline is the longest in
the continental United States and the most vulnerable to hurricanes. About 80 percent
of the Sunshine State’s 17 million residents live within 20 miles of the coast.

“Florida is a state that’s based on growth and development,” says Tallahassee
lawyer Thomas G. Pelham, former secretary of the Florida Department of Community
Affairs, the state agency responsible for overseeing that growth. “We’re getting
1,000 new residents a day.”

Many of those newcomers flock to the barrier islands that ring Florida and other
coastal states. As the term suggests, barrier islands serve as natural buffers between
storms and the mainland.

Their beauty also makes them attractive to developers. But barrier islands are notoriously
unstable because they are essentially big sandbars with contours that regularly
shift with normal ocean currents and wave action. It does not take the storm of
the century to wipe out everything on a barrier island.

Seawalls and similar structures—collectively called coastal armoring—may save
buildings from going into the drink. But most engineers and government authorities
discourage their use because they ultimately can destroy beaches.

In their natural state, beaches along eroding shorelines maintain their width by
retreating toward land as the water rises. A seawall, however, blocks the path of
retreat, so the water erodes the beach right up to its base. (See the diagram on
page 49.) In addition, female sea turtles, which weigh 250 pounds or more, can’t
scale the walls to come ashore and lay their eggs.

“If that armoring remains, there’s enough evidence that we may lose our beaches,”
says Anita Page, executive director of the South Walton Community Council, which
opposes the seawalls.

Walton County lies in a largely rural region where the live oaks and Spanish moss
of the Old South meet modern coastal Florida along a beachfront stretch of swank
homes that some call the Emerald Coast. Others call it the Redneck Riviera because
many of the tourists and seasonal residents come from Alabama, Mississippi and other
parts of the Southeast.

Panhandle counties like Walton also make up Florida’s historical political power
base. Long suspicious of state government in the capital of Tallahassee, Panhandle
counties have always marched to their own tune, even as power shifted after World
War II with rapid development to the south.

For example, arguing that hurricanes hardly touch there, Panhandle lawmakers for
years managed to exempt the region from stricter building codes imposed on the rest
of the state to reduce storm damage. After several unsuccessful attempts, the rest
of the legislature ended the Panhandle exemption this spring.

The politicians’ meteorological prognostications notwithstanding, it only took
a few hours in July 2005 for hurricane-induced beach erosion to erupt into a crisis
for Walton County, which depends on its coast for 90 percent of its property taxes.
That’s not to mention the bundles of money tourists spend in the increasingly popular
vacation destination.

Though extreme in scope, the Walton County seawall standoff draws together key points
of the laws governing coastal land use.

Like the politicians, county residents along the Gulf had grown complacent over
the years. After all, it had been a decade since the last major storm struck the
area.

But the beachfront owners quickly awakened when they saw the damage Dennis left
behind. The storm surge, caused by wind and low pressure associated with hurricanes,
had taken a 300-foot bite out of a line of 15- to 30-foot-tall bluffs above the
beach, where the homes stand.

SEAWALL FRENZY

The day after Dennis, Colleen M. Castille, secretary of the state Department of
Environmental Protection, issued an emergency order allowing counties to grant 60-day
permits for temporary seawalls to protect property threatened by the Gulf. In no
time, Walton County officials were hip-deep in the temporary permits, issuing them
to 243 owners, about 150 of whom eventually built seawalls. Among the contracting
companies pulling permits was one owned by a county commissioner who voted for them.

Though Florida statutes and the state administrative code envision easily removable
sandbags and wood pilings as temporary measures, the Walton County beachfront owners
had something else in mind. They erected massive fiberglass and galvanized steel
barriers that reach down to sea level—15 feet or more beneath the surface—and
stand another 15 feet above ground. Anchored, covered with sand, planted with sea
oats and costing about $1,000 a foot, the walls were anything but temporary.

“I’ve got a quarter of a million dollars into it,” says part-time resident Stephen
Holmes, a partner in a Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm. “This is my retirement
money.”

After Castille’s order, Walton County seawall construction took off like nobody’s
business. The pace shocked some residents, who watched as trucks and other equipment
smashed through protective sand dunes to gain access to the beach.

The property owners knew they ultimately would need state permits if the walls were
to remain. But one of their lawyers says he came up against another kind of wall
when he tried to get some advance indication of what DEP officials would approve.

Thomas G. Tomasello says he usually advises his clients to come to him first before
trying to deal with state bureaucrats. But he says even he got nowhere when he contacted
DEP on behalf of a Walton County condominium association. And Tomasello is a former
DEP general counsel.

“I couldn’t get any cooperation from them,” says Tomasello, who practices in
Tallahassee. “I said, ‘This just isn’t working.’ I told my client, ‘Just build
it with the emergency permit, and we’ll deal with it later.’ ”

By the time turtle nesting season began May 1, the seawalls were finished, and the
trucks, bulldozers, cranes and pile drivers all had pulled out. Now the property
owners face the difficult task of getting permanent DEP permits after the fact.

TABLES TURN FOR TURTLES

Owners also must deal with Fish and Wildlife over the turtle question.

Before the seawalls, about 20 turtles a year nested on Walton County beaches. Now
Richard Fowlkes wonders whether the turtles will nest there again. The combination
of storm damage and construction in many areas had left only a few feet of beach,
hardly enough for a turtle to lay its eggs without them being carried out to sea
by the next tide.

What’s more, the county allowed some contractors to replace sand with red clay
hauled in from the interior instead of the sugary white substance that makes Gulf
beaches some of the world’s finest. The red clay doesn’t just clash aesthetically
with the native white sand. It also can spook turtles back into the Gulf before
they make their nests.

“The county gave them a green light to do whatever they wanted,” says Fowlkes,
a retired photojournalist who with other volunteers marks and monitors turtle nests
to make sure people don’t disturb them. “The temporary structures morphed into
permanent ones. No way is a turtle going to be able to climb those steep walls.
The only place for them to go is on that little strip of beach where it’s almost
for sure guaranteed that they’re going to be washed out.”

The property owners say the storms, not the seawalls, damaged the turtle habitat.
In fact, they say they’ve improved the beach with their own money.

The death of a rare Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle in a dredge in May forced the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers to halt an unrelated beach restoration project off Walton
County until October. It was the third turtle killed since the project began this
year.

Though Fish and Wildlife can sue and even criminally prosecute uncooperative owners
under the Endangered Species Act, lawyer Tomasello doubts that will happen. He sees
the agency as a bully that threatens local governments and individuals with a parade
of legal horrors that never arrives. “I don’t think Fish and Wildlife has the
grit to sue.”

The agency declined comment. Citing potential litigation, DEP spokesman Anthony
De Luise also declined to respond to similar remarks Tomasello directed toward his
department, except to say Tomasello’s clients must wait like everyone else for
permit applications.

For its part, the county says it’s out of the seawall business, though it continues
to work with the owners and Fish and Wildlife to address concerns for turtles and
other endangered species that may inhabit the area. County Attorney David A. Hallman
says owners who ignored the requirements of DEP and other agencies did so at their
own risk.

“My board authorized folks to do temporary armoring and nothing more,” Hallman
says. “If I tell you to build temporary armoring, and you build something more
elaborate, it’s not my responsibility. The hard decisions now lie with DEP.”

Hildreth says he and his neighbors have plowed at least $70 million into the structures,
which they prefer to call “upland retaining walls.” He, too, doubts any government
agency or court will force their removal.

“The beachfront property owners have been hurt unmercifully by the storms,” he
says. “To make them tear out these walls would be without conscience. Why shouldn’t
property owners be able to protect their homes or businesses?”

Florida law may not be so benevolent, as one company learned when it went ahead
and began building condominiums in Martin County on the Atlantic coast. The developer
had been warned that the project may not receive final approval after legal challenges
to it had run their course.

Despite the developer’s protests that it stood to lose $3.3 million, a trial judge
ordered the demolition of five buildings in various stages of completion, including
two that were nearly totally occupied. The Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal
in West Palm Beach showed no sympathy in affirming the order. Pinecrest Lakes Inc.
v. Shidel, 795 So. 2d 191 (2001).

“If the rule of law requires land uses to meet specific standards, then allowing
those who develop land to escape its requirements by spending a project out of compliance
would make the standards of growth management of little real consequence,” wrote
appeals Judge Gary M. Farmer. “It would allow developers such as this one to build
in defiance of the limits, then escape compliance by making the cost of correction
too high.”

Walton County’s first coastal armoring litigation may come from the Retreat Homeowners
Association, the client Pensacola lawyer Mead represents in its effort to install
geotubes. As talks with the state and county continued this spring, Mead already
was researching a takings claim.

In late April, he received an unexpected boost in the case from other Walton County
property owners fighting a renourishment project, which restores beaches by pumping
more sand onto them. In somewhat counterintuitive arguments, the owners maintained
the project constituted a taking because the state denies them property rights over
the added sand, even if it increases the size of their lots, and because the new
sand also would cut their property off from direct access to the water. The First
District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee agreed with the owners and ordered the project
scuttled. Save Our Beaches Inc. v. Florida DEP, No. 1D05-4086 (April 28). Not before
the court, however, were the questions of whether the taking requires a condemnation
trial or compensation.

As Mead sees it, the state’s denial of the geotubes already has deprived his client
of partial use of the property, perhaps worth as much as $250,000 a month in compensation.
He shudders at what a taking of all 90 lots on the site could entail.

“My clients are willing to spend $1.7 million to protect themselves, and we may
have a takings claim that could wind up costing tens of millions of dollars,” Mead
says. “I don’t get it.”

REINING IN DEVELOPMENT

Besides case law, the state also has set a strong political precedent when it comes
to saving Florida from Floridians. Pattison of 1000 Friends recalls how legislators
in the 1970s wrested control of runaway development in the Florida Keys from the
locals and turned it over to the state by designating the Keys as an area of critical
state concern.

“The state was not going to sit back and let local governments ruin everything,”
says Pattison, a regional and urban planner who helped implement the project for
the community affairs department.

Like sports records, though, political precedents are made to be broken. The 2006
edition of the Florida Legislature lifted the designation, effective in 2009.

But at least on paper, Florida has one of the nation’s strongest laws to control
development. The 1985 Growth Management Act requires local and regional governments
to submit to the state comprehensive plans that cover all aspects of growth, from
transportation to sanitation. The state can reject plans that don’t meet minimum
standards and can punish local governments that fail to enforce the law.

The act brought the concept of zoning to the Panhandle for the first time, including
to large sections of the urbanized Pensacola area. It also discourages development
along the coast.

“I think the process is unraveling—steadily,” says former Community Affairs Secretary
Pelham, who administered the act in its early days. Pelham also has served as chair
of the ABA State and Local Government Law Section’s committee on land use, planning
and zoning.

“There’s been an increasing deference to the property rights side of the equation,
and it’s in full swing today,” Pelham says. Then he ticks off a list of key state
agency positions and legislative posts held or controlled by developers. Many of
those same agency heads, legislators and developers dominated the state’s Coastal
High Hazard Study Committee, established by Gov. Jeb Bush last fall to explore ways
to alleviate future storm damage. The upshot: a Florida that just can’t say no.

“It takes strong political leadership to overcome that sort of pressure,” Pelham
says. “That’s just a fact of life in Florida, even though we’ve had laws on the
books for years restricting development in coastal areas.”

Legislators may have brought Pelham’s nightmare to life this spring when they unanimously
adopted a bill that would allow local governments to increase population densities
in coastal areas, provided the development can meet minimum evacuation times. The
developer can avoid that requirement, however, through unspecified “payment of
money, contribution of land, and construction of hurricane shelters and transportation
facilities.”

While the bill could make construction more difficult in many more congested parts
of the state, it actually could speed it up in the still relatively undeveloped
Panhandle, where evacuation times aren’t a crucial issue.

Republican Charlie Clary is Walton County’s state senator and sponsor of an earlier
version of the legislation. He also sits on the Bush study committee and knows he’ll
never please everyone.

“It’s a fine line of protecting private property rights and the community,” says
Clary, an architect. “There’s never a magic fix. You just have to have flexibility.”

But Walton County officials and residents can’t expect Clary and the legislature
to bail them out of the seawall mess.

“I don’t know if we can resolve the current seawall situation legislatively,”
Clary says. “That’s an issue for the county, the property owners and the state
[agencies].”

The DEP approval process for permanent permits, meanwhile, has broken out of the
gate at a crawl. By mid-May, the agency had approved only three of 66 applications
and denied one because the wall was built too close to the water.

Some observers say the agency is buying time because turtle nesting season began
May 1 and runs through Oct. 31, meaning contractors can’t bring heavy equipment
onto the beach to remove any illegal walls. Nesting season also ends a few days
before Florida’s gubernatorial election. Because of term limits, Bush can’t run
again. So the prospect of a new governor with different priorities for the coast
could chill DEP officials from acting quickly.

But despite the potential for litigation in Walton County, experts in land use and
planning say insurance ultimately will decide the issue writ large. Most private
insurers offering wind and flood coverage have pulled out of Florida, leaving the
state to pick up the cost of rebuilding through its own insurance program. Storm
damage claims by coastal residents mean higher premiums for people who don’t live
anywhere near the sea.

“If I tell you your insurance premium is going to go up 125 percent every year,
I think you’ll get people’s attention,” Pattison says.

Property owner Hildreth also is an Alabama-licensed litigator. And he sounds every
bit the part as he sits behind his desk and delivers the summation of his case for
seawalls. As if he were standing before the bench or a jury, he describes a taking
through an examination of Walton’s beachfront homes the day after Dennis.

“No. 1,” he says, “they were unsellable. There was nothing to buy. No. 2, you
could not personally use them. The county red-tagged them [as unsafe]. No. 3, you
couldn’t rent them out. No tourists would take them. And No. 4, you can’t insure
them. If you can’t sell it, if you can’t use it, if you can’t rent it, and you
can’t insure it, it’s worthless.”

LOOKING AT LUCAS

The question of rebuilding in coastal areas resides almost exclusively in state
law, but one U.S. Supreme Court decision sets the tone.

In Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992), the justices held
6-3 that the state supreme court erred in denying a developer compensation for two
lots on a barrier island by declaring planned home construction on them in violation
of the public interest. The developer had purchased the lots for $975,000, but a
state setback law enacted after he bought the property prohibited building there
because it was too close to the Atlantic Ocean. After the Supreme Court decision
revived the developer’s takings claim, the state on remand paid for the lots.

Now, with the devastation of the 2005 hurricane season, one leading environmental
advocate says it’s time for the court to reverse Lucas.

“I’d just love to have an opportunity to re-litigate Lucas today,” says John
D. Echeverria, head of Georgetown Law Center’s Environmental Law and Policy Institute.
“If we re-litigated Lucas after Katrina, hands down it comes out the other way.”

He notes that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy concurred in the judgment and refused to
go along with the majority’s conclusion that such a ban almost always would result
in a taking. He also sees hope for reversal in new Chief Justice John G. Roberts
Jr.’s successful defense before the high court of a takings challenge to land-use
regulations in Lake Tahoe when Roberts was in private practice.

Though Lucas also suggests that a taking has to render property virtually worthless
to merit compensation, courts in states like Florida go further and make payouts
for partial takings. Other state courts, though, have used subsequent Supreme Court
takings precedent to dull the bludgeon Lucas can wield.

LINGLE’S EXAMPLE

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2005 upheld coastal building restrictions
using Lingle v. Chevron Inc., 544 U.S. 528, which was also decided in 2005 and held
that land use regulations that “substantially advance” a legitimate state interest
can defeat a takings claim. The Massachusetts case involved a lot on the southeastern
tip of Cape Cod, surrounded by the Atlantic on three sides. Gove v. Zoning Board
of Appeals of Chatham, 831 N.E.2d 865.

Given the property’s location and the lack of evidence to the contrary, the court
had no problem in establishing state interest. Though the owner couldn’t build
a home on the lot, the court noted that the state had not physically occupied the
property or rendered it totally worthless. In doing so, the Massachusetts court
followed Lingle’s suggestion that “government hardly could go on if to some extent
values incident to property could not be diminished without paying for every such
change.”

Echeverria says more state courts should step up to the plate with that approach.
“If you create the impression that people can make stupid building decisions and
get bailed out, then people will keep making stupid building decisions.”

John Gibeaut is a senior writer for the ABA Journal. His e-mail address is gibeautj@staff.abanet.org.

©2006 ABA Journal

This great link on Gulf Coast Hurricanes makes one thing clear.
This is a regular event if you live on the coast and with more people wanting to own property and live here the building density gets greater and storms do more damage even with improved building codes causing insurance costs to increase.....


Gulf Coast Hurricane chart

That's what a few days away can do for you. GIVE YOU PERSPECTIVE

1. Global Warming, If it's real, it's bad, if it's not real and this many people are either wrong or trying to make us believe what's wrong that's bad too.

2. Global War-ing, Wars and more wars. You would think people just love killing other people.
We just can't seem to stop this nasty habit. Afganistan, Iraq, the latest middle east flare up,more wars, to come and come and come and come.

3. Oil, Are we getting ripped off by big oil??? $3.00 for regular.

4. Insurance, Property taxes, interest rates up!

5. Consumer confidence ..... Up ? What gives? Prozac? Viagra?

6. 100 other important problems.....
Breast Cancer
Aids
World Hunger
Avain Bird flu
96 other huge problems


101. Retreat association problems/geo tubes, blah blah blah....I know , pretty darn silly. We DON'T KNOW HOW LUCKY WE ARE.

We were sitting on the beach at the end of the day and noticed a family of four stomp up the dunes in the preserve area to get a bettert view and then stomp back down.
There's nothing we can do really because we have no signs telling people to stay off the dunes.....

Click on the link and then read the full interview to understand that we really do not have a vast amount of data
on Hurricanes.....

words like these : "Everybody should realize before about 1970, we didn’t have adequate satellites. So hurricanes occurred in the Atlantic that nobody knew about and certainly, didn’t have measurements on them.

Hurricane wisdom

Beach Test

Recent Florida legislation allows the Florida DEP to revoke the authority of an agency, political
subdivision, or municipality's authority to install or permit the installation of a rigid coastal armoring structure.
As I predicted, more control was bound to happen after the wild and wooly emergency permitting mess we had in 2005.
The DEP is permitted to revoke such authority if installation conflicts with certain public policies regarding adjacent properties, public access, or damage to vegatation or nesting turtle
populations.
This legislation is a significant step in protecting Florida's environment.

The beach can teach You how to relax
Come listen to the sounds of tme and tides
That wait for no man
And demand respect all the more
Because of their age old superiority
Feel the cool winds that caress the petty cares
Away from great and small minds alike
While the sky acts out a different play above this stage
Each day you may attend and silently applaud


Sea Change, a Poem by Shawn O'Neal © 2006 All Rights Reserved

Meadiation-

Private, informal dispute resolution process in which a neutral third person,
the mediator, helps disputing parties to reach an agreement.
the mediator has no power to impose a decision on the parties.

The Judge has instructed the parties to attend this mediation .
A trial will be held if the mediation does not resolve the dispute.

The trial is scheduled next month, although recent
developments may extend the time frame of this dispute considerably.

I've broken down and I can't get up......

Old Beach Club color Showing through as paint is wearing off in several places....
< A Sad Tail............

Breaker 1, Breaker 1, we have a palm tree down at the beach club. I repeat, Dead palm at the beach club
and that boy
is leaning
over

Register to Vote for Your favorite Green Building Designs for New OrleansDesigns will be announced on NBC's Today Show and posted on this site Monday, July 17th .

Global Green USA

Neighbor- One who lives in close proximity to another

As used with reference to a person's reputation, "neighborhood" means in general any community or society where a person is well known and has established a reputation.

Hood- Slang word for neighborhood.

A native english suffix denoting state, condition, character, nature, etc. ,
or a body of persons of a particular character or class.

I think the current Retreat board has busted this Myth.

In fact, I think they have started the "More is Nothing" movement.

You pay a pickup truck load of "special assessment" money and get...... Nothing.

Retreat Choices:

A. Pay Thousands or Tens of thousands of Dollars for "special Assessments" that you could use for a productive purpose and get... Nothing.

B. Pay nothing and get liens on your property and pursue a legal solution.

I attended the walton County Beach Restoration this evening with about 40 other folks.
I saw a few guys I know from Old Florida Beach.
Cindy Meadows and brad Pickel were there as was Mike Trudnak with Taylor Engineering.

They are working on a beach and or dune restoration project for our area but it could take a few more seasons to get going and even the large scale dune restoration project would only reach a height of 16 feet.

Even though the Critical erosion in Blue Mountain beach is well to the east of us, our area
would be included under the current proposed plan because otherwise it would leave a "GAP"
which could make the project less effective.

It is very expensive to protect the beach to the 50 year storm event level.

Everything about living on the Beach is expensive.

>> WALTON COUNTY TDC HOSTS PUBLIC INFORMATION WORKSHOP TO DISCUSS BEACH
>> RESTORATION ALONG THE 30-A CORRIDOR
>>
>> WALTON COUNTY, Fla.- The Walton County Tourist
>> Development Council (TDC) has scheduled a second public information
>> workshop regarding beach restoration projects for the beaches along the
>> 30-A corridor. The public meeting will be held Thursday,
 July 13, 2006 from 6-8 p.m., in the Azalea Room at the
 Baytowne Conference Center in Sandestin
 Golf and Beach Resort.

>> The workshop will highlight the scientific findings regarding the
>> current state of the beaches, sand source information and proposed
>> project areas for future restoration efforts. The information will serve
>> as the blueprint for ways that Walton County can restore, protect and
>> enhance all beaches managed by Walton County while focusing on the
>> newly-designated "critically eroded" areas by the Florida Department
of
>> Environmental Protection (DEP).  The workshop will also include a
>> moderated question and answer session, which will provide local
>> residents the opportunity to voice their questions and concerns
>> regarding future beach restoration initiatives in Walton County.
>>
>> After the impact of Hurricane Ivan in late 2004, Walton County directed
>> Taylor Engineering, Inc., Walton County's coastal engineering firm, to
>> update all existing scientific and technical information to identify
>> potential new projects along the 30-A corridor.  This information
>> included updated beach profile measurements after Hurricane Ivan and
>> Dennis, and a comprehensive sand source investigation. In April 2006,
>> DEP released their state-designated "critically eroded" areas,
which
>> includes all of Western Walton County that is currently undergoing
>> restoration and an increase from two miles to nine miles along the 30-A
>> corridor.
>>
>> For more information on Walton County beach restoration projects please
>> contact our public relations department at 1-800-822-6877 or visit
>> www.protectwaltoncountybeaches.com .
>>

We have now made it all the way to "Dennis Day" the dreaded day last year that wrought destruction on our area.

23 of the last 40 some odd years have had no major cane in these parts during the month of July.

let's make it 24!

With his SPEED GUN people.
So SLOOOOOOOW down now would ya?

Call me a radical but I think we need to get another "PRIVATE DRIVE" sign at the entrance to RETREAT DRIVE to help keep the baby strollers, skaters, and tourists off our drive.
maybe back that sign up with a DEAD END sign. People hate DEAD ENDS.

Cut the Bushes in front of the SPEED LIMIT sign on the entry lane coming into the neighborhood.

And get a new SPEED LIMIT sign outside the gates on the right hand exit lane.

While doing some reading over the weekend I believe I have identified the real reason the South lost the Civil War.

The Union had 150,000 "Fighting Irish" Immigrants in their ranks while We ( I am from Texas) had only 30,000 "Fighting Irish" immigrants in our ranks.

5 to 1 ..... an insurmountable difference to be sure.

Speaking of our own little Civil War here in the Retreat, we have a mediation next Monday and have at least one Irish American on our team.

You're in your prime
having a great time
enjoying your wine
wondering where to dine

eyeing the clouds
laughing out loud
with out a care
in your cozy beach chair

I have started asking people what they think of the Retreat the last few days.
These are the comments I have so far.....

From a real estate agent who lives on 30A:
" I haven't been there lately, it's private. Mainly older people.

From a couple (architects) near Rosemary Beach:
The homes seem close together.

To which I answered " Not as close together as the homes in Alys Beach."
To which she said " but they are supposed to be attached at Alys Beach."

Maybe we need a little PR .

Perhaps the sale of the Bohn home at $9 + Million dollars has created the impression that we are a neighborhood of the Uber-rich .

These pix were taken on July 5th.

If the 24 Gulf front owners form an LLC (type of corporation) to protect their private property then that LLC is responsible for any liability that arises from beach projects that the LLC undertakes .
This protects the other members of the association who are not members of the LLC from liability.
If the association then joins in with this LLC to protect the common areas like the beach club and the beach walkovers then this becomes the associations potential liability to that degree .


This is quite different than the association putting the entire association membership at risk for work being done on what is mostly private property by having every member of the association pay for the costs through the assessment method proposed by the current board and which has been contested by a group of 8 owners of which I am one.

**************************HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!******************************

**************************THE BANNER STILL WAVES*******************************

After Spain declared war against Great Britain in June of 1779, Count Bernardo de Gálvez, the governor of Louisiana, seized three British Mississippi River outposts: Manchac, Baton Rouge, and Natchez. Gálvez then captured Mobile on March 14, 1780, and in May of 1781 forced the surrender of the British outpost at Pensacola, Florida.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation
of any government, and to protect its free expression
should be our first object.

- Thomas Jefferson

A SEA TURTLE has laid a clutch of eggs on the retreat beach just west of where the beach club
walkover used to be. Sharon and her turtle watch team are already on it and as you can see have the situation well in hand.

> Well this is a fine mess you've gotten us into .... < Don't point your finger at ME.

< YOU'RE the one who wanted to play hardball.

Old Florida Beach, our neighbors to the West, are just finishing an installation of new Dune fencing while here at the retreat we see .................................................

Nothing.

Since September of 2004.

Nothing.