Coastal line shifts; critics stand firm

Although the line is moving 6 feet, officials are upset by the date and location of the public hearing.

By AMY WIMMER

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 14, 2001

INDIAN SHORES -- The team of beach officials, waterfront property owners, retired professionals and neighbors who have worked for more than a year to keep the Department of Environmental Protection's new restrictions out of Pinellas learned Wednesday how far their work has taken them.

About 6 feet, more or less.

The DEP met Wednesday with representatives from all beach cities and towns affected by the new Coastal Construction Control Line, which could force thousands of beachfront property owners to seek state permission for new construction. The state is expected to put the rule in place as early as Feb. 28, though an organization of beach mayors is seeking 11th-hour relief from the new regulations.

At the meeting, DEP officials announced that they will move their proposed line about 6 feet from where they had originally drawn it, an offering that did little to mollify critics.

Opponents list a slew of problems with the proposed line. They question the science behind it, the DEP's timetable for approving it, and whether built-out Pinellas should have a new control line at all. Mostly, they say they are frustrated that the DEP plans to hold what will likely be a final public hearing Jan. 30.

"To provide all this information and not provide adequate time to digest it makes it seem that the whole process is a charade," said John Robertson, mayor of Belleair Shore and a member of the Barrier Islands Governmental Council, composed of elected officials from all the beach towns south of Clearwater.

The group has been working for a year to find flaws in how the DEP established the line. Now it is considering seeking out lobbyists or attorneys who might take the case.

The Big-C formed a technical advisory committee that has researched how the DEP established the new control line in Pinellas, the last of 24 counties to have its coastal control line revised by the state agency, as required by state law.

In August, the committee met with the same DEP officials who returned to Pinellas on Wednesday to present the agency's new findings, the result of more intense study that was prompted by the committee's questions.

"I think the data have certainly been hammered harder in this county, harder than it has in any other county," said Dr. Robert Dean, an engineering professor at the University of Florida who helped with the DEP's study. "You ask how you can change the line. You've already changed the line. I know you want to change it more."

In addition to their objections to the date, beach officials are also upset about the location of the public hearing -- at Clearwater City Hall in downtown Clearwater. They think the DEP is purposely holding the meeting in the northernmost beach city so that residents of the south beaches, which have been more vocal in their opposition to the line, do not attend.

"If you want the public that is being affected, if you want their input, then you'll move your meeting," said Leon Atkinson, mayor of Treasure Island and president of the Big-C.

DEP officials told the beach representatives that after their meeting in August with the Big-C's committee, they included more data in their study. As a result, the control line moved slightly seaward, in the beach communities' favor.

All the cities and towns along the Pinellas coast have a DEP control line. That line was established in 1979 and essentially ran along the beachward side of developments already in place. New hotels, condominiums and homes built in the years since have, in every case, been built landward of the DEP's line.

In 1981, the state Legislature ordered the DEP to revise every control line put in place before June 1980. Pinellas is the 24th and final county to be reworked.

DEP officials have said they left Pinellas for last because they anticipated a fight here. But they are reluctant to negotiate the line. Every county's control line should be established using the "same procedures, same methodology," Dean said.

The new control lines have more effect because the DEP draws the line wherever a 3-foot wave would hit land in a 100-year storm, and the new lines can dissect existing buildings.

It cuts Pass-a-Grille in half, for instance, throwing the west side of the neighborhood into non-compliance and making it more expensive and time-consuming to build new structures seaward of the line.

Elsewhere, the line moves along Gulf Boulevard in many beach cities, putting an estimated $2.8-billion in gulf-front property into non-compliance, though the construction standards applied to properties west of the control line are only considered when a property owner wants to rebuild or alter the structure.

"We've been doing this now for 19 years and have completed 23 studies," said Gene Chalecki, program administrator for the DEP's Office of Beaches and Coastal Systems. "Pinellas County is the last county where that study is not completed."

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