Florida Sea Grant and University of Florida Law School Partner to Support Public Access Policy Initiatives

Grant Watson and Thomas T. Ankersen

Grant Watson is a recent graduate of the University of Florida College of Law who worked with Florida Sea Grant on public access issues through the UF Law Conservation Clinic.

Thomas T. Ankersen is a Legal Skills Professor at the UF College of Law and directs its Conservation Clinic in the Center for Governmental Responsibility. He also serves as a statewide legal specialist for Florida Sea Grant.

Florida enjoys one of the nation’s longest coastlines and a year-round climate conducive to maritime activities. Historically, marine industries have thrived because of an abundance of waterfront property on which to establish water-dependent activities and their support facilities. Commercial waterfront activities have not been the only beneficiaries of Florida’s vast coastline and coastal resources. Recreational boaters have also been able to enjoy Florida’s coastal waters without concern over access to the water. Today, however, there are more than one million registered boaters in the state and boating access infrastructure, already overtaxed, is facing a wave of waterfront privatization that threatens two Florida traditions, commercial fishing and recreational boating. Competition for once-abundant space on the water has also become increasingly problematic with growing conflict among user groups and with marine resources such as manatees, sea grasses and corals. A unique collaboration between the Florida Sea Grant Boating and Waterway Management Program and faculty and students at the University of Florida College of Law’s Center for Governmental Responsibility and Conservation Clinic has been assisting the state and its communities with these issues.

After a fitful beginning, the Florida legislature began to face up to the access problem by passing the 2005 Working Waterfronts Legislation - a multifaceted attempt to stem the tide of waterfront privatization. Key to the legislation is its parcel-based definition. A “working waterfront” can be either recreational or commercial in nature, and is “a parcel of real property that provides access for water-dependent commercial activities or provides access for the public to the navigable waters of the state.” Some examples of a “working waterfront” are docks, wharfs, lifts, wet and dry marinas, boat ramps, boat hauling and repair facilities, commercial fishing facilities, boat construction facilities, and other support structures over the water. Thus the term “working waterfront” in Florida has been expanded to include waterfronts that serve the access needs of recreational boaters as well as commercial maritime industries.

The new legislation has provisions that require local governments to address public access through the local government comprehensive planning process. The new legislation also codifies the Waterfronts Florida Partnership Program, a cooperative arrangement between the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA) that assists certain designated coastal communities with a variety of issues related to their waterfronts, including revitalization and the provision of public access. The new legislation also includes a complex property tax deferral program that local governments may adopt and apply to “working waterfront” property, enabling owners to defer paying skyrocketing waterfront property taxes until there is a change in ownership or use. Finally, the law directs the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to survey state parks for additional public access capacity.

Even before public access for recreational boating became a hot button political issue, Florida Sea Grant had begun to address recreational use of the State’s waters through the creation of a Boating and Waterway Management Program that brought mapping technologies, planning principles and policy analysis to bear on the State’s waterways. Focusing first on the waters of Southwest Florida, and the vision of the West Coast Inland Navigation District, Sea Grant and CGR attorneys have been working to develop the conceptual framework for a regional waterway management system focused on the “adaptive reuse” of the federal intracoastal waterway as the artery for a still evolving network of interconnected channels and public access points linking the region to its marine cultural and natural resources. While Sea Grant’s planners and geographers mapped the resources and assessed needs, CGR attorneys and law clinic students addressed rights of navigation, created a model local harbor management ordinance and facilitated regional consensus building through a boater-driven initiative known as the Southwest Florida Regional Harbor Board.

More recently, the UF attorneys, students in the Conservation Clinic and Florida Sea Grant have begun working with the state and local governments on a variety of projects to address public access, surface water zoning and the protection of traditional waterfront uses. Under contract with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and its marine law enforcement division, CGR attorneys and Sea Grant geographers have launched a challenging effort to identify and map all local marine regulatory zones, effectively creating a “maritime cadastre” for use by planners, resource managers and law enforcement officials. At the same time faculty and students in the law clinic are working with the State’s Department of Community Affairs to develop the policy planning tools communities need to ensure public access and retain traditional waterfront community character. Recent local initiatives include assistance to the cities of Bradenton Beach, Punta Gorda and Saint Augustine with proposals for managed mooring fields, and to the City of Crystal River and the panhandle community of Panacea with proposals for water-dependent, thematic resource overlay districts. For inland Alachua County Sea Grant has partnered with several units of the UF campus, including the law school, to develop a “waterways master plan” to address conflicts on rivers, lakes and springs. The Clinic is also evaluating the viability of the 2005 tax deferral legislation, reviewing state submerged lands leasing policies and local land acquisition programs for their ability to contribute to the provision of public access.

Despite these efforts, the challenge presented by the changing character of the Florida waterfront and increasing congestion on the water remains a daunting one. Their success will tell whether “working waterfronts” - both commercial and recreational - will not only have a history in Florida, but also a future.