Brevard sales tax will help clean lagoon

Brevard County has begun collecting a half-cent of sales tax aimed at achieving what stymied state government for years: recovery of the sickly Indian River Lagoon.

“Now we have skin in the game,” said Jim Barfield, a county commissioner, repeating a widely used phrase meant to convey pride in voter approval of the tax and a challenge for Florida agencies to step up efforts for the ailing lagoon.

County officials expect the half penny to bring in more than $30 million a year for a decade to clean out the algae and muck linked to frequent, mass killings of manatees, dolphins, game fish, coastal birds and life-supporting sea grass.

Devoted to the restoration of a specific environment, where projects will include extensive muck dredging and sewerage upgrades, the tax may be the only one of its kind in Florida, according to officials familiar

with such initiatives. It won 62 percent of ballots in November, took effect Jan. 1 and starts providing revenue in March.

“Every precinct in our county supported it,” said Barfield, the owner of a medical-services company that gave $10,000 to the campaign backing the referendum. “That’s unheard of.”

Separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a string of barrier islands, the 156-mile lagoon spans dozens of communities and five counties from Ponce Inlet in Volusia to Jupiter Inlet in Palm Beach County. Its mix of ocean and fresh water supports one of the nation’s richest marine ecosystems.

The lagoon came under assault decades ago by pollutants from septic tanks, sewer plants, stormwater runoff and agricultural drainage established according to nowoutmoded state rules.

While the coastal treasure is chiefly under Florida guardianship, Brevard officials have stressed that restoration is a pressing concern for the local economy.

Nearly half of the lagoon’s length and nearly three-quarters of its area are within the county.

“There is a $2 billion upside of potential economic gain with restoration,” said Al Vazquez, whose investmentanalysis company Closewaters LLC of Satellite Beach assessed the county’s stake in the lagoon’s fate. “There’s a very conservative $4.3 billion potential economic loss if we don’t restore it.”

Gains or losses during a 30-year window considered by CloseWaters will hinge largely on tourism, property values and commercial fishing.

Vazquez has encouraged county leaders to accelerate restoration by borrowing against future revenues of the half-cent tax.

Nearly all of the more than $300 million in tax revenue will have to be spent to reach a “tipping point” when the lagoon becomes healthy enough to avoid losses, Vazquez said.

The cost of borrowing money would be less than the losses arising from taking as long as a decade to restore Brevard’s share of the lagoon, he said.

“We will be at risk until this is fully implemented,” Vazquez said.

Virginia Barker, director of Brevard’s department of natural resources, said the county is pushing to establish an oversight committee, set up funds and accounts and coordinate with cities to select “shovel-ready” projects.

She warned of potential setbacks and disputes.

“It’s going to be easy to find things that we disagree about,” said Barker, speaking recently to a gathering of environmentalists. “We have to stick with the big picture.”

State experts have said they don’t know precisely why the lagoon’s health seemed to be on the upswing a decade ago before the system’s waters became plagued with algae and deadly for sea grass and wildlife.

Yet, Brevard leaders have goals for a restored lagoon: mostly sandy bottom; welloxygenated water and few fish kills; water clarity that allows visibility of the bottom; and sea grass as widespread as before the Kennedy Space Center and extensive development arrived.

R. Grant Gilmore Jr., a senior scientist at Estuarine, Coastal and Ocean Science Inc., a research and consulting company in Vero Beach, said the lagoon’s chemistry and biology are difficult to understand.

Added to that is ongoing sea rise and the increasing chance that storms could carve new, system-altering inlets between the Atlantic and lagoon.

Gilmore said muck removal and sewer upgrades “are good, constructive things that will have a positive impact. But you have to recognize the lagoon is a very complex system.”

Drew Bartlett, who heads ecosystem restoration at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said his agency will try to partner with Brevard as the county ramps up lagoon projects.

“We want to get into a long-term, cost-share relationship to do septic-tosewer, to pull muck out of the lagoon, to address those stormwater issues because all of them need to happen,” Bartlett said.

Previously, according to the county’s chairman, Barfield, relying on the water district and the state Department of Environmental Project had been marked by delays and frustration.

“It was a waste of county resources,” he said.

Barfield hopes that will change, now that Brevard has cash to motivate cooperation.

Brevard voters picked a different path than the one set by Gov. Rick Scott in cutting funding for environmental protection.

After Scott took office in 2011, he and lawmakers slashed budgets of the state’s water districts and then lauded the resulting cuts in residential property taxes of less than $50 annually for a typical home.

Brevard voters, however, opted to increase their annual sales tax bill by more than $60 for a typical family, according to county officials.

“It’s not like we are just standing here with our hand out,” said Laurilee Thompson, owner of the Dixie Crossroad restaurant in Titusville and member of Brevard’s Tourism Development Council. “We’ve got skin in the game.”