South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
ANCHOR CITY
Free ride for Hollywood boat squatters coming to an end
Four derelict boats mar the pretty view, turning the watery cove into a nautical junkyard. And when those four boats are hauled away, more will move in to take their place, critics say of the never-ending cycle that’s been going on for years at Broward’s North Beach Park.
Some of the boats are on their last sea legs but become lifeboats for squatters. Nearby homeowners have complained for years about liveaboards using the waterway as their own personal septic tank, dumping buckets of poop overboard. The view gets even uglier when the boats sink.
But there’s a pricey plan underway to protect the popular boating spot just east of the Intracoastal Waterway at A1A and Sheridan Street in Hollywood.
A mooring field is in the works, where boaters would pay $40 a day to anchor and use new dinghy docks, restrooms and showers.
County officials expect the $1.8 million project to be up and running by 2021.
When the mooring field opens, boaters who don’t want to pay to anchor at the cove will likely head on down the Intracoastal to North Lake
and South Lake, two spots already teeming with boaters.
That has Hollywood talking about creating its own mooring field in an attempt to keep liveaboard boaters from anchoring for months on end, free of charge.
Under state law, boaters can drop anchor pretty much anywhere they want for as long as they want, provided they’re outside the navigational channel. So there’s not much Hollywood officials can do, much to the dismay of nearby homeowners.
“In North Lake, you see some floating wrecks,” said John Fiore, a county planner and expert on local marine issues. “Those are the boats in danger of sinking. Putting in the mooring field is the only way they’re going to get some control over who anchors there.”
A couple years ago, Hollywood dropped plans to create a mooring field in North Lake after residents said they didn’t want one.
That plan is back on again, partially thanks to Hurricane Irma.
Several boats were left untended in North Lake when the storm hit in September 2017. Nine sank. Some slammed into the docks of nearby homeowners, causing thousands of dollars in damage.
“That’s why there’s some change of heart,” Commissioner Caryl Shuham said. “After Irma, some loose boats damaged docks.”
Homeowners also don’t like seeing boaters anchored for weeks on end in the lake outside their homes.
“There’s boats with people living on them forever,” Shuham said. “People are concerned that these boaters are polluting the waters
and could create a nuisance.”
Fixing the problem may cost at least $1 million.
But Hollywood wouldn’t have to pay a dime if it can get grants from the state and county to cover the cost, Fiore said.
Two mooring fields — one for each lake — would cost more than $1 million to design and build, Fiore said.
On Wednesday, Hollywood commissioners approved a plan to request a
$150,000 grant from the state to help pay for design and permitting. The county would provide a matching grant, Fiore said.
On Thursday, 20 boats were anchored in North Lake and 10 in South Lake.
Michael Remaly, one of the homeowners whose dock was damaged by a wayward boat during Irma, wasn’t keen on a mooring field two years ago.
At the time, he said he’d rather see boat squatters banned — something state law doesn’t currently allow.
“We had to pay tens of thousands of dollars out of our own pockets because of all these boats that broke free,” Remaly said Thursday. “One was up against my seawall for several months.”
But Remaly is not entirely sold on the idea of a mooring field.
“If you’re going to invite these people in there you need security and a police presence 24 hours a day,” he said. “They need to make sure there’s no music playing loudly from the boats and no trash being dumped overboard.”
In the meantime, Hollywood is working on getting those four boats at the cove hauled away by early April, Fiore said. It will cost
$25,000, but the county plans to pick up the tab.