COLUMN: It's time to back off on beach restoration (with VIDEO)

Okaloosa County Commissioners, it is time you take a hard look at the facts and events related to beach restoration and stand down for the time being.  I say that based on the following verifiable facts.

The group “Stop the Beach Renourishment” (STBR) filed a lawsuit several years ago to stop the now completed Walton County/East

Destin beach restoration project.  Their suit went to the Florida Supreme Court and now has been selected for hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court.

STBR claimed that beach restoration denied coastal waterfront owners their fundamental littoral rights guaranteed by common law and the U.S. and Florida Constitutions, namely, the right to accretions and the right to continue to own to the water's edge.

STBR lost that argument at the Florida Supreme Court level because the majority of the justices ruled that similar (but inferior in my opinion) rights based on a state statute can be substituted for constitutional rights.

Why do I claim that substituted rights are inferior? Because the Florida Legislature, which enacted that state law, can amend or rescind the law at any time, unlike a constitutional provision, which only the citizens can change.

This is the issue that will be addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court: Whether it is an unconstitutional taking for Florida to substitute rights provided by a state law in place of littoral property rights without an eminent domain proceeding and the payment of just compensation to beachfront landowners.

The U.S. Supreme Court does not agree to hear a case unless there is a possibility that the lower state court ruling will be reversed.

While the taking issue was a defeat for STBR at the state level, the Florida Supreme Court did at least stand up for waterfront owners by repeatedly affirming that the pre-Opal location of our southern property boundaries was not affected by Opal or any other storms since then.

It is important to understand that STBR only claimed loss of the littoral rights of accretion and continued ownership to the water's edge.

The claims of western Destin owners are even stronger because they claim the County is also taking their privately owned submerged water bottoms between the state-imposed Erosion Control Line and the more seaward pre-Opal southern boundary.

The state statute is clear on the issue of taking:  if beach restoration cannot reasonably be accomplished without taking of private property, it must be done through eminent domain with compensation to upland owners.

The county commissioners have totally ignored this requirement and not one penny has been budgeted to compensate upland owners of coastal property if the U.S. Supreme Court over-turns the Florida court ruling.  The County commissioners are gambling that the U.S. Supreme Court will NOT declare that beach restoration is, indeed, a taking and that “just compensation” need not be paid to affected upland property owners.

The county commissioners have a perfect opportunity to use common sense and stand down by suspending the MSBU tax and the DEP permit application until the U.S. Supreme Court rules.  If the court rules that beach restoration in Florida results in a taking that requires compensation to upland owners, the commissioners will have to scramble to find the funds to carry out the court ruling.

The only logical source will have to come from all county taxpayers.

If beach restoration proceeds, compensation will also have to be made for newly added littoral rights taken in west Destin — plus valuable Destin prime beachfront.

Let’s see if common sense prevails and the commissioners take the only prudent course of action available to them.   
               
Roland Guidry is homeowner's association president at Oceania condominium, which is involved in one of the lawsuits to block the latest beach restoration.