During a parking-lot dispute, we were warned about the beach's future.
During a meeting last week between officials from Volusia County and Daytona Beach Shores over their dispute about a beach-users parking lot, some bigger, longer-term issues came up.
Like whether beach driving is necessarily a forever thing.
Deputy County Attorney Jamie Seaman said she isn’t so sure about the future of beach driving after 2030. That’s because the county’s permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the one that allows beach driving despite the harm it does to the habitat of endangered sea turtles and birds, may not be easy to renew before it lapses when the ball drops on New Year’s Day 2031.
“A future council, sometime around 2027, is going to have to start to prepare for this,” she said. “I know that we have lost a substantial amount of beach, our elevation has changed, our tides are higher. I think it’s going to be a challenge ... in 2030 to get that permit renewed.”
The year 2030 still sounds like a science fiction date to me, but it’s a deadline that’s only a dozen years and nine and half months away.
So what happens if, on Jan. 1, 2031, the county is enjoined from allowing cars on the beach? What happens to beach access? It’s already hard enough to find a parking spot at Andy Romano Park on a sunny weekend. Without beach parking to the north and south, forget even trying.
Getting the permit to allow beach driving during the last go-around was no easy matter. Volusia County got the permit November 22, 1996, despite determined litigation from Shirley Reynolds and Rita Alexander on behalf of the sea turtles. (The cases actually were styled, in shortened form, Loggerhead Turtle v. Volusia County Council.)
The permit is called an incidental take permit, which is an authorization for a business or government to harm or kill some kind of endangered animal in the course of normal operations.
To get this permission, the county had to agree to do all kinds of things it didn’t want to do – create sections of car-free beaches, put up posts marking conservation zones, ban all nighttime driving, and pass a beach lighting ordinance.
These were not popular measures, yet they were enacted surprisingly fast.
This quick action helped get the county a five-year take permit, which was later renewed after a few years of bureaucratic delay and again in the face of new litigation. (That time it was Atlantic Green Sea Turtle v. Volusia County.)
All of which I mention to make the point that getting permission to keep cars running on the beach was no sure thing the last two times around.
It took a lot of legal effort, a big investment in and commitment to conservation counter-measures, and enactment of limits on beach driving that caused a huge public outcry.
And if this permit was so hard to win last time, what will the process be like a dozen years from now? After a dozen years of sea-level rise. After a dozen years of new environmental regulations and additional court legal precedents? Calling renewal “a challenge” sounds like an understatement to me.
The permit may be renewed next time around or could be denied. Or it might be renewed with even tighter beach driving restrictions.
Which means the county has about a decade to come up with Plan B for beach access. A Plan C would be good, too.
Having more off-beach parking is the obvious place to start even though every attempt to build another parking area or beachside park is met with opposition from people who fear off-beach parking is part of a plan to take away beach driving.
A dozen years to go. It’s less time than it seems.