Last Saturday thousands lined Gulf Boulevard on Navarre Beach for the annual Mardi Gras parade, a family friendly version of the more hedonistic event in New Orleans. Mardi Gras, French for “Fat Tuesday,” refers to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and marks the end of a month of festivities before the forty-day season of Lent.
The professional shark fishermen that fish from the Navarre Beach Pier caught a Great White Shark on Tuesday. They send a drone out from the end of the pier – that is already the longest pier standing in the Gulf of Mexico with fishing line and bait that they drop even further out. Thankfully the crew at Windjammers on the Pier Restaurant and Bar were on it and got some excellent video. This is not something you put in your tourism brochures, but it is a novelty for our area although not unheard of. A 10-foot-long Great White is small. The average Great White is 15 feet. Perhaps this one was a juvenile. Regardless, it is pretty cool that one was caught in our area. It is a sign that they are not as rare as they use to be which means our Gulf is healthy – which is good news for everyone that lives on the Gulf.
The Home Builders Association turned out in numbers to Monday’s County Commission meeting wearing their red HBA shirts. The Home Builders Association of West Florida is a membership driven networking and advocacy group focused on the needs of the building and development industry and related business in Escambia and Santa Rosa County.
I am asked on almost a daily basis what I think about the flyover. This is what I think about the flyover…it is going to hurt our small businesses in Navarre and Navarre will continue to be a donor community for Santa Rosa County and a bedroom community for our neighboring counties.
At Navarre Beach, Santa Rosa County’s wastewater treatment plant has a state permit to dump as much as 900,000 gallons of sewage effluent per day into Santa Rosa Sound. For much of the year, it’s much less than that, but during the summer – peak swimming and fishing season – it increases dramatically. The County is now requesting another 5-year permit to continue this primitive and unhealthy method of sewage disposal.
After hearing the Santa Rosa County Board of Commissioners claim they cannot disapprove a proposed development on any grounds whatsoever, many of us were incredulous. This apparent disregard for environmental laws and regulations with respect to wetland and endangered species conservation here in Santa Rosa County has gone beyond egregious. In fact, they claim (their interpretation) that by state legislation, citing F.S. 125.022(d), they can’t even ask to see a developer’s environmental permits, to ensure that they have even been obtained, prior to approval of a project. Escambia County has no such problem asking for permits.
