Earlier this week, the good offices of the Sunshine State’s Department of Environmental Protection announced The Great Outdoors Initiative’s 2024-2025 agenda, which consists of a proposal that could desecrate your local surf spot in the name of “expanding visitor capacity” by way of trouncing natural habit in favor of lodges and cabins, pickleball and tennis courts, and golf and disc golf courses.
What better way could a state or any such entity demonstrate its “dedication to conservation” and “its investment in conserving its natural landscapes,” you ask?
You might consider this now, or you might wait a mere week and find yourself traipsing across a pickleball court in progress on your way to your favorite local, where dunes, marsh, mangroves, or other natural wonders might have lain not so many moons ago.
Nine parks across the state are slated to accommodate these lodgings (with up to 350 rooms), courts, courses, and other “efficient amenities that visitors expect.” Which visitors? Perhaps many of those who’d just as soon stay inside. But several of those parks border surf spots, including Jonathan Dickinson State Park near Jupiter Inlet, Camp Helen State Park in Panama City, and Topsail Hill Preserve State Park in Destin, and several of those surf spots are likely to get a devastating facelift.
While bipartisan grievances are being filed from left, right, and center loudly and clearly across the state, Governor Ron DeSantis’ Communications Director, Bryan Griffin, was quick to jump on X in support of the project.
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Congressman Brian Mast led the charge in response on X, “Over my dead body will there be a golf course at Jonathan Dickinson State Park!”
The Florida DEP will hold a public hearing in Stuart on August 27 at 3pm for one hour on the matter of Jonathan Dickinson State Park, during which the public can voice its humble interests, should anyone happen to have kept their calendar clear on that given Tuesday for just such an occasion. Indeed, speak then or forever hold your peace.
Others state lawmakers, such as Palm Harbor Republican Rep. Adam Anderson, pulled a few punches, perhaps, but didn’t mince words, either. Rep. Anderson described a proposal for four pickleball courts at Honeymoon Island State Park (a Gulf-Coast spot that occasionally flares up) as being “not just foolhardy—it’s wrong. These acts could aggravate ongoing environmental challenges, harm our vulnerable coastlines and estuaries, and increase the likelihood of red tide events along the Gulf,”—something Gulf Coast surfers already contend with plenty.
The Florida DEP addressed the widespread backlash with a cryptic post on X, declaring “a LOT of confusion” and that it wants “to clear some things up…”—full stop. We’re still waiting…
As for the democratic process, attendance for the eight public hearings to be held who-knows-where-and-when across the state, including the one-hour public hearing in Stuart (3pm at The Flagler, 201 SW Flagler Avenue), is capped, so you may have to go grassroots on this thing in order to be heard, picket sign, bull horn and all. After all, stranger things have proven fruitful in the weird and wonderful state of Florida.
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