Panhandle residents rally to save a rare coastal dune lake

Florida is chock full of amazing phenomena. We’ve got the Lake Wales Ridge, an ancient sand dune stretching down the center of the state, far from the nearest ocean. We’ve got the Devil’s Millhopper, a massive sinkhole in Gainesville with its own distinctive ecosystem. And, of course, in Tallahassee, we have a lot of legislators walking around without a brain in their heads.

One of the most fascinating scientific phenomena in Florida has to be the coastal dune lakes of Walton County. There are 15 of these sparkling freshwater lakes located along 26 miles of sandy white coastline.

“These lakes are a unique geographical feature and are only found in Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand, Oregon, and here in Walton County,” the county’s own website boasts.

People in Walton County really cherish those unique features. They rose up in outrage recently when one of them faced a major threat.

From the county itself.

In 2021, Walton County’s Tourism and Beach Operations Department acquired 2.7 acres on one of the coastal dune lakes, known as Eastern Lake. About 420 feet of the property fronts on the Gulf of Whatever We’re Calling It This Week.

Recently, county officials proposed building a big regional beach access facility there, a move that dismayed everyone who had supported the purchase.

“When the county purchased it, we thought it was a protective move,” Garrett Horn, whose family has lived on the lake since 1959, said during a public hearing on the proposal. “It seems very ironic and extremely troubling that this parcel now needs to be protected from being developed by our own county.”

What happened after that was one more example of an amazing Florida phenomenon: a popular revolt that turned the tide.

Put it in the deed

The first time I saw these magical dune lakes was in 2010. They were facing a major environmental threat then, too.

Oil from the BP spill off the Louisiana coast was rolling toward the beaches of eight Panhandle counties, including Walton.

Walton officials were so worried about what the oil could do to these precious lakes that they dispatched crews to build a large, sandy berm. The berm blocked the oil from reaching the lakes, so they remained untainted by the oil.

Eight years later, though, a coalition of Walton landowners sued the county for not doing enough to protect them.

What sparked the lawsuit was a far more common threat than mere oil.

A Texas developer had been granted a county permit to build “a monster house” with no setback whatsoever from the lake’s outlet, Horn told me.

“A group of us started a GoFundMe and hired a lawyer and challenged the legality of the variance in 2018,” he said. “It took several years but we won our case in 2021.”

As a result, the developer agreed to sell the property to the county. Residents encouraged the Commissioners to say yes.

“To me it is priceless, to these neighbors it is priceless, to the world it is priceless,” one resident told Commissioners, according to the Northwest Florida Daily News.

County officials vaguely discussed the possibility of building some sort of beach access facilities there but took no vote on that. The residents made it clear then that they would oppose any such move. One even flat-out told them, “Put in the deed that we’re going to leave it alone.”

Yet it then came back up again, the idea of “improving” on what nature had put there.

“This breaks everything in the books about trying to protect these dune lakes,” a Walton County community activist named Kim Falconer told me.

Sometimes a vague notion

You can generally tell when a local government is ashamed of doing something. Officials try to slip it through on the “consent” agenda, where they put items that are supposed to be noncontroversial and thus have no need for discussion.

That’s what happened with the county’s plans for the Eastern Lake, according to Barbara Morano, a former Commission candidate who keeps a close eye on what the incumbents are up to. The item on a November meeting agenda authorized spending $500,000 for a study of what should be built at the lake. It was clearly intended to slide by the residents unnoticed.

“We caught that,” Morano told me.

When people objected to spending so much money to study something they didn’t want to spend a penny on, county officials agreed to hold a workshop to take public input, Morano said. The workshop happened on Jan. 12. Opponents packed the meeting room.

The county’s deputy director for beach operations, Ryan Adams (no relation to the same-named singer), outlined what they were thinking of. It would feature (takes a deep breath) new sidewalks, a vehicle turnaround, handicap-accessible dune walkovers, handicap parking, showers, golf cart and bicycle parking, drainage improvements, and not one, but TWO bathrooms, one on either side of the outlet flowing into the gulf.

Why they didn’t throw in some kiddie rides, a jacuzzi, and a stock car racing track is a mystery to me.

The county’s beach boss contended what they had in mind was merely a vague notion, nothing certain.

“What we have tonight … is just an idea,” Beach Operations Director Josh Ervin told the crowd. “It’s not even a concept at this particular point. We want to hear back from you all.”

Boy howdy, did they get their wish! The crowd’s intentions couldn’t have been clearer if they had all been channeling Nancy Reagan and chanting “Just say no!”

“Several times during the meeting, attendees were asked to raise their hands if they opposed the proposed construction of beach access,” the Mid-Bay News reported. “It was clear that there was unanimous opposition due to environmental reasons.”

People at the meeting complained about how the county’s plans would lead to the destruction of dunes, the pollution from the restrooms would damage the lake’s water quality and the increased traffic would produce congestion for everyone.

They also revealed that an online petition calling for the county to stand down had collected 1,587 signatures, including 740 from residents of Walton County.

There was an obvious effort to split the crowd when one official asked if anyone supported at least a dune walkover, nothing more. But the opponents held the line.

“We don’t want any dune walkovers,” Morano said. “We don’t want a $500,000 study to tell you anything before you begin. And please excuse me if I sound very angry — it’s really passion.”

When the hearing ended, Ervin acknowledged that it seemed clear that “no development is really what the desire is.”

But the question remained: Would the County Commission listen? After all, the Commissioners were in a jam.

Don’t enforce it

Sometimes watching our Legislature at work is like watching Dean Martin navigating a Vegas hallway. First there’s a stumble to the right, then a bounce off one wall, then a stagger to the left and a ricochet off the other wall.

In 2016, the Walton County Commission passed an ordinance that made a lot of beach property owners mad. Some of them — primarily people who had moved in from outside Florida — had put up “no trespassing” signs to block tourists from the beaches. That prompted Walton County to tell them they couldn’t do that.

The ordinance said the public could use the entire beach except for a 15-foot buffer. It was an effort to restore a constitutional principle called “customary use.” That means people have been using the beaches for decades and public use should continue, no matter what private landowners want.

The landowners — including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who didn’t want the stinking public messing up HIS beach — persuaded the Legislature to pass a new law that overturned the Walton County ordinance. Then-Gov. Rick Scott signed it.

Then Scott freaked out when he saw pictures of Walton County deputies confronting beachgoers. Like brave Sir Robin from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” Scott ran away as fast as he could, signing an executive order that basically called for not enforcing the law he’d just signed.

“Florida beaches belong to all of us, and people from across the world visit Florida because of them — and we are going to keep it that way,” Scott said.

Last year, the Legislature staggered the other direction, passing a new law to repeal the 2018 one that Scott had said no one should enforce. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed that one and made no mention of not enforcing it.

Meanwhile, Walton County filed a lawsuit against 1,194 of its own property owners, attempting to encourage the courts to affirm recreational customary use. Just before trial was to begin in 2023, the county settled the case.

The settlement said the public could access 20 feet of beach above the wet sand line from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Meanwhile, the county agreed to do a study on how to expand beach access.

More than one person I spoke to in Walton County pointed out that the big loser in all this beach access discussion was the powerful St. Joe Co.

St. Joe, a onetime pulp and paper manufacturer turned major developer, has been trying to turn all the piney woods it once harvested for raw materials into new developments with cute names like “WaterSound” and “SummerCamp Beach.”

One such development is planned to be built directly across the main highway from Eastern Lake. Gosh, wouldn’t it be a convenient selling point for St. Joe if the buyers of those homes had easy access to the beach? File that under the Arsenio Hall heading of “Things that make you go hmmmm.”

So, you can see why the commissioners might feel the pressure to okay building a regional beach access at Eastern Lake. This despite the fact that there are already two beach access points nearby, each of them one mile away in either direction.

Drive a stake in it

Walton County has a lot of beautiful natural resources, but the Commissioners haven’t been too happy about that.

In 1992, when the state bought 21,000 acres that had been slated for development as a new town called “Emerald City” — land that became Topsail Hill State Park and Point Washington State Forest — the Commissioners got very angry with then-Gov. Lawton Chiles. They couldn’t see what a huge favor the state had done for them by opening the door for eco-tourism.

Since then, they have tried repeatedly to get the state to give some of that land back to them. They hoped to build a new town there, or even a new highway through the state forest. So far, they have failed.

Thus, when the County Commissioners convened this past Tuesday to discuss what should be done with Eastern Lake, the residents had very low expectations. They thought the Commissioners would just as soon pave over every inch of the place.

Yet, shortly after the Commission meeting started, a political miracle occurred.

The Commissioners looked out at the determined opponents and had a change of attitude. They decided that the smartest thing to do was to wave a big white flag.

Commission Chairman Brad Drake — a former DeSantis aide whom the Governor appointed to the Commission seat — quickly suggested a parliamentary maneuver that would, he said, kill the proposal. Three of the Commissioners quickly agreed.

The only Commissioner to disagree, Dan Curry, said he wanted to do more than just lay the matter on the table. He wanted to vote it down, period. I got the impression he also wanted to set the motion on fire and watch it burn, which would have been popular with a lot of people in the audience.

The Commissioners quickly voted 4-1 (the lone “no” vote coming from Curry) to shut down the whole discussion and try to forget that it ever happened.

Morano pointed out to me that two of the Commissioners are up for re-election this Fall, so it makes sense they didn’t want to rock the boat. Others think it was only a strategic retreat from the ultimate goal.

“This will pop back up again in the future, I’m quite sure,” Falconer told me.

Horn had, I think, the best line. He told me, “We want to celebrate, but it’s a celebration with vigilance.”

This, I’m sorry to say, is another Florida phenomenon: The destructive, developer-driven project that people do their best to fight off, but it keeps coming back. If this one ever does rise from the dead, Horn said, “We want to drive a stake into its heart.”

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Reporting by Craig Pittman. Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email protected].