BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Save Our Lakes leaders told the Keystone Heights City Council during its April 7 meeting that Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection has approved a 5-year environmental resource permit for Clay County to remove trees and underbrush from Lake Geneva’s dry lakebed.
Board member Scott Slater told council members that the permit will go into effect after a 14-day public comment period.
After the meeting, Slater said the permit has restrictions, but those restrictions do not interfere with the goals of the county or Save Our Lakes.
Save Our Lakes President Vivian Katz-James said the permit allows the county to remove trees and underbrush below the 102.9-foot watermark. That land is considered state property, while land outside the 102-9-foot mark is the property of landowners surrounding the water body.
She added that even with the permit, the project still must overcome other obstacles, like access to the trees and the objections of some property owners to have trees removed near their homes.
Slater told council members that once the 14-day public comment period is over, the county will request bids or proposals from timber companies and continue to manage the project through its completion.
He added that the project is no longer cost-neutral because rising water levels have made the trees in some areas more expensive to remove and that prices for biomass material, which he hoped would fund the project, have fallen.
Slater said removal operations could begin in six weeks, and one company he has spoken with about the job said the project would take an additional two to four weeks to complete.
Katz-James said her organization hired the law firm of Adams and Reese to shepherd the permit through FDEP.
“Best money we ever spent,” the nonprofit’s president said about the law firm’s services, adding that one of the principals in the firm is a former FDEP secretary and Save Our Lakes’s contact with Adams and Resse is a former deputy secretary.
The firm estimated Save Our Lakes’s services at $30,000. Katz-James said she has already paid $15,000 in invoices and is awaiting the firm’s final billing.
Slater added that Save Our Lakes is planning a Lake Geneva cleanup day for January 26. He said the remains of homeless encampments and illegal dumping were near the county’s 5th Street Boat Ramp, and the cleanup day will remove that debris.
