Martin County Commission set to allow structures in Shoreline Protection Zones

STUART Waterfront homeowners would be allowed to install structures like wood decks and tiki huts in their backyards within 25 feet of a hardened shoreline under a proposal that received initial approval Tuesday from the Martin County Commission.

The proposed amendment to the Shoreline Protection Zone rules in the county growth plan still faces review by the state Department of Economic Opportunity and a second vote by the county commissioners.

One of the requirements of the proposed amendment would be for a property owner who places a pervious structure near the shoreline to show it doesn't send more polluted runoff into the waterway, said Clyde Dulin, a county planner.

Commissioners Ed Fielding and Sarah Heard, who dissented on the 3-2 vote, argued the initiative would reduce shoreline protections, harm water quality and set a bad precedent.

Fielding said the growth plan amendment seems to be a favor to Shaun Plymale, a Republican Party activist, who received a notice of code violation last year for allegedly building a wooden retaining wall too close to the shoreline in the backyard of his Lighthouse Point home.

"It's not that our rules are inappropriate, it's that our rules have been broken," Fielding said. "What we're trying to do now is try to justify the violation."

But Plymale argued the retaining wall reduced the flow of polluted runoff into a canal that leads to the St. Lucie River and hundreds of owners of older waterfront homes could do likewise.

"This is a problem in those neighborhoods ... because when those neighborhoods were designed, they were small lots and they were designed to drain into the river as fast as humanly possible and that's not good," Plymale said. "We need regulations like this that allow homeowners like me to take matters into our own hands and improve stormwater runoff. "

Commissioners Doug Smith and Patrick Hayes argued the initiative would allow waterfront homeowners to simultaneously improve their properties and reduce the amount of polluted runoff flowing into the county's waterways.

Many of the county's waterfront homes were built in the 1960s and 1970s before the adoption of the county's growth plan and its strict environmental regulations, Smith and Hayes said. The runoff from some waterfront properties drains straight into the waterways.

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Martin County Commission set to allow structures in Shoreline Protection Zones