The concept of developing a regulated mooring field has been explored over the past few years in the City of Miami Beach in response to a significant increase in the amount of anchored vessels in the waters around Sunset Harbour, Belle Isle, and West Avenue. The City has received complaints from residents and neighborhoods who are concerned about reckless behavior, impacts to the seagrass and environment within Biscayne Bay, and potential discharge of waste from some of these vessels. This is a complex undertaking which includes extensive regulatory approvals, establishing boundaries, a management plan and entity, addressing where boats may shift, and addressing both support and concerns from resident groups.
Considerations for the City Commission include:
- Location, boundaries and amenities;
- The appropriate entity to design, permit, build, and manage, including procurement;
- Diverse resident opinions;
- Funding; and
- The intricacies of environmental regulatory approvals.
The City continues to work with E-Sciences and Moffatt & Nichol during this planning phase to prepare for the next steps. The consultants are assisting with mooring field expertise, including developing an overall strategy for mooring field layout and boundaries, providing public meeting support, examining State land leases, phasing permitting strategies, and opinions of probable costs based on location and phases.
As noted, this guidance also includes pre-application meetings with permitting agencies. These meetings are important milestones as they will help determine what types of boundaries will be allowable at different regulatory levels – local through federal. The information is essential for the City to finalize the parameters needed for design, permitting, and management.
Location, Boundaries and Amenities
The Preliminary Analysis (Attachment 1) presented four potential locations (or one large location). In addition, the City should consider adding new waterway markers to clearly delineate channels to reduce the chances of improper mooring within channels.
To help address boats moving to other areas, which is a concern of some residents, an Anchoring Limitation Area (ALA) could be identified and implemented (Attachment 2) along with a new mooring field. ALAs are defined by State Statute and need to be established by the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners. ALAs could be a way to reduce overnight mooring within their designated boundaries.
A mooring field is required to include a support facility on land that incorporates at minimum a dinghy dock and sewage pump-out facility. Other amenities that are often incorporated, but are not a regulatory requirement, include bathrooms, showers, and laundry facilities.
Design, Permitting, Construction, and Management
The allowable mooring field boundaries, from an environmental permitting perspective, need to be understood prior to beginning design and permitting. In addition, the permitting agencies will seek to understand, relatively early in the process, what the management plan will be. Options for mooring field management include creating new City staff resources or issuing a competitive procurement. The City has been approached by various private entities interested in this option.
The City can elect to have a private establishment complete the design, permitting, construction, and management, have them complete construction and management, or strictly manage the facility. From the competitive procurement perspective, the City can issue a Request for Information (RFI) to obtain input from the industry before issuing a Request for Proposals to design, build, operate, and maintain. The City will need to issue a competitive procurement to address these next steps.
Diverse Resident Opinions
Residents have expressed strong and diverse viewpoints with respect to establishing a mooring field. Residents are frustrated with the current impact of anchoring boats and report undesired behavior. They are concerned with the health of Biscayne Bay, and understand the impact of these boats on seagrass and water quality. Residents are also worried about where boats, that may not choose to anchor in a regulated mooring field, will move. They are concerned that a regulated mooring field may make the issue worse in areas near their own homes that are adjacent to the Bay.
Funding
The funding for the mooring field can only be determined after the boundaries, upland partner, and management plan are better understood. The City’s consultant can determine probable cost with this additional information.
Regulatory Agency Input
The following include a summary of the preliminary regulatory agency meetings:
Miami-Dade County Division of Environmental Resources Management (DERM):
DERM’s main areas of focus during the permitting process will be on impacts to existing environmental resources (i.e. seagrasses and corals), water depths, and the project’s consistence with the County’s Manatee Protection Plan (MPP). DERM noted they have concerns regarding a possible shift in vessel anchoring locations once the mooring field is installed; this is a concern shared by residents and City staff alike, so it is important that County Commission is encouraged to establish an Anchoring Limitation Area surrounding the regulated mooring field in sensitive marine habitat. Furthermore, a mooring field with a creation of 50 slips is the threshold to trigger the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) approval. In addition to a Class I permit for the coastal construction aspect of a regulated mooring field, a Marine Facilities Annual Operating Permit (MOP) for the operation of the mooring facility will be required prior to the mooring of vessels at the approved location. There may be mitigation for benthic resource impacts if mooring balls are proposed outside of areas that contain existing, unregulated mooring as well as slip mitigation per established mooring ball. DERM has no preference whether the mooring field is privately or publicly operated. Once the layout is approved by DERM, written consent from adjacent riparian owners would need to be obtained prior to being heard before BCC for approval.
Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP):
FDEP shared that the City could obtain a conceptual permit for all four theoretical phases and then obtain Individual permits and leases for each phase as desired or needed. FDEP closely reviews and approves mooring field management plans and have indicated that while a privately operated mooring field is possible, it is more expensive as it would not qualify for a waiver of annual lease fees. The revenue generated by a regulated mooring field would need to go directly towards the operation and maintenance of the mooring field to qualify for this waiver (i.e. be managed by the public entity/municipality). It is also critical to note that annual lease fees are double the cost for projects located within the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserve (38 cents per square foot rather than 19 cents per square foot). It is possible to have a private operator for the mooring field per 18-21 F.AC., as a party eligible for the waiver of lease fees (the City) may hire a private vendor to operate the activity provided that the private vendor may not directly receive funds from such operation.
FDEP further indicated that demonstrating the need for mooring in phases three and four may be more difficult as there is not currently a significant extent of unregulated anchorage in those areas. Additionally, proposing substantially more slips beyond the current use would need to be thoroughly justified. The City could show the need with a desire to space out the mooring arrangement to reduce impacts to benthic resources. FDEP staff noted that the City of Titusville provided reasonable justification for a lease for a larger area with sections of no mooring proposed due to the density of seagrass in those areas. The lease was expanded, and the mooring ball locations were shifted to avoid impacting the denser seagrass areas.
A concern to be addressed during the design phase includes developing a mooring field in a way that does not impact the ingress or egress of adjacent facilities or boaters. In regard to mitigation costs, it is possible for a mooring field to be considered self-mitigating depending on the types and locations of anchors used, marine debris removal, and swing radius and drafts of vessels. A mooring field is required to be heard before the Board of Trustees meeting of the Governor and Cabinet and there is a public necessity clause; this could be satisfied when a local government is the applicant and the project is noticed to everyone within a 500-foot radius of the proposed lease boundary. All concerns or comments received during the public notice need to be addressed to practicable and reasonable extents.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
FWC’s main concern will be conformance to Miami-Dade County’s Manatee Protection Plan and seagrass impacts. There is a benefit to having the phases evaluated for consistency with the MPP collectively so the City has certainty as to the permitability of the phases. Mitigation may be required for seagrass impacts; the fact that a portion of the proposed mooring field boundaries are currently being used for mooring will help justify reduction in mitigation requirements, in addition to required debris removal from the field. FWC defers to FDEP regarding the management plan, including the upland facilities requirements. FWC will include permit conditions requiring PVC coating on the anchor lines to reduce possible entrapment or entanglement and the vessel drafts and bottom clearance will be important considerations for manatees.
United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE):
It is important to note the USACE does not permit in phases as they prefer one single and complete project package. If the phases were permitted separately, the project may trigger endangered species consultations each time the City applied for a permit. The main areas that the USACE will focus on when reviewing the plans will be proposed impacts, navigation, the type of anchor system used, swing radius, potential shading from vessels, number of slips, water depths, avoidance and minimization to resources and project impacts to existing users of the waterways.
USACE coordinates with DERM regarding compliance with the MPP and consult with both sections of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS): Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) and Endangered Species Act (ESA). The degree of consultation will depend on whether the project qualifies under the Jacksonville District Programmatic Biological Opinion (JAXBO), and they will also coordinate with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for endangered species. USACE will defer to FDEP’s jurisdiction for the operation and maintenance plan, but they will regulate overwater structures such as dinghy docks. Several permits from USACE could be required and ‘stacked’, including the Standard permit (which includes a public comment period), Nationwide Permits 1 and 9, and Regional General Permit SAJ-33.