The funding fell short of what beach advocates first sought, but the fiscal 2011-12 budget approved by state lawmakers May 7 contains renourishment money, including for Manatee County.
Gov. Rick Scott still needs to sign off on the spending plan.
The legislative session that concluded May 7 began with the receipt of Scott’s proposed budget, which contained no money for beach renourishment projects in fiscal 2011-12.
A campaign from the coastal counties, as well as environmental and tourism groups began a push for renourishment funds during a session of many skirmishes over budget priorities.
Manatee County commissioners went to Tallahassee earlier this spring to lobby lawmakers for renourishment money, and to talk briefly with Scott.
They returned optimistic, and learned last week that the negotiated $68 billion House-Senate budget deal contained about $16.2 million for 12 top-ranked renourishment proposals before the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, including a major project on Anna Maria Island in 2015.
A project recently concluded on the Island that provided emergency sand to a small section of the shore in Anna Maria and longer stretches of Coquina Beach.
A second project is scheduled for next year, when Anna Maria will be nourished with sand provided under an agreement with Port Dolphin LLC, which is building a natural gas pipeline in Tampa Bay and a deepwater port in the nearby Gulf of Mexico.
“The county’s cost for engineering, permitting and construction of this project will be reimbursed 100 percent by Port Dolphin LLC,” said Manatee County natural resources director Charlie Hunsicker.
A third and major renourishment project is scheduled for 2015, when all of the Island’s beaches are to be renourished. This is the project threatened during the budget dispute in the capital this spring.
The 2011-12 legislative budget includes about $909,000 for Manatee County’s 2015 project, said Hunsicker.
He said the funds would be used for:
• Verifying the location and amounts of beach quality sand available offshore for renourishment in 2015.
• Preparing the design and state and federal permits for the 2015 project.
The timeline for that project is “dependent upon the timely issuance of state and federal permits and … windows of time for construction to avoid sea turtle and listed shorebird nesting activities,” Hunsicker added.
In shore, he said, the project period might be 2015-16.