Truth in Government
To the editor:
Last week a feature article reporting on re-nourishment was published in another area newspaper. Unfortunately, that article was replete with false and misleading information. It covered Kate Gooderham’s views as the new, paid lobbyist for Lee County.
The article suggested that everyone should support re-nourishment as an uncomplicated project.
Renourishment is indeed not complicated. County’s 12-year old and failing plan is simply artificial beach expansion. It places sand where all scientific and governmental shoreline surveys show that sand largely never existed on our beach, ever.
Commissioner Judah’s purpose for the project is to bring additional tourists and area people to our Beach. County needs beach for growth.
People see through Judah’s schemes on artificial beach expansion for County growth. Judah cares little about real erosion. For example, Judah’s plan gives the least beach widening to the only two, and limited areas of actual erosion. That is verified by repeated Governmental Shoreline Maps
Per governmental shoreline maps, the two fastest growing beach areas get the most beach widening. Expand those beaches for County growth.
When Judah had to justify his artificial beach expansion to the Federal government, he explained renourishment as being 88 percent for recreation. That obviously ties in with growth. Yet to the owners, Judah justified his project as being for storm protection. But, his project manager went on public record that he had no scientific data supporting storm protection.
There is another example of the two faces of Judah: In this same area newspaper article, Judah threatens owners by saying that with a major storm and without Judah’s renourishment, “local officials will not have money to fix it.
Yet, in the Oct. 7 News-Press Bonita Beach article, Judah admits that he “isn’t sure about the state and city shares” to fix Judah’s failed Bonita Beach project that is washing away in much less than the planned eight years.
Those News-Press Headlines shows the residents’ upset feelings: “Bonita residents face sand storm.”
Next, Lovers key is scarred from the sand that washed away from this failed Judah project. Where is Judah’s plan and money to fix his failed project? He wants Bonita to pay one third of the total cost to fix this Judah failure.
In May, Judah’s project manager demanded the specific sand placement of the dredgings from Matanzas Pass. How does Judah plan to fix this failure, and where is the money to fix this mistake?
In our area. there are at least eight other County failed beach projects, where County pumped, dumped, and bull-dozed sand. This is consistent with the nationally collected data that shows that only 12 percent of beach renourishments last as long as 5 years.
Clearly, Lee County does not have the engineering expertise either to devise or oversee the construction of artificial beaches and have them last for more that a few years or so. Residents get sucked into paying for repeated County artificial beach fixing after Judah’s beaches wash away.
To that point, because our Council neglected to put any cap on our payment percentages for all the future renourishment failures, County can charge us what they wants to fix their mistakes.
Yet, Lee County put zero permanent dollars from County’s tax funds into this proposed renourishment. Your Council graciously kicked in $1 million from the Town’s past savings to County’s $0. The independent, Tourist Development Council is happy to pour in millions of bed tax dollars, including our taxes.
Lee County’s paid lobbyist reads Judah’s TelePrompter very well. However, the Lobbyist showed her utter lack of expertise when she says “engineering studies “since 1960’s show that Fort Myers Beach has a longstanding erosion problem”
Utterly false! She needs to be educated by reviewing all of the governmental shoreline maps back to 1927. She will be mortified. Next in sequence, she needs to read and understand the Humiston & Moore study, then Coastal Engineering study, and finally the AMT engineering study
As AMT (hired by the Town) said for the preceding five years of shoreline data: “The upper beach has remained stable with an average shoreline position gain of 0.92 feet and a volume gain of 2,024 cubic yards…. This result indicates that the upper beach has remained remarkably stable…”
Coastal Engineering ( hired by County) went back to 1927 and showed actual shore lines by year on photographic maps, with corresponding written analysis for each island section. Same stable and growing beach story
It is crystal clear!. If I were the lobbyist, I would be so embarrassed about these area newspaper misstatements, that I would resign in disgrace.
For myself, having personally managed a global business with my $100 million spent annually for engineering hi-tech projects, and 1,000 engineers, I can tell an expert from a phony. Lee County’ paid lobbyist is no expert!!
In the last 12 years, I have put thousands of hours into studying this project. My purpose is to get the taxpayers to understand how much they have been misinformed. I am not paid. My compensation is getting truth in Government.
Frank Schilling
Fort Myers Beach