Episode 14: Brevard County’s SOIRL Program: Partnering With Citizens to Fund Restoration

Remember the half-cent sales tax that citizens in Brevard county voted themselves in 2016?

Have you ever wondered what that tax is funding? It’s doing a lot and it’s moving the needle on restoring the Indian River Lagoon. 

Stay with us. Today we’re talking about the Save Our Indian River Lagoon plan on this episode of One Lagoon – One Voice. 

Hi, I am Duane De Freese, executive director of the IRL Council and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. Welcome to our One Lagoon, One Voice Podcast.

Each week, myself or one of my staff members will host leaders in the community, scientists along the lagoon, people who know a lot about the system to talk about some of the problems.

And most importantly, some of the solutions to solve the Indian River Lagoon’s health and make sure it’s great for future generations. So let’s get the show started and let’s talk a little lagoon.

All right. Welcome everyone to One Lagoon, One Voice. I’m Kathy Hill, Deputy Director of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program.

Today on the show we’ll be discussing the SOIRL Program, which is Brevard County’s Save Our Indian River Lagoon Program. We’ll talk about some of the projects that are making a difference — and whether these projects are helping to improve health in the lagoon.

Today on the show we’ve got our guests, Virginia Barker, Director of Natural Resources for Brevard County, and Terri Breeden, the Environmental Section Supervisor, who’s also with Brevard. Ladies, tell our audience a little bit about yourselves and the work that you do. Virginia, why don’t you go first?

Okay. It’s great to be here, Kathy. I’m a Florida Native. [I] started out as a research diver in the Florida Keys, and then worked on the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Plan.

[I] worked on a coral reef sanctuary plan in Sri Lanka before ending up here in Brevard County where I’ve had a progression of assignments up to the Director of Natural Resources. The Natural Resources Department does environmental permitting, hazardous waste cleanup, beach management, boating and waterways management, stormwater, and now our largest assignment, the Save Our Indian River Lagoon Program.

So I’m the Environmental Section Supervisor for the Brevard County Save our Indian River Lagoon Program. I also grew up in Brevard. And some of the projects I work on [include] reviewing the projects for the SOIRL plan, updating the SOIRL plan, also drafting contracts and creating reports for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to name a few.

Yep. Also a big job. Reports are so important — we do that all the time for EPA. So we are right there with you. So before we talk about SOIRL specifically, let’s set the stage a little bit and talk [about] what the conditions were in the lagoon that required a plan to help save it.

So, Virginia, you want to talk about what was going on in the lagoon around the time that SOIRL was getting developed?

Certainly. You know, this was a problem that was roughly 60, 70 years in the making with coastal development and pollution generated by people — [and] by all of us in our daily lives. And this amazing drainage system that we have in place to drain the swamps and prevent mosquitoes that carries the pollution that we generate to the Indian River Lagoon. And so that has gone on for generations now.

And we’ve gotten to the point where there’s just too much pollution in the lagoon and too much pollution still going to the lagoon. Whether that’s from wastewater or septic systems, reclaimed irrigation, stormwater that carries lawn chemicals and grass clippings and pet waste to the lagoon and air pollution from our cars and trucks and power generation. You know, all these things have led to algal blooms that have turned the lagoon all sorts of colors that it shouldn’t be.

[This has] created a mucky bottom that smothers life over large expanses of the lagoon. It’s led to the loss of seagrass, which is this underwater rainforest that underpins the enormous diversity and abundance of the lagoon. And all of those changes have contributed to fish kills and starving manatees. And so it was the fish kill in 2016 that really galvanized the community with the desire to stop this downward spiral and turn things around. And so the voters voted in a half-cent sales tax to fund the Save our Indian River Lagoon Program to restore health to the Indian River Lagoon.

Yeah. And that was a real impetus that fish kill was massive. It was the biggest, most extensive, most, you know, just disgusting 169 tons of fish I think, right? Pulled out of the river by volunteers in the couple of days that they could get in and get at them. And it really was a driver for making people wanna take action. Terri, you have thoughts on that?

Yeah, I was just kind of expanding on what Virginia said. So we had the first super bloom in 2011, and in the following years we experienced those brown tides and unusual mortality events with the manatees.

And then in 2016, you could say we had the super, super balloon because it was even bigger. And that’s where we experienced those giant fish kills and loss of our seagrass beds.

So we all know we’re a community that truly cherishes the lagoon and everything it has to offer — and this is our home. So it was really upsetting to see that devastation and the community really stepped forward and decided to tax themselves to create a funding source to improve the water quality in the lagoon.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it was, it was so great to see, and that was a vote that went all in. [Almost] 70% of people voted for this tax, which is almost unheard of if you think about the political climate now. People don’t do that. And so that was really, really humbling and gratifying to see that people were all in on fixing lagoon issues.

Before we talk about the SOIRL plan, Virginia, tell us a little bit about [the] timeline. I know you guys were on a fast timeline to get the plan developed and get it out and have something on paper. Tell us a little bit about how that went and what are the elements of the plan? What gave people comfort that this was a good plan and they wanted to go for it?

So the plan centers around [what we call] our four Rs: reduce, remove, restore, and respond. And so, you know, we’re focusing on projects that will reduce the amount of pollution getting to the lagoon, remove accumulation of pollution that’s already there from past decades of over pollution, restoring the natural filtration systems like oysters and sea grass that were previously there helping to maintain stability in the ecosystem.

Then responding to new information, new opportunities, new technology with annual plan updates. At the same time we were working with the cities and working with the community to identify projects to put in the plan for how the half-cent sales tax would be spent. We were also working on a good governance structure for how the dollars would be allocated and how decisions would be made. And that good governance structure is often overlooked, but so important to the community.

[The plan had to be] creditable, you know, science-based and it needed to maximize return on investment. So there was a lot of number crunching going on, but the public process was also really, really important. And so we promised annual audits and we established a citizen oversight committee and actually got those citizens who were first appointed to that committee. We got them appointed before the vote on the ballot initiative.

Right. I remember that.

And then that committee [meets monthly]. They met before we started collecting the tax to sort of come up with their own bylaws and ground rules. And so all of that process was really important to getting started.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think having that Citizens Oversight Committee really gave people confidence that this was going to be a good plan where the money was being spent where it needed to be, and it was so good for public confidence in what you all were doing. So Terri, you’re responsible for updating the plan, right? So give us an idea about how that goes on an annual, you update the plan every year, right?

Correct. Yeah.

And then what kind of things do you focus on to do your updates every year?

So we look at the latest scientific data, cost estimates for projects, different project types, and all of this is presented to the Citizen Oversight Committee throughout the year. And they make recommendations based on that information if we need to adjust the cost share — if they want to add a different project type to the plan.

Then in the late summer/early fall, we start the request for proposals. And this is open to municipalities, HOAs, private homeowners, whoever has a project that would qualify, can submit an application that is then reviewed by the Citizen Oversight Committee and approved projects are put into the next year’s plan update, which is then approved by the Board of County Commissioners.

And then we can move forward with contracting and getting those projects underway and completed.

Excellent. Yeah.

May I just add that there are three rounds of public comment accepted during that process as well. First, when the oversight committee is considering the individual projects, and then when the oversight committee is considering the new plan update that incorporates all those new projects. And then again at the county commission stage where they’re reviewing and adopting the new plan update.

That’s really important to point out. I think that citizens have the opportunity to weigh in and kind of influence the process as it’s going forward.

So just moving on a little bit, I want to talk about progress and the projects that have been ongoing [and are] sort of moving the needle for the lagoon. And if the folks in your office or anything like the folks in our office, you get really excited when you get a really impactful cool project that’s working.

Tell us a little bit about a few of the high impact projects that are favorites of yours, and ones that are really making a difference to Lagoon Health. Virginia, why don’t you start?

Okay. It’s really hard to pick favorites. We have so much going on and some things are favorites because they’re huge and they’re so impactful. And some projects are favorites because they just make so much sense. They’re so simple and they make so much sense.

So, you know, just starting with one example on wastewater, we are upgrading wastewater treatment plants so that the water that comes out of them that is then redistributed as irrigation water has fewer nutrients in it that have been contributing to pollution in the lagoon. So we’re spending over $30 million on wastewater treatment plant upgrades — and those collectively will reduce the amount of pollution going to the lagoon each year by 74,000 pounds.

That’s a big number.

Yeah, huge number. But then we’re also working with individual homeowners. We’ve done smoke testing to identify leaks in their private sewer lines, and often it’s just that the cap on their cleanout has gotten broken or whacked by the weed whacker or the lawnmower.

And so for $3 and 50 cents, we replace that cleanout cap and that stops all the floodwaters. When we have a major hurricane or a major flood event, if there’s a puddle around that missing clean out cap, all that water goes into the sewer system and overwhelms the sewer system and causes those horrible overflows of raw sewage to the lagoon that none of us want to see. And so something as simple as checking those clean out caps and replacing them for $3 and 50 cents can add up to a huge difference.

We’re also doing a $160 million worth of septic to sewer conversions in, in neighborhoods throughout the lagoon, and working with individual homeowners who are close to existing sewer lines to get them connected. So these little $12,000 projects for individual connections. Our stormwater projects range from a $20 million partnership with the water management district for the M1 Crane Creek re-diversion project, which is gonna take millions of gallons of water that used to flow to St. John’s that got re-plumed to flow to the Indian River Lagoon. And now we’re re-pluming it again to take it back to the St. John’s but through a stormwater treatment area first, so that water is cleaned up.

And so that project alone is gonna remove 23,000 pounds of nitrogen per year that used to be going to the lagoon. So that’s on the big end. And then on the small end, we have a project that’s $1,500 to install floating islands in a stormwater pond that are then harvested to remove nutrients to make that stormwater pond more effective than it would be without those floating islands.

And that’s something that individual homeowners associations could do. We have over 4,000 private ponds around the county, each of which could be made more effective with projects like floating islands.

That’s fantastic. And just for the listeners who may not understand when you say nutrients, [it] sounds like a good thing, but tell us a little bit about what nutrients are and why they’re bad when you have too many of them.

Yeah. So nutrients are the building blocks of life, and we need them for us, [for our] plants that we eat need them to grow. The animals that we grow for food need nutrients. So we normally think of nutrients as a good thing, but just like we can eat too much, have too many nutrients and get unhealthy, the lagoon can be fed too many nutrients and get unhealthy. And it creates an entire imbalance in the system that really tears apart the web of life that should be there and destroys the abundance and diversity that we all value.

Great. Thank you. And Terri, what projects get you going and get you out of bed in the morning? Tell us about some of the ones you really like.

I have a couple that come to mind, and some of the ones are working with the private homeowners and property owners because they’re taking the initiative to make these changes at their homes. And it’s exciting to see.

And one that comes [to] mind, in particular, is the Oak Point Mobile Home Park. This was an age restricted community — mostly retired people so they didn’t have extra income. And this took an old package plant, removed that from their system and connected them to [the] sewer. So they are no longer polluting the lagoon at all with this project.

And we worked in conjunction with the St. John’s River Water Management District to secure additional funding to get this project underway and completed.

Fantastic. Yeah. Those are the really great ones when you can help a neighborhood out with something really fundamental and it is low cost or no cost to them, and the work gets done and the lagoon gets healthier as a result.

One of the things I really like about SOIRL — and we’ve touched on this already a little bit — is that citizens are your funding partners, right? So it’s like this ultimate public private partnership almost, right? And yet there’s still a pretty persistent public perception that nothing’s being done, right? And we hear this all the time — we hear it at every talk we give, we get phone calls all the time. Nobody’s doing [anything] to help the lagoon. And I know in our program, I’ll just give you the lagoon overview for the whole region.

We ask our partners every year about what projects and programs they have going that help the lagoon outside of funding from us. And over the last three years, it’s been over 800 projects, right? So that’s everything from Volusia County all the way through Martin County. Last year alone [there were] 301 projects that were done.

So how are you all battling the perception that nobody’s doing [anything]? Give us your perspective. You’ve been managing this program for seven years, it’s doing a lot. Tell us a little bit about how many projects have been completed, how many nutrients are not going into the lagoon as the result of seven years of progress. And just kind of give us your perspective on combating that public perception that no one’s doing [anything]. Terri, why don’t you go first this time.

All right, so currently we have 432 projects in the Save our Indian River Lagoon Plan. And they are estimated to remove 1.4 million pounds of total nitrogen and 124,000 pounds of total phosphorus once they’re all complete.

To date, we have 92 of those projects completed and over 1500 homeowner grants completed. And those are for septic upgrades — connection to sewer and the sewer lateral repairs that Virginia mentioned earlier. So with all of those projects completed, we are at 236,000 pounds of total nitrogen reduction and 19,000 pounds of total phosphorus reduction.

Fantastic.

Yeah. We also have another 88 projects that are currently underway — whether it be in design or permitting — are actively under construction right now. So we’re making progress every day. This number — every day we update this number with where we’re at with everything.

But it takes time. A lot of these other projects took years for design and engineering, so they’re finally getting underway now. So we’re continuing to make progress every day.

Terrific. And Virginia, you’re the boss over at SOIRL. Tell us about how the folks in your shop talk about the projects to combat that persistent perception?

Well, all staff are on hand all the time to talk to community groups. And I know the National Estuary Program staff are out there doing the same thing. And so we have our websites, we have all the information publicly available in lots of different formats.

It’s available on our website in story maps. We’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram, we’re on YouTube. We make videos of projects and share those and send them around. And so we’re trying to get the word out, but so many of these projects are underground, which means they’re invisible.

Right.

And so if you are looking for projects, it’s hard to find them because they’re just not visible to the normal human driving past.

Right. It’s just another construction project at that point, right?

Right. Yeah. You know, why is the road torn up? Why is there a flag man out there slowing me down? But as Terri said, we have so much underway right now. We have 25 projects under construction right now, and with 92 completed, we’ve got eight to go to hit 100. And so it’s really a race to see who’s gonna be that 100th project. And we’re looking forward to having a 100th project celebration like we did with our 75th project.

So we try to celebrate big milestones. And next week we’re gonna have a groundbreaking ceremony for our Titusville Causeway Multi-Trophic Project. And so we try to make a big splash for a handful of projects, but we really try to spend most of our time nose to the grindstone, getting projects done as fast as possible to help the lagoon.

Right. Just cranking out the work. Yep — same on this end. So in our management plan for the Lagoon, we stress how important it is for local governments and agencies to address the problems over which they have control, right? So you guys are living examples of that. Brevard County is taking control of the issues that are affecting the lagoon and doing projects to make that better.

Of course on the other side of that, everybody who lives in the watershed has a role to play in this, right? So it’s not just [the] government that’s responsible, it’s all of us who are polluting and have behaviors that are polluting. And just by living on the watershed, we are creating issues for the lagoon. Do you have any tips for how residents can help prevent pollution and help maybe keep the lagoon a little bit cleaner? Terri, you can start on that one.

Sure. So one of the project types we have in the Save Our Lagoon Plan is education. And so we stress fertilizer, grass clipping, septic system maintenance, education on reclaimed water and stormwater. And so there’s things residents can do on their own, at their own homes to help with their everyday footprint on lagoon pollution reduction.

So simple things such as washing your car at a commercial car wash or over the grass, instead of having that water run down the drain into the sewer water system. Blowing your grass clippings back into your yard instead of also going down the storm drain makes a huge difference. And fertilizer is a big one — especially now [that] we have the fertilizer ban coming up, starting June 1st through October.

So it’s not recommended to fertilize your yards during this period because it’s the rainy period. So if you put it on, it’s just gonna get washed away and that just feeds the algae and the lagoon. So you could just not fertilize and enjoy your summer that way or use phosphorus-free fertilizer as well.

Yep. Fantastic. And you know, with the grass clippings, it’s free fertilizer, right? You’ve already fertilized your lawn. You cut your grass and if you put the clippings back on, you’re fertilizing again. So it’s free and you don’t have to put more down.

Yeah.

Virginia, tell us a little bit about Lagoon Loyal.

Right. So the concept of Lagoon Loyal was to sort of gamify the whole idea of taking lagoon friendly actions and get people to compete on who could do the most activities and involve businesses that could help promote participation in the program.

And so we have a website, Lagoon Loyal, that lists all these different tips and tricks like Terri was just describing. Things that people can do that will reduce their individual footprint. Each household is responsible for about 10 pounds of pollution, nitrogen pollution a year. Our projects collectively funded by the half-cent sales tax will get that down to about seven pounds per household, but that’s still a lot per household.

Right.

And so we really need people to stop pollution at the source. We’re busy consumers, we create more waste than we, we export. And so we just have to make better decisions. So this website provides lists and all sorts of activities, links for things that people can do to reduce their footprint, and then they collect points that are rewards for those projects. And they can turn those rewards in for coupons with local businesses who provide discounts to incentivize people to implement even more lagoon-friendly actions.

That’s awesome. That’s really innovative. And I hope people take advantage of that. And so, Terri, there’s another program that you all are responsible for called Restore Our Shores, and that’s in partnership with Brevard Zoo, right? Tell us a little bit about that.

Correct. So the Brevard Zoo has taken great initiative for oyster bar restoration, the clam aquaculture and putting new clam beds out there and seagrass as well. So they are a great entity and work really well with the public. It’s a great opportunity for the public to get involved with a lot of these restoration projects.

So they’re always looking for volunteers to come out and help plant the seagrass or count the oysters [and] put the oysters in the water. Yeah, they’re doing great restoration work and it’s a great way for the local community to get wet and do some good work.

Excellent. And I know it’s thousands of volunteers now. Do you have a handle on how many people-

Oh, gosh.

… have volunteered so far?

I think the last number I saw was over 70,000. I know with the Oyster Gardening program, our goal was to engage 100 homeowners in gardening oysters under their docks, and they’re over 1,700 now.

Oh, that’s so great. Love to hear that. That’s fantastic. So one of the things I wanted to touch on quickly is kind of leading by example. Brevard County was the first county in the region to vote itself a sales tax. Since then, other counties have followed suit. So Indian River County has a sales tax now to conserve land and St. Lucie County has one to benefit the lagoon and roadways.

So tell us about that — that must feel pretty good that, you know, Brevard County led the way in making this possible and showing other counties that it’s doable and people will support it. What are your thoughts on that, Virginia?

It does feel good, but it’s really a reflection, I think, of the community here in Brevard. You know, we’re the Space Coast. We put man on the moon. We don’t wait for other people to show us how to do things. We invent our own solutions and we set targets and we hit them. So we were the first county to vote itself a tax like this, to help clean up the lagoon. But we are also working on new solutions for how to clean up that pollution that keeps happening and how to reduce the amount of pollution that’s getting to the lagoon.

We’re working with industry on new technologies. We’re working with the Department of Environmental Protection on funding to test innovative solutions. And we have had a fantastic legislative delegation working with us to understand what our challenges are and what sorts of solutions we’re finding here can be useful elsewhere in the State of Florida. Senator Mayfield worked on the Clean Waterways Act a couple of years ago and that incorporated a lot of the successes that we’ve had here into statewide policy to protect water throughout Florida.

The lagoon is just, you know, amazingly precious, but also fragile. We had an event here not too long ago where the secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection was here — Sean Hamilton. And he said, “If we could save the lagoon, we could save Florida.” And it was really great to hear that perspective from Tallahassee that we’re not just fixing our problems, we’re finding new and better ways to fix all the water quality problems in Florida.

Yeah. And, you know, that could be everybody who’s working in this field, that could be the motto for all of us. You know, if we can save the lagoon, we can save Florida, [and maybe make Florida] the first clean water state in the nation.

So I can’t think of any other better way to wrap that up. I do wanna touch on one thing though, before I let you all go. Just a really fun thing our listeners are enjoying. Terri, tell us about your best day ever on the lagoon.

Oh, wow. I really enjoy getting out and kayaking and boating through the islands, the mangrove islands, and seeing the birds and the fish and the clear water. When you can see everything out there, it’s just, it’s home.

Yep. Absolutely. How about you, Virginia?

I, I just love the natural phenomena that we have here that you don’t have elsewhere. So the bioluminescence is just magical. But I remember one of my first magical moments in the lagoon was wading out from one of the picnic islands into this enormous mullet run.

How fun.

And there was just mullet for as far as you could see in every direction. And they were swimming right at me and swimming around me and leaping past my ears. And to see that much life all in one place, it’s just amazing.

When we started the Lagoon Plan,I knew from a scientific aspect, right, that this place was important because of the diversity, because of the abundance, because of the land to sea connection and being on the ecotone boundary between temperate America and the subtropics and all of that in one water body — just this amazing diversity. But I didn’t really understand why the normal public, all my neighbors, all my friends, [love] the lagoon, too. And so when you ask people why they love the lagoon, you get these emotional stories, this sense of place that’s just fantastic.

And it’s not just big fish stories like you might expect. It’s these family memories clamming with grandma for the big family meal. It’s sunset with a sweetheart from a city dock, right? It’s family picnics on the spoil islands, it’s water-skiing with your buddies, with dolphins all around. You know, it’s watching space launches from the causeway and seeing that shimmering, you know, feeling the vibration of the land and seeing the shimmering water over the reflection of that launch.

There’s just so many reasons that people love this lagoon and it, and it ties our whole community together. This has been a really good discussion. I’m so glad that you came on today. And before I let you go, I would love for you to tell us about your website and how people can get on there and find out more information and what your handles are for socials so people can like and follow your pages. Terri, you wanna, you wanna start with that?

Okay. Yes. So a lot of our information can be found on our website at brevardfl.gov and then click on the manatee or Google Save Our Indian River Lagoon. It’ll take you right to our page as well. And on there you can find the latest Save Our Indian River Lagoon Plan, all of our story maps, our project funding applications, information for our homeowner grants, our septic to sewer projects — everything is there.

Also, all of our past citizen oversight committee meetings are on there, and we also have special presentations as well presented at these meetings. And they’re also located on our YouTube channel. And for social media we have Facebook and Instagram. The Facebook handle is Brevard County Save Our Indian River Lagoon, and the Instagram handle is Save Our Lagoon.

Excellent. Great. All right, thanks so much for coming on the show today. It was a great discussion and I really enjoyed it. I hope you guys did too, and just keep up the good work. I can’t wait to hear the next update from y’all.

Thank you, Kathy.

Thank you. Thanks for all you do.