2020 will probably be best remembered as the year that COVID took over society but for Save Coral Bay it was “business as usual.” Environmental advocacy doesn’t stop on account of a pandemic …
The Summers End Group was hard at work sending reams of new documents to the Army Corps, including a complex (and inaccurate) simulation of currents in Coral Harbor, (incomplete) geotechnical studies to support their claim that pilings could be installed with vibratory (as opposed to impact) pile driving, and the a continuation of the many (insufficient) benthic resource surveys attempting to demonstrate no impacts from the marina.
Each of these submissions required the filing of a FOIA request and weeks or months of correspondence to secure the documents. Then followed the tediuous job of determining what was actually sent, its significance, and whether or not a response was needed.
As it turned out the many months of COVID confinement provided the time for detailed analysis and rebuttals, all of which was submitted to the federal agencies and the Army Corps of Engineers.
On the local front, in 2020 the Legislature had the creatively crafted “new and improved” CZM permits, which had never been seen or touched by CZM, and a Governor anxious to get them ratified.
Upon seeing the handiwork of Ms. Summers, in the form of her self-made CZM permits, Save Coral Bay immediately filed an appeal in February 2020 with the Board of Land Use Appeals. However, the CZM Code never contemplated a new permit or a highly modified permit being written by the Governor in cooperation with a developer, and the CZM code only allows for actions by the DPNR Commissioner or the CZM Committee to be appealed. Not the Governor. BLUA eventually dismissed the appeal arguing that they lacked “subject matter jurisdiction.”
By mid-2020 the Legislature was ready to convene a second Committee of the Whole to review the creatively redrafted CZM permits. We were now fully in COVID mode and the hearing was conducted virtually, one of the first times in this mode.
The tone of the 2020 hearing was a major shift from 2019, and the Legislature appeared posed to ratify. Save Coral Bay filed a lawsuit in VI Superior Court challenging the Governor’s improper use of an emergency enforcement provision to modify a permit for the benefit of a developer. As retribution, Governor Bryan kicked me off of the St John CZM Committee (ironically my term was due to expire in 2 weeks and I had no intention of staying on the board). The year ended with the Legislature ratifying a fundamentally flawed and worthless CZM permit for the Summers End Group.
All of this in the next few chapters …