Limpkin December 2003

By Sarah Linney

The Significant Environmental Areas (SEAs) Ordinance started in March of 2001 when the Brevard County Board of Commissioners directed staff to achieve two things: 1) develop a significant areas ordinance which would include protecting crucial habitat beginning with scrub habitat; 2) to consolidate the numerous natural resource ordinances into a single framework. What resulted is the county’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) staff drafting an ordinance entitled Significant Environmental Areas (SEAs) and Natural Resource Standards. Hopefully, most of you have already heard about this either by reading the October 7 Florida Today article and/or from attending one of the five public workshops.

The SEAs Ordinance will consolidate 11 of the current natural resource-related ordinances, reducing language conflicts and overlaps, and generally streamlining the permitting process.

The Ordinance also aims to protect crucial habitat areas along what is known as the Atlantic Coastal Ridge, a series of ancient sand dune ridges and swales between Mims and Micco that roughly parallel the Florida East Coast Railroad tracks. The xeric (dry) habitat that formed on the Ridge are our county’s upland scrub communities, cover only 3% of Brevard, and are considered to be environmentally significant habitats. Walter Kingsley Taylor in his book Florida Wildflowers in Their Natural Communities, pgs 27–31, describes Oak Scrub communities as being endemic to Florida (meaning it occurs nowhere else in the world) and that scrub as a whole across central Florida has declined 90%. Scrub also provides shelter for a number of Federal- or State-listed plants and animals (many endemic) including Titusville MInt, Gopher Tortoises, Indigo Snakes, and Scrub Jays.
A map was created to show the roughly 46,000 acres of up-lands along the Ridge. Once municipal, current conservation areas, and parcels less than five acres were eliminated, it left about 15,000 acres. From that figure was then eliminated schools, libraries, parks, etc., to leave 10,952 acres in a Crucial Habitat Overlay Zone (CHOZ). Basically for un-incorporated areas, any undeveloped parcels five acres or more that fall within, or partially within, the Overlay Zone must preserve 50% of the site as native habitat, or a portion equal to what lies within the Zone if less than 50%.

The goal of the SEAs ordinance is to allow development while preserving as much contiguous crucial habitat as possible. Animals, and plants to some degree, need a lot more area to live in than humans do. Animals do not have the luxury of going to a department store or a grocery store for what they need to survive; nor can they go to a local hangout to pick up a potential mate. That is why wildlife corridors are so important: to allow travel between areas for dispersal, to find increased food supply, and to locate new mates.

There have been five Public Workshops on the Draft Ordinance and the DNR staff have been collecting comments and suggestions. A list of these was presented along with the Draft to the County Commissioners at the first Public Hearing on Nov. 18. A second Public Hearing will be December 15. The DNR staff will advise and make recommendations to the commissioners regarding the suggestions, but it will be up to the commissioners to make any amendments to the Ordinance.

For more information on the SEAs Ordinance, please visit: http://natres.brevardcounty.us. From there you can down-load the draft ordinance, the Crucial Habitat Overlay Zone maps, agenda reports and meeting notices. The number to contact the Brevard County Natural Resources Management Office is 633-2016.

SEAs the Moment: The Significant Environmental Areas Ordinance

By Sarah Linney