CTE/FCAT CONNECTION
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Beach driving foes take aim at Flagler County
By NICOLE SERVICE
NEWS-JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
PALM COAST — The sands of time may be running out for those who like driving on Flagler County’s beach.
Besides following through with a threatened lawsuit aiming to ban beach driving, longtime sea turtle advocate Shirley Reynolds and part-time northeast Flagler County resident Stephen Belida want a court order temporarily banning driving on the beach during turtle nesting season, while the lawsuit goes through the courts. The turtle season is May 1 through Oct. 31.
A federal judge in Jacksonville is expected to hear that request Sept. 9. Reynolds, who splits her time between New Smyrna Beach and Colorado, said the injunction was necessary to protect the turtles now.
“Right now, the turtles are hatching, and with driving on the beach at night, that’s just the worst thing you can do,” Reynolds said in a phone interview from Colorado. “It’s impossible to see the little things. And they are very susceptible to being run over, so it’s imperative that something be done as quickly as possible because (Flagler County) does allow 24-hour accessibility to the beach during turtle seasons.”
Unlike Volusia County, where night driving is prohibited, Flagler allows night driving on eight miles of beach, according to the lawsuit.
News of the request and lawsuit worried Joan Jonas, who lives near a home Belida owns in Marineland Acres, is disabled and can't walk to the beach — she drives a golf cart.
"It would disappoint me immensely and depress me just to think that we aren't going to be able to do that any more," Jonas said Monday.
Belida could not be reached for comment.
Most times she drives down to the beach, Jonas said, and ends up picking up things that would harmanimals.
"I have picked up fishing lines so the birds wouldn't get it. I don't know what else we can do," Jonas said. ". . . if we can no longer go up there from May to October, it would be like taking so much away."
Deputy county attorney Patrick McCormack said the lawsuit filed Aug. 19 in federal court in Jacksonville comes as no surprise to county officials.
"We had received a notice of their intent to sue some time ago," he said. "We tried to do a mediation with them and that was not successful, and so they had filed suit."
The suit argues beach driving is harmful to sea turtles, which violates the Endangered Species Act. The suit also contends at least one marked sea turtle nest has been run over by a motor vehicle and says lights from nighttime beach driving disorients the hatchlings. Tire ruts also interfere with their ability to reach the ocean, it says.
The county has hired Gray Robinson, P.A., the same Orlando law firm that represented Volusia County in 1996, when Reynolds sued under the same law. In the end, Volusia officials removed cars from nine miles of beach but won the right to continued beach driving elsewhere after getting a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Reynolds has since threatened another lawsuit against Volusia County, saying the county didn't properly renew its permit.
She said arguments by disabled people that banning beach driving would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act aren't valid. Iin her view, there aren't any valid arguments to continue beach driving.
"In my opinion, if you are a good steward of the environment, it's not necessary to drive on the beach," she said. "It's incompatible with resource conservation."
