County finally gets pier approval

Santa Rosa County finally has permission to build a pier on Navarre Beach, Commissioner Gordon Goodin announced Tuesday.

"I've seen an electronic version of the document; it's beautiful," he told about 100 residents at a town hall meeting. "It's done."
The county could issue bid documents for a 1,200- to 1,500-foot-long, 20-foot-wide pier this month, project engineer Wayne Lasch of Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan told Navarre Press in November, with bidding completed by February. Construction is expected to last about a year, depending on the county's preferred option.
The old pier was 900 feet long.
Hurricane Ivan demolished most of the old pier in September 2004 and Hurricane Dennis destabilized the rest in July 2005. The county spent months hiring project engineers and negotiating funding with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection before the permitting process could begin. Officials expected the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to permit the project this spring, but in the final stages of the process the National Marine Fisheries Service unexpectedly required a biological impact study to determine how the project might affect gulf sturgeon and sea turtles.
The corps couldn't issue a permit without the fisheries service's biological opinion. The service missed its Nov. 13 deadline when final editing and review took longer than expected.

 For more on this story, see the Dec. 11 issue of the Navarre Press or subscribe online.