The state water district has put a 34,336 dollar civil penalty on the developer of the Seven Islands project in Cape Coral over mangroves cleared without permits, and the district says the money has not been paid yet
Stock photo
The South Florida Water Management District has assessed 34,336.51 dollars in civil penalties and investigation costs against Gulf Gateway Resort and Marina, LLC over protected mangroves removed at the Seven Islands development in Cape Coral, and the district says the developer has not yet paid.
The figure comes from district public information officer Jason Schultz, who gave it by email to the Cape Coral Breeze in a report by CJ Haddad. Schultz described it as the total of the civil penalties and the costs associated with the investigation and the settlement of the violation, and said the amount was determined using procedures in the district's enforcement manual. The News-Press reported the same day that the developers had been fined and were beginning restoration.
No public enforcement document has been obtained. The district publishes no record of this action on its website, and its ePermitting portal could not be reached from here across three attempts, so the amount rests on a named district official rather than on a signed order. The entity itself is on the state record: the Florida Division of Corporations lists Gulf Gateway Resort and Marina, LLC as active under document number L21000194459.
A city permit that does not cover mangroves
The clearing happened along the North Spreader Waterway, on one of the manmade spoil islands connected to land off Old Burnt Store Road. According to the Breeze, the contractor that removed the trees held a land clearing permit issued by the city.
That permit does not reach mangroves. The city does not issue permits for mangrove removal at all, and city officials have confirmed that no agency had issued the permits any removal would have required. As of July, the report says, Forest Development had not been issued permits for removal along hundreds of feet of shoreline.
Forest Development spokesperson Sarah Flynn told the Breeze that the company has been coordinating with local, state and federal agencies on restoration since learning that mangroves had been inadvertently removed from the property. That is the developer's account of how it happened, and no agency finding on the point has been published.
The remedy is shoreline first, trees later
Work on the bank began on Tuesday, August 18, the same day the district's approval of the restoration and bank stabilisation plans took effect. Flynn said the district and the United States Army Corps of Engineers approved a bank stabilisation plan that reshapes the shoreline and stabilises the bank against erosion, and that the work addresses roughly 545 linear feet.
Replanting does not start with it. Mangrove replanting begins once the stabilisation work is finished and the applicable agencies approve a separate mangrove restoration plan, according to Flynn. No date has been given for that.
How many trees were lost is not settled. David Scott, the Cape Coral resident the Breeze credits with alerting the Army Corps to the clearing, estimates from aerial photography that around a thousand were removed, and says the size of the penalty sets a poor precedent for anyone weighing whether to follow the rules. His estimate is his own. No agency has published a count.
Measured against the project
The penalty is small next to the development it attaches to. This desk reported in July that Cape Coral City Council established the 7 Islands community development district by Ordinance 34-26 on July 22, covering about 47.18 acres adjacent to the North Spreader Waterway and brought forward by Gulf Gateway Resort and Marina, LLC. The petition for that district estimated the cost of providing the capital facilities at approximately 71,504,778.04 dollars.
Set one figure against the other and the penalty is 0.048 percent of that estimate, or under one twentieth of one percent. That is arithmetic, not a verdict on whether the amount is adequate, and the district has not published the reasoning behind it beyond the reference to its enforcement manual.
What is not known matters here. Whether a signed consent order or settlement agreement exists, what it requires beyond payment, and whether any deadline attaches to the 34,336.51 dollars are all unresolved on the public record as it stands today.
Where we read it: CJ Haddad at Cape Coral Breeze. Read their story.
The document: No public filing has been released.
