Rob Robbins' Presentation on the Living Shoreline along Bryant Park and other joint projects with the city...

Rob Robbins, Director of Palm Beach County Environmental Resource Management, gives an update at the City Commission meeting last night (1/7/14). He highlighted a future "living shoreline" project along the Bryant Park seawall, which will involve the Michael Singer Group. You might recall that group was involved in the design of the downtown West Palm Beach waterfront and also our beach project site plan. It might be part of a National Endowment of the Arts grant project, with Michael Singer Group as the lead. We will hear more about that from staff in the future. He also talked about installing floating docks by the boatramp.

He also addressed the mangrove trimming issue along the golf course. He is actually meeting with South Florida Water Management this Thursday about removing some of the mangroves and replacing them with Spartina grass, which would not require as much maintenance and only grows waist high. There has already been some removal of exotics in the area. I was impressed how the county is responding to the city's concerns about maintaining views. Really must listen to his presentation. He stayed until later in the meeting to talk about the submerged lands on the west side of the barrier island that appeared as item 12 C on the agenda.

He also talks about water quality in the Lake Worth lagoon and that they are looking at the water control structure at the C-51 canal. It sounded like they are studying changing it from a bottom-opening structure, which allows a lot of silt and muck into the lagoon.