“[W]orking with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Florida Inland Navigation District. . .

“and county parks and recreation officials to create the Snook Islands Natural Area. . .”

The news below is from ‘back in the day’ when local news about the environment was very big local news in Lake Worth and beyond the City limits.

Former Palm Beach Post reporter Lady Hereford focused a lot of effort on in-depth environmental journalism and she was later succeeded by another reporter who covered this City, an acclaimed environmental reporter in his own right, Willie Howard.

From December 2003.
Front page news in The Palm Beach Post.

Click on image to enlarge:

Over strong objections from homeowners along the golf course and local environmentalists who wanted this area to remain ‘pristine’, former Mayor Rodney Romano pushed the project forward.

The Snook Islands Natural Area, a Joint Project with Palm Beach County, “Creating habitat in a busy city” is one of the most popular. So the next time you visit the Snook Islands remember all the hard work by people such a former Mayor Rodney Romano and former Palm Beach County Commissioner Warren Newell who later ended up in prison and claimed his only real crime was staying, “in my position as county commissioner too long.”

The good news is Newell remained on the County Commission long enough to push through the Snook Islands project!

The original idea for the Snook Islands was a boardwalk the entire length of the golf course and extending south past the Robert Harris (“Lake Worth”) Bridge allowing the public to walk a boardwalk from 16th Ave. North all the way to Bryant Park, “without ever having to cross a road”.

Twenty years ago, during the period when a future boardwalk along the Intracoastal Waterway was envisioned the critics began spreading rumors about selling the Lake Worth Municipal Golf Course and that the City was removing mangroves and all other kinds of nonsense. Despite the facts these rumors persist to this day, depending on how the political winds are blowing at the time.

But back in 2003 the public got tired of hearing those homeowners along the golf course that wanted to protect their view and turned a deaf ear to those who wanted a ‘pristine’ Intracoastal and then the dirt and sand began to move. . .

Click on image to read the caption: