Palm Beach has hired a consultant to study the feasibility of developing a town-operated mooring field for boats within the Lake Worth Lagoon.
The Town Council voted unanimously Tuesday to hire Moffatt & Nichol, a leading engineering firm that specializes in the planning and design of coastal environments and infrastructure, to do the study for $136,000. The Long Beach, Calif.-based firm was retained by the City of Miami Beach to design its Sunset Harbour Mooring Field.
In June 2025, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection denied the City of Riviera Beach’s application for a state permit to establish and operate a 100-vessel managed mooring field in the Lake Worth Lagoon within 500 feet of Palm Beach’s North End.
The DEP denial was a reversal of an earlier DEP decision to grant the permit. The denial occurred amid strong opposition from the Town of Palm Beach, which objected to Riviera Beach establishing a mooring field in what Palm Beach says are its jurisdictional waters. Riviera Beach said the mooring field would control the problem of abandoned vessels and environmental pollution in the lagoon.
Since then, Palm Beach’s police department has been working to clear unpermitted, and therefore illegal, moorings in its own waters. In late 2025, Palm Beach began limiting overnight anchoring to 30 days within a six-month period. The town is also removing derelict and unpermitted vessels from its lagoon waters to protect seagrass and promote navigational safety.
Palm Beach Public Works Director Paul Brazil told the council Tuesday that town staff recommended the feasibility study. He spoke of the benefits of a town-operated mooring field.
“That way, the town would have control over both the law enforcement side of this – who can moor, who can’t moor, size of the vessels, where they can moor – and also have some [beneficial] environmental impacts,” Brazil said.
Brazil said the town is not currently seeking a state permit to establish its own mooring field.
“This is not permitting, this is a feasibility study,” he said. Moffatt & Nichol “will look at potential configurations for mooring fields. They will have a pre-application meeting with regulatory agencies to try to parse out any true hurdles we’re going to face. Upland support [facilities for the mooring field] will probably be one of those hurdles.”
Moffatt & Nichol will deliver three scenarios for the town to consider, Brazil said. The firm will also address conceptual layout and provide a preliminary opinion of probable construction cost, a revenue and operational cost summary, and identify grant opportunities.
The study will require six months or more to complete, Brazil said. Once it is complete, the findings will be brought to the council for discussion and public comment.
Mayor Danielle Moore said she always has reservations about spending money on consultants. But she said the study is probably a necessary step for Palm Beach to control its own waters.
“I always have concerns that our neighboring municipalities are going to keep trying to step on our toes,” Moore said.
Brazil replied, “It’s time that we took this first step … It’s the first step in controlling how that waterway is used.”
Town Manager Kirk Blouin told the Civic Association that residents and council members have expressed concerns for years about water quality and safety in the Intracoastal waters.
The concerns “particularly relate to maintaining navigable channels, environmental concerns, sewage and other pollutants and trash that come from the boats that have been illegally moored,” Blouin said.
A town-managed mooring field could help to maintain marine habitat, reduce trash and pollution and address noise and nuisance violations caused by “people behaving badly,” Blouin said.
In a May 9 letter to Moore and the Town Council, the Civic Association stated its support for the feasibility study. The letter was signed by Civic Association Chairman Michael Pucillo and Keith Beaty, chairman of the non-profit organization’s Intracoastal/Lagoon Committee.
“The Civic Association believes it would be beneficial for the Town of Palm Beach to investigate the concept of developing and managing its own mooring field within town waters in the lagoon,” the letter stated. “The environmental and navigational safety benefits of properly managed mooring fields are well known.”
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