The City of Riviera Beach continues to seek regulatory approval to establish mooring fields in the Lake Worth Lagoon despite objections from Palm Beach, a town official said Tuesday.
One of the three mooring fields would be located south of the Lake Worth Inlet, around 500 feet from Palm Beach’s North End and within the town’s municipal boundary, Paul Brazil, Palm Beach’s public works director, told the Town Council.
“We continue to lodge objections … [to] the section of the mooring field that’s within the limits of the town of Palm Beach,” Brazil said.
To gain permission to build the mooring field, Riviera Beach has applied for a state permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and a federal permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Neither has been approved and the state application appears to be inactive.
Riviera Beach would also need a sovereign state submerged land lease from the governor’s board of trustees but has not applied for that, Brazil said.
Palm Beach has registered its objections to the mooring fields proposal with both the DEP and the Army Corps, Brazil said.
After initially becoming aware of the city’s plans, Mayor Danielle Moore and council members strongly objected in 2022 that the mooring field would be a nuisance and an invasion of the town’s privacy while providing no benefit to Palm Beach. At the time, Town Manager Kirk Blouin expressed doubt that Riviera Beach would have the resources to provide adequate law enforcement for the mooring field near Palm Beach, which was to accommodate 100 boats.
Riviera Beach said the “managed” mooring fields would be environmentally beneficial and help address the problem of derelict vessels in the lagoon while providing a revenue stream for the city.
A mooring field is a legally defined area within a body of water, established by a local ordinance so a government can regulate activities within it. Boaters can rent buoys and tie up their boats and, in some cases, live aboard them.
The town recently discovered a change in the city’s application with the Army Corps, Brazil said Tuesday. The city is now seeking permission for three separate mooring fields instead of two, as it had earlier proposed. One of the three would fall within the town’s jurisdiction and the other two would be to the north.
The application also includes modifications to the city’s marina.
“They have tied all of those things together,” Brazil said. “The modifications to the marina would include dredging. The dredging impacts sea grass. There needs to be mitigation for sea grass. They have connected the mooring fields to that by saying, ‘creating a mooring field would be mitigation for disturbing the sea grass.’”
“That permit is going to be challenging – to get a permit to dredge and to support the logic that a mooring field is actually mitigation,” Brazil said.
Palm Beach commented on the project to the Army Corps last year, Brazil said. The comment period for the federal permit has been closed for a while. The city is now in consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service, which routinely issues its own comments on a federal application before the Army Corps makes its decision.
Asked if the town has legally challenged the city’s proposal, Brazil said that is a legal action the town can’t take unless and until one of the regulatory agencies issues a notice of intent to issue a permit for the project.
Riviera Beach has not addressed the town’s comments to the DEP as part of the agency’s review of the state application. “As of right now, the state is saying that it is inactive, for lack of a response,” Brazil said.
Council President Bobbie Lindsay asked Brazil and Blouin if the town should be “worried” about the proposal.
No, Blouin replied.
“The permit is inactive,” Blouin said. “They are in the first step of the process, but we will continue to monitor it and will update you.”
Councilman Ted Cooney asked if residents can send their comments about the mooring fields proposal to the DEP.
Brazil said they can.
According to the town, public comment on Riviera Beach’s state application can be mailed to Geneva Alpert at Geneva.Alpert@Floridadep.gov.
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