Citizens want to protect county's Travatine Island
By LESTER R. DAILEY
Article published on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006  |
PINELLAS COUNTY – With condo developers gobbling up marinas in this maritime county, boaters are finding their access to the water increasingly limited.
To deal with the situation, the county has formed a Boating Access Task Force, made up of county officials, environmentalists and representatives of the boating industry.
One of the task force’s suggestions involves building a boat launching ramp on Travatine Island, a spoil island just south of the Park Boulevard bridge from the mainland to Indian Shores and Redington Shores.
But neighbors said doing so would be an environmental disaster.
“It would ruin the environment,” said Janet Martin, who has teamed up with Pat Kellner and Elaine Kuehn to spearhead a petition drive against the plan. “It’s one of the last mangrove stands left. It’s very important to our coastal ecosystem.”
Officially, the island is 82 acres, but that includes uplands, mangrove swamps and submerged tidal lands, according to Jake Stowers, the assistant county administrator heading the task force.
“It’s nothing but rock that was blown out of the Narrows and covered with exotic trees,” Stowers said. “Only 20 or 30 acres of it are buildable.”
He added that earlier newspaper reports that the county was planning to build a 150-slip marina on the island are no longer accurate, if they ever were.
“A marina is pushing it,” he said. “We’d probably have a boat ramp. There’s a big need for boat ramps in that area.”
Tentative plans call for a bridge to be built from the former toll plaza at the eastern end of the Park Boulevard bridge to the island, a couple of hundred yards to the south. Martin worries that the new bridge would cause environmental damage, but Stowers said the damage will be minimal.
“We’re not going to impact the mangroves, except perhaps a little at the edges,” he said.
But Kellner opposes any development of the island.
“I don’t feel it would stop with a marina,” she said. “It wouldn’t be long before we’d get condos, townhouses or whatever. That island was bought by the county as a preserve. I don’t see how they can develop it. We have a retention pond behind our house that attracts wood storks, bald eagles and roseate spoonbills, and we think they’re coming from Travatine Island.”
At this point, Stowers said, the county is just checking jurisdictional lines, doing due diligence and coming up with concepts. In the meantime, opponents of the project will have an open meeting at Kellner’s home, 7674 Harborview Way, Seminole, at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23. They also will gather signatures on petitions.
“We have a lot of petitions out there,” Martin said. “We’ll give them right to the County Commission and let them know what the people think.”
Other task force suggestions include adding 54 parking spaces at the War Veterans County Park boat ramp and 50 to 60 spaces at the Belleair Boat Ramp. Neighborhood opposition has forced the county to drop plans for a ramp in the Honeymoon Island State Park.
A marina and boat ramp are proposed for county-owned land near the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, and a marina and mooring field are under consideration for the St. Petersburg College-owned Hurricane Hole in the Bay Pines area.
The former Stauffer Chemical Company site in Tarpon Springs is large enough to accommodate a large marina, but the federal Environmental Protection Agency must grant its approval before anything can be built on the contaminated Superfund site.
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Article published on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006
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