MEXICO BEACH, Fla. (WMBB) – Mexico Beach’s biggest asset is the beach.
Tuesday, city council members moved forward with a plan to protect that asset.
The Beach and Dune Protection Ordinance covers all the beach within city limits.
City staff say this ordinance is crucial to protecting and preserving the beauty of Mexico Beach.
“Any time you have people walking over the dunes, trampling on the plants, disturbing the nests, it’s detrimental to the dune protection system because it degrades the dunes themselves. They start to erode and start to shrink basically in size, and that reduces the protection,” said Mexico Beach City Administrator Chris Truitt.
This new rule would not only help protect area wildlife like shorebirds and nesting sea turtles, but also the dunes which serve as a key defensive measure against storms.
The city also plans to add walkovers so all who visit the beach can appreciate all it has to offer.
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“If we have set walkways in place, the wildlife will have its protected areas, the dunes themselves will be protected, and then we can start focusing on additional protection measures for those walkovers so that even those walkovers don’t start degrading the condition of the dunes,” Truitt added.
The new ordinance will also set the penalties for those who don’t follow the law.
“We’re going to be looking at fines, forfeitures, penalties essentially for violating the dunes ordinance on this part of our bigger picture, or bigger project I should say, of looking at all of our municipal codes and the fines and forfeitures penalties for violating any of those codes,” Truitt said.
This ordinance will help protect a new and improved beach in the midst of a renourishment project.
Bay County commissioners say it’s on schedule.
“They’re still slated to probably have most of the sand done by the end of March, which is hard to believe that whole strip of beach, 150 feet of sand, the dunes,” said District 2 Bay County Commissioner Robert Carroll. “The next step will be working on some ADA ramps.”
City officials say they have all been having many conversations with residents on this issue for a while now and are pleased to see some progress being made.
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