RRF first meeting with the Palm Beach County Reef Committee
Thursday,
Big John and I headed South on Wednesday night. Our First trip to WPB to meet Carman and the Reef Committee. We were supposed to go down in July but the committee postponed the meeting. We are going to pitch our idea to the Reef committee. Found a good hotel on hotels .com. Palm Beach Oceanfront Inn for $69.00 out of season ($190.00 in season) Room was standard hotel fair but had a nice pool deck and bar overlooking the ocean. I would definitely come back (out of season). WPB has an ordinance that does not allow hi-rise hotels on the beach. So beach front hotels are slim pickings. Hotel is about 15-20 miles from Boynton. The meetings are held at the WPB fishing club. It's a neat old building that is covered wall to wall in fishing memorabilia (my kind of place). It's in down town WPB. West Palm Beach looks like Beverly Hills only on the east coast.
I finally got my chance to speak right at the end of the meeting. I had put together a power point presentation and a speech. I kind of got dumped into it and didn't get a chance to set up the presentation. I winged it and read from my notes. I got about half way through when I was interrupted and hammered with questions. The committee wanted to know details, and I was there to pitch an idea, so I didn't have details yet.
They told me to keep working on the details with Carmen and come back in January to present. All in all it went well. I didn't get shot down. I got the feeling that just about everybody was on my side and open to my idea. Plus it gave me a chance to meet the Reef committee and develop a rapport.
Later I went to lunch with Carman to discuss the details. This went very well, and we came up with a tenitive plan. He steered me to the Boynton Beach area to find a location. I agreed to conduct the site surveys and report back to him. If I were to put it ware I wanted, I would have to do this so that Carman can obtain a new permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. I later found out this had to be done by December, so that we could get the permit back by June-04. We would have to work up a legal agreement definineing each party's responsibilities. I agreed to locate a vessel, and he was already working on limestone bids for other projects. Best case scenario the project would unfold as follows.
We get all our ducks in order and present the DETAILS to the Reef Committee on January 8th. They vote and approve it. About six weeks later it then goes to Palm Beach County Commissioners and they vote on it. If they approve it we get the go ahead to begin construction (once we get the permit back from the Corps). We sink the vessel shortly thereafter, and then drop the limestone. Best case scenario we could have the major construction finished by the end of the summer 2004.
We ended up staying in WPB again that night to celebrate.
The bioluminescent plankton was right up to the beach. We were up all night swimming in the ocean watching the bioluminescence and talking about Ginger.
Brian