Podcast: Robinson on ‘Leave No Trace Behind’

Commissioner Grover Robinson says the “Leave Trace Behind” ordinance that the Escambia Board of County Commissioners passed last year was created as a turtle protection ordinance, not for clean up after events on Pensacola Beach.

“Somehow or another it got misconstrued a lot of different ways,” he said on “Pensacola Speaks.” “The Board came into this to deal most effectively with turtles.”

He explained, “Most of the other beach counties in the state of Florida have some similar ordinance for dealing with no trace left behind in dealing with turtles and other things. They come up on the shore and nest and then of course when the younglings hatch they go off. So, again, all of this is really more in line to deal with issues related to turtles than anything else.”

The commissioner, whose district includes Pensacola Beach, said the goal of the ordinance was to allow people to set up tents, chairs and other items during the day on the beach, but all items had to be removed by sunset.

“You may be staying in a condo or a house, move them to that, or you may be in your car and you’re going somewhere else, you take your car and you take it home,” he said. “We don’t say where you have to take it to, we just don’t want it on the beach.”

However, the board anticipated there would need to exemptions for such events as the Blue Angels Airshow and Memorial Day Weekend.

“We had a group a couple weekends ago that did a jet-ski thing. Great event. Great reasons to have exemptions and do everything else. The challenge is once you have an exemption, you kind of have to have it available to everyone regardless of use just as long as they are taking care of the beach,” said Robinson.

Last week, the board worked out the details for permitting exemptions for events.

“I think what we decided is we don’t want to get into the tent permitting for a single tent and then the policing of that,” said the commissioner. “What we’d rather do is give somebody for that special event a section of the beach.”

He added, “The problem is if you permit individual tents and you place them all over the place, then you don’t give them – you’ve got tents everywhere – you don’t really have a center spot that is being limited to where the impact is and then other areas of the beach that are clear.”

Robinson said that County Administrator Jack Brown was developing a fee schedule for the permits that would cover the costs of any clean up.

He said, “I do think at least for this weekend, I think we’ve got a solid reason for the permit cost and making sure that the costs associated with what has been happening will be covered.”