Maitland passes wetland protection

Seventeen years after Maitland Councilwoman Bev Reponen began talking about the need for a broad wetlands protection ordinance in the city, the Council passed an ordinance Monday night to do just that. But it took a last-minute change to get it passed with all of the Council on board.

“That’s one of the reasons that I joined the council,” she said of the beginning of her journey into civil governance in the year 2000. “It would be so very nice to be known that we handle our environment, when [cyclists] ride through the boardwalk that they can see that we handled our wetland well.”

The ordinance was created and revised in response to recent development that threatened part of a Maitland wetland. The ordinance would set up rules to prevent private developers from being able to build in and around wetlands. It had already passed first reading on April 24, by a 3-2 vote.

Reponen opened discussion ahead of the final vote on the ordinance with a long monologue, trying to convince Councilman Mike Thomas, Councilman John Lowndes, and Mayor Dale McDonald to remove a provision from the ordinance. That part of the ordinance exempted all city projects from regulation by the wetland protection ordinance.  

Thomas wanted that exemption kept in the ordinance, which seemed set to pass as written.

“Including the city in this ordinance is not going to give any real protection,” Thomas said. “It's just going to increase cost and create delays.” 

Reponen and Councilwoman Joy Goff-Marcil had expressed fears that a future Council could build structures in wetlands if they weren’t prevented from doing so now. City Manager Sharon Anselmo disputed that possibility, at least for the current city administration and Council.

“I don't think we'd ever put a building in the wetlands,” Anselmo said. “We're not going to develop something into the wetlands.”

Goff-Marcil said there should still be rules preventing the city from constructing less obtrusive structures that could still be detrimental to the wetlands.

“I’ve sat on a council where a basketball court was suggested to be built in the wetlands,” she said.

Reponen proposed an amendment removing the exemption and causing the city to be subject to all wetland protection regulations, but it was immediately voted down, with Reponen and Goff-Marcil dissenting. Reponen’s attempts to include city projects in the protection ordinance seemed doomed until Lowndes came to her rescue just before a final vote.

Lowndes proposed changing a blanket city exemption so that the exemption would be limited to city projects and maintenance allowing access to, on or around wetland zones or wetlands including walkways, boardwalks and trails. With that, both Reponen and Thomas dropped their objections.

In the span of less than two minutes the vote went from a cumulative three-hour impasse to passing unanimously.

“We all owe Mr. Lowndes a debt of gratitude here for getting us all on board,” Thomas said.