Letters to the Editor

Posted on 23 February 2012 by LeslieM

Save our view;  Keep dune vegetation off beach

Dear Editor:

I heard a disturbing thing at the commission meeting [two weeks ago]. It seems the city is trying to win a grant of $30,000 to which they will have to add their own matching amount to total $60,000.

What’s so disturbing about that — you might wonder? That’s better than Publix’s ketchup 2 for 1 sale.

Well, it’s what the assistant city manager said he wanted to do with the money that is disturbing. He wants to put plantings on our main beach grassy area. In patches, he said. Not everywhere.

This was tried before, and the public uproar put an end to it.

This would be a disaster for our lovely beach view.

If you doubt that, go to the south end of the beach and look at the dunes there. The sea oats and other plantings are growing, spreading, vigorously and TALL. Sit on a bench there or walk on the sidewalk and you see grass, not ocean.

If patches were placed on our main beach it would eliminate places to sit, but worse, the patches will spread to the rest of the beach. After all, sea oats and other plantings of the kind are basically hardy weeds. We know how well plants grow in our climate. I stuck a pencil in the ground and it grew. And, according to regulations, once you put plants on the beach, you will not be allowed to remove them.

Our main beach is what Deerfield Beach is all about. It is our bragging right, our main attraction, the reason we say proudly, “I live in Deerfield Beach, yes, the one with the beautiful beach … Right, Deerfield Beach, the place where you can sit in the shade of a Palm tree on a grassy hill and not get all sandy.”

These plantings, as anyone with half a brain would see, will not help with the erosion of the beach. The beach is not eroding up along the grass line, it is eroding at the water line.

These plantings will not prevent the sand, on stormy or hurricane days, from blowing across the grass and road. The wind is much higher and stronger than the grass so these plantings will not eliminate the need to string the black fabric sand fences.

AND, the damage to the view of our beach would be so devastating to the enjoyment of our beach and our view that it wouldn’t, under any circumstances, be worth the loss. The clean-up costs are just the price we pay for the beautiful view.

Use the money to put the required plantings around the new pier restoration. We have to put plants in along there, add some plants to the south beach dunes, they are an eyesore anyway. Add plantings along the back of JBs and Ocean’s 234.

Bett Willett

Deerfield Beach

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