4/21/1987 - Laserfiche WebLink

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inventorying the scrub habitats in the four -county area. The initial intent of the project was to develop guidelines on how to go into a scrub community and permit development and still retain as much of the natural community as possible; however, the more he got into this project, the more it became obvious that you can't do both - you either preserve the scrub habitat or develop it. There are certain minimums involved and you can't just set aside 15 acres or so and preserve it. Commissioner Eggert requested that scrub community be de- fined. Mr. Fernald explained that basically we are talking about sand pine scrub and its associated communities. The sand pine is a very short -needled pine growing primarily along the Atlantic coastal ridge, and it is kind of the pinnacle of the community. There is a scrubby oak flat woods that is essentially I treeless scrub; it has very much the same vegetation but does not have the sand pine canopy. There is also a scrub pine flat woods with slash pine in the canopy. The scrub communities are differenti- ated from flat woods by the nature of the scrub layer and the ground cover. Flat woods have an understory dominated by grasses and palmettos whereas scrubs have lower layers dominated by prickly pear, etc., with very little grass cover. Mr. Fernald advised that Indian River County has scrub communities in three primary regions - along the Atlantic coastal ridge parallel to Old Dixie and the FEC Railroad; along both shorelines of the Sebastian River; and along the Ten Mile Ridge which basically parallels 1-95 and the FP&L corridor. All three areas are being impacted severely by development and encroaching development. Chairman Scurlock believed Ten Mile Ridge is where we are looking at acquiring some land for effluent disposal, and possibly we can work out a positive relationship from the utility standpoint since the ridge is very good for effluent disposal because of the perc rate. Pr R 24 1987 25 BOOK 6 8 Ft E 1,39