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Indian River County Indian River County, Florida Administration Complex 1801 27th Street Vero Beach, Florida 32960 * * indianriver.gov roA MEMORANDUM File ID: 25-0497 Type: Consent Staff Report Meeting Date: 5/20/2025 TO: Board of County Commissioners THROUGH: John A. Titkanich, Jr., County Administrator Kylie Yanchula, Natural Resources Director FROM: Eric Charest, Assistant Director Natural Resources Department DATE: April 16, 2025 SUBJECT: Florida Department of Transportation's SRA IA Bridge Replacement and Indian River County's Artificial Reef Program BACKGROUND Indian River County (IRC) Natural Resources Department Staff (Staff) have been in communications with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) with regards to their upcoming State Road AlA Bridge Replacement Project (Project) over the Sebastian Inlet. As FDOT's Project will result in the demolition of the existing Bridge, the County was made aware of the opportunity to repurpose a portion of the bridge demolition debris for use in its' artificial reef program. IRC currently holds active permits through the US Army Corps of Engineers for 2 Artificial Reef locations offshore of the County, with adequate space to accommodate deployments for qualifying material such as what will be made available from FDOT's Project. As the cost for repurposing bridge demolition debris for use as Artificial Reef material is in excess of what it would cost the FDOT to appropriately dispose of the material, should the County be interested in utilizing it for Artificial Reef deployment, the County would need to enter into a Local Funding Agreement (LFA) with the FDOT to offset the increase in FDOT costs. FDOT has estimated that the additional cost to provide IRC with approximately 3,500 tons of artificial reef qualifying material, along transportation and deployment into one of the County's permitted sites, would be $219,000.00 more than what the costs would be to properly dispose of the material. Aware of increased costs to repurpose applicable material for Artificial Reef deployments, Coastal Conservation Association (CCA), Inc., a Florida based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to marine fisheries and coastal conservation, education and advocacy has offered to provide funding to the County to help defray costs associated with the County's use of the Sebastian Inlet Bridge debris for artificial reefing. CCA has offered the County 50.2% of the cost of repurposing the material, in the amount of $110,000.00 for the County to utilize the materials in an Artificial Reef deployment. Through this proposed contribution, CCA is requesting County approval for them to reserve naming rights for a portion of the reefs deployed utilizing the bridge material. Indian River County, Florida Page 1 of 2 Printed on 5/15/2025 powered 4 LegistarTM