Technical ReportPDF Available

The Cedar Point Study

December 1992

December 1992

Authors:

James Beever

Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council

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Technical Report

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Spring Creek Vulnerability and Restoration Opportunity Assessment

January 2015

James Beever

The Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council (SWFRPC) is assisting the City of Bonita Springs in developing a Spring Creek Restoration Plan that will include plans for restoration of hydrology, water quality, habitat, and navigation. The Spring Creek Watershed is located in the southern area of Lee County. It is approximately ten (10) square miles in size. The watershed mouth originates at ... [Show full abstract] Estero Bay approximately 6,000 feet south of Coconut Road. The watershed is approximately two miles wide and five miles long. This watershed is generally located south of the Halfway Creek Watershed and north and west of the Imperial River Watershed. In the development of this Vulnerability Assessment we meet with the City of Bonita Springs staff to introduce project and began in discussions of previously identified and considered restoration needs, vulnerabilities and potential mitigations. We completed initial meetings with citizens at Cedar Creek, Imperial Harbor, Pelican Landing, and Spring Creek Village . We confirmed the scope of work and selected protocols, confirmed accepted population projections for the watershed. We undertook data acquisition, continued meetings and fact finding as needed, and coordinated data needs. We distributed and responded to all time-critical data requests. Set up and performed site visits for project assessments. WE then applied the Regional Restoration Coordination Team, Southwest Florida Comprehensive Watershed Plan , and Southwest Florida Vulnerabilities Assessment to the watershed to identify vulnerabilities. Identified Vulnerabilities for the Spring Creek Watershed include: 1) Improved reconnection of the original headwaters of Spring Creek located east of Interstate 75 in the Flint Penn strand to the headwaters located in the San Carlos Estates and the north branch of Spring Creek 2) Improvement of undersized culverts to larger capacity 3) Removal of man-made damming of tributaries to the creek 4) Modifications of weirs and causeway barriers impeding flow in the upper and middle reaches of the creek 5) Placement ditch block/ structures in swales within San Carlos Estates to delay and control runoff. 6) Removing sand shoals that have formed in the estuarine portions of the creek providing reasonable navigational access. 7) Removing muck and debris in the freshwater portions of the creek that have accumulated over time. 8) Copper pollution associated with human activities 9) Bacterial pollution as indicated by fecal coliform in the freshwater and estuarine parts of Spring Creek 10) Increases in nitrogen in the freshwater and estuarine parts of Spring Creek 11) The low dissolved oxygen events can likely be improved by addressing the issues of hydrologic flow, nutrients, and anthropogenic oxygen demanding pollution sources 12) Completing the proposed Florida Forever Land Acquisitions 13) Removing exotic vegetation from existing conservation easements 14) Removing exotics along the main channels of Spring Creek. 15) Removing exotics with the storm water management systems of existing developments with outfalls to Spring Creek. 16) Creation of filter marshes in appropriate locations to offset the loss of freshwater headwater wetlands 17) Improving public access to Spring Creek viewing, canoeing and kayaking. 18) Development of a Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the Spring Creek Watershed Following acceptance of this report we will proceed with the development of The Spring Creek Restoration Plan that will describe how to address these vulnerabilities.

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Technical Report

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Spring Creek Restoration Plan

June 2016

James Beever

The Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council (SWFRPC) is assisting the City of Bonita Springs in developing a Spring Creek Restoration Plan that will include plans for restoration of hydrology, water quality, habitat, and navigation. The Spring Creek Watershed is located in the southern area of Lee County. It is approximately ten (10) square miles in size. The watershed mouth originates at ... [Show full abstract] Estero Bay approximately 6,000 feet south of Coconut Road. The watershed is approximately two miles wide and five miles long. This watershed is generally located south of the Halfway Creek Watershed and north and west of the Imperial River Watershed. In the development of this Vulnerability Assessment we meet with the City of Bonita Springs staff to introduce project and began in discussions of previously identified and considered restoration needs, vulnerabilities and potential mitigations. We completed initial meetings with citizens at Cedar Creek, Imperial Harbor, Pelican Landing, and Spring Creek Village. We confirmed the scope of work and selected protocols, confirmed accepted population projections for the watershed. We undertook data acquisition, continued meetings and fact finding as needed, and coordinated data needs. We distributed and responded to all time-critical data requests. Set up and performed site visits for project assessments. We then applied the Regional Restoration Coordination Team, Southwest Florida Comprehensive Watershed Plan, and Southwest Florida Vulnerabilities Assessment to the watershed to identify vulnerabilities. Identified Vulnerabilities for the Spring Creek Watershed include: 1) Improved reconnection of the original headwaters of Spring Creek located east of Interstate 75 in the Flint Penn strand to the headwaters located in the San Carlos Estates and the north branch of Spring Creek 2) Improvement of undersized culverts to larger capacity 3) Removal of man-made damming of tributaries to the creek 4) Modifications of weirs and causeway barriers impeding flow in the upper and middle reaches of the creek 5) Placement ditch block/ structures in swales within San Carlos Estates to delay and control runoff. 6) Removing sand shoals that have formed in the estuarine portions of the creek providing reasonable navigational access. 7) Removing muck and debris in the freshwater portions of the creek that have accumulated over time. 8) Copper pollution associated with human activities 9) Bacterial pollution as indicated by fecal coliform in the freshwater and estuarine parts of Spring Creek 10) Increases in nitrogen in the freshwater and estuarine parts of Spring Creek 11) The low dissolved oxygen events can likely be improved by addressing the issues of hydrologic flow, nutrients, and anthropogenic oxygen demanding pollution sources 12) Completing the proposed Florida Forever Land Acquisitions 13) Removing exotic vegetation from existing conservation easements 14) Removing exotics along the main channels of Spring Creek. 15) Removing exotics with the storm water management systems of existing developments with outfalls to Spring Creek. 16) Creation of filter marshes in appropriate locations to offset the loss of freshwater headwater wetlands 17) Improving public access to Spring Creek viewing, canoeing and kayaking. 18) Development of a Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the Spring Creek Watershed Following acceptance of this report we proceeded with the development of The Spring Creek Restoration Plan that describes how to address these vulnerabilities. Spring Creek is restorable. The order of restoration actions and the use of timely opportunities will improve the chances of restoration success and decrease negative unintended consequences of restoration actions. The primary goal of the restoration action are to improve the health of the creek in the areas of flows, water quality, habitat, and appropriate recreational opportunities. This subsequently will improve the quality of life for the residents of the Spring Creek watershed and subsequently for parts of the City of Bonita Springs.

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Technical Report

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Estimating The Ecosystem Services of Existing Conservation 2020 Lands in Lee County Florida

May 2013

James Beever

The establishment of ecosystem services values for the ecologically rich Conservation 2020 lands is the second valuation using ECOSERVE in Lee County. Ecosystem services values can be used by decision makers when establishing and maintaining conservation lands, siting utilities, or making development decisions, putting numbers to the impacts associated with those decisions, and adding data when ... [Show full abstract] critical trade-offs are being discussed. These values will also be useful in justifying other grant funding and in leveraging future restoration dollars. The output of this project is an assessment of the total ecosystem services provided by all habitat types on the Conservation 2020 lands in Lee County, Florida. This assessment will be made available to local governments and the public to assist in planning for use in developing conservation plans. This work is intended to identify the range and quantity of ecosystem services provided by all the land covers types on Conservation 2020 lands including marine, estuarine and freshwater wetlands and native upland habitat, and disturbed habitats. Based on current calculations the 2012 TEV of the Conservation 2020 lands is $628,865,027.93 (Table 1). It is notable that the majority (92.45 %) of the TEV is found in the top nine habitats including mangrove swamp (63.33%), mesic flatwoods (15.13%) wet flatwoods (3.69%), mesic flatwoods - disturbed (2.61%), mangrove swamp - disturbed (2.21%), strand swamp (2.01%), scrubby flatwoods (1.37%), depression marsh (1.05%), and wet flatwoods - disturbed (1.77%). These nine habitats make up 54.56% of the physical area of the Conservation 2020 lands. Given more time and resources this project could be improved by a detailed mapping of the Conservation 2020 lands including salt marsh type and mangrove forest type to better estimate the ecosystem services provided by each type and better represent the relative functions of each type in location and landscape. Alternate futures could be evaluated with additional climate change perturbations, alternate land use plans, and regulatory environments.

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Estimate of the Ecosystem Services of Existing Conservation Collier Lands in Collier County Florida

June 2014

James Beever

Estimating ecosystem services values for the ecologically rich Conservation Collier lands is the third valuation, following a study of Pine Island Sound and its associated islands (Beever and Walker 2013) and of the Lee County Conservation 2020 lands (Beever 2013) using ECOSERVE in southwest Florida. Ecosystem services values can be used by decision makers when establishing and maintaining ... [Show full abstract] conservation lands, siting utilities, or making development decisions, putting numbers to the impacts associated with those decisions, and adding data when critical trade-offs are being discussed. These values will also be useful in justifying other grant funding and in leveraging future restoration dollars. The output of this project is an assessment of the total ecosystem services provided by all habitat types on the Conservation Collier property, including the mangrove habitat which is detailed above. This assessment will be made available to local governments and the public to assist in planning for use in developing conservation plans. This work is intended to identify the range and quantity of ecosystem services provided by all the land covers types on Conservation Collier lands including marine, estuarine and freshwater wetlands and native upland habitat, and disturbed habitats. The current calculations the 2013 TEV of the Conservation Collier property is $144,988,312.22 per year (Table 1). Please note that this is only includes the Collier County owner lands in the Conservation Collier program, a small subset of the total of all the conservation lands in Collier County. The majority (90.65 %) of the TEV for Conservation Collier property is found in the top twelve habitats including mangrove swamp (58.13%), pine flatwoods (7.32%) upland mixed forest (5.6%), mixed wetland hardwoods (3.1%), cypress (2.9%), wetland scrub (2.65%), depression marsh (2.06%), wetland forest mixed (1.99%), upland mixed forest disturbed (1.57%), depression marsh disturbed (1.57%), bottomland forest (1.44%), cypress- cabbage palm-pine (1.21%) and saltwater marsh (1.11%). These twelve habitats make up 64.62% of the physical area of the Conservation Collier property.

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