Officials struggle to keep heads above water with abandoned, derelict boats

There’s a tension deep in the waters of Manatee County. The issue surrounds derelict boats — an eyesore for city officials, a liability concern for business owners and a hit to the wallet for taxpayers.

After boats crashed into a floating day dock parallel to the Historic Bridge Street Pier during Tropical Storm Colin, Bradenton Beach Mayor William Shearon sought to gain more control over the water by the pier where multiple boats are anchored, and where some people live on those boats.

It’s something he and Bradenton Beach Police Chief Sam Speciale have wanted for years. The city has a submerged land lease with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, meaning they have regulatory authority over the area a few feet outside the pier, the day dock and the Anna Maria Oyster Bar. The city has policing jurisdiction in the area surrounding the pier, Shearon said, but it’s very limited. Bradenton Beach police can regulate behavior on the water, but officials do not have authority to regulate how boats are anchored or for how long the vessels stay anchored.

“That’s maritime law. Anybody can go anchor out there and anchor any way, however, whenever —and there’s no control over it,” Shearon said. “We used to have shower facilities, but those were abused. We have a dinghy dock for them to bring their little boats in. They can drop off their garbage. They get water, and there’s of course no charge for it... there’s no charge because we can’t charge for it.”

The Bradenton Beach Commission recently decided to hold off discussing the possibility of controlled moorings, which Shearon called disappointing. The city must apply for a permit and state lands authorization with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in order to install a managed mooring field, according to Shannon Herbon, Southwest District spokeswoman for the DEP.

Shearon noted that during Tropical Storm Colin, some of the boaters didn’t even secure their boats properly.

“The boaters out there didn’t use very good judgment,” the mayor said. “In some cases, the people that are out there are not boaters. They’re just renting a place to stay. They’re not true boaters. If we had a mooring field where the boats were secured and anchored, then we wouldn’t have the issue.”

Lack of regulation surrounding the anchored boats also concerns nearby business owners. Bobby Woodson, owner of Cortez’s Tide Tables Restaurant and Marina for two years, is worried about what the stray boats — many of which are uninsured — could do to his property. He recently went out on his boat to point out the nearby abandoned boats. A Cormorant was perched on one abandoned boat being kept afloat by an airbag.

“When Colin came through, there were at least five boats that came up close to us,” Woodson said. “They missed the docks but hit Cortez Bridge. Five years ago we had a tropical storm, and a ton of boats beat the hell out of the Bradenton Beach pier to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are no mooring balls. The problem is people come out there and they don’t have a time frame to visit. They keep boats out there and don’t have insurance.”

New law may help

A new Florida law may alleviate headaches for many, though it’s too soon to tell. The law, adopted in the 2016 session, went into effect July 1 and will enable local, county and state authorities to more effectively manage the state’s waterways. FS327.4107 allows law enforcement officers to issue non-criminal citations to owners who allow their boats to become “at risk” of becoming derelict. If the problem is not rectified within 30 days of the citation, boat owners will face fines issued every 30 days until the issues are addressed.

“This law allows officers to take action before a vessel crosses that line between at-risk and derelict, and hopefully prompts the owner to rectify any issues with the vessel before it reaches a state of disrepair,” said Phil Horning, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s derelict vessel program administrator. “Prior to this law being enacted, officers had to wait until a vessel met the legal criteria for a derelict vessel before beginning any sort of official interaction with the owner.”

Justin McBride is director of the West Coast Inland Navigation District, a regional agency tasked with managing waterway projects to promote safe navigation in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and systems of secondary tributaries. McBride has worked on the derelict and abandoned boats issue for more than 15 years, and said the new law should bring some relief.

“I think it’s going to be a great help,” McBride said. “It’s going to allow law enforcement to get in front of those that would have been an issue or a problem down the line. They’re going to be able to catch them before they become derelict or abandoned or sink and become much more expensive to remove. And it’s going to allow boat owners an easier opportunity to take care of those vessels.”

Lt. John Cosby with the Bradenton Beach Police Department said his agency is discussing how to incorporate the new law.

“Any law is a tool for us so, in that respect, yes it’s going to help us,” he said. “Is it going to change the mindset of the people who have the derelict boats? I don’t know.”

The Bridge Tender Inn, a waterside bar and restaurant, is on the Bradenton Beach side of the troublesome waters. Manager James Roberts also deals with countless problems stemming from a lack of regulation and control over the anchored boats or the people who live on them.

“There’s a lot of issues with derelict behavior,” Roberts said. “We have had to call the cops because people out there are causing a scene; yelling and screaming and harassing customers. A lot of the boats out there are unregistered, and it’s one step up from being homeless.” Roberts grew up on Anna Maria Island and has worked at Bridge Tender for the last 20 years. Though it has been an ongoing issue for as long as he can remember, he said it’s gotten worse in recent years.

Tropical Storm Colin was a light warning for what could happen to Cortez and Bradenton Beach properties in the event of a real hurricane.

“What happens if we get a real storm here?” Woodson asked. “People have zero responsibility for what happens to their boats.”

Taxpayers foot bill to remove abandoned boats

In the case of abandoned or sunken vessels, taxpayers pay for the boats to be removed. And it’s not necessarily cheap.

“I've spent as much as $100,000 on a single vessel and as little as $200,” McBride said. “It all depends on the size of the vessel, the location and the condition.”

Within the last month, McBride issued a request for proposal for firms that can conduct vessel removal across the region. When the regional vessel removal program begins, WCIND will begin a tally of removed boats. Alan Lai Hipp, environmental program manager for the Manatee County Parks and Natural Resources Department, said his department “deals with abandoned boats everywhere in the county.”

But in looking at the biggest concern, he pointed to the waters between Cortez and Bradenton Beach. “There is no doubt that area there is the greatest concentration of boats,” Lai Hipp said.

Since 2010, Manatee County has removed 92 vessels at a price tag of $204,200, according to Lai Hipp. Fifteen of the 92, or 16 percent of the boats, were removed from the waters between Cortez and Bradenton Beach. Lai Hipp estimated a $40,000 cost for those 15 vessels. The average cost of removing a vessel is about $2,500, and the most the county has spent on removing a single vessel is $27,000.

The vessels are in such bad shape upon removal that they must be taken straight to the landfill.

“We salvage what we can off of them,” Lai Hipp said. “The statute allows us to do other things with it, but 99.9 percent of time the boats are in such horrible condition that we of course wouldn't get in a situation where we would keep it.” Other possibilities include donating the vessel to a nonprofit or other government department, but staff time spent cleaning them up and storage costs far exceed the boat’s worth.

“That’s putting good money after bad,” he said.

Counties and municipalities have several funding conduits to pursue for the removal of vessels, including WCIND funds and Florida Boater Improvement funds. The latter is generated by boater registration fees. Because several Gulf Coast counties are struggling with the issue, the WCIND board approved a regional funding source for vessel removal at its June 26 meeting.

The proposed amount for the regional pot of money started at $65,000, McBride said in an email, but “at the meeting, the commissioners feared that was not enough to adequately fund the program so they increased it to $130k. Outside of that, we will be seeking funds from the State through reimbursement from the FWC Derelict Vessel Program. But those are competitive funds and not guaranteed — the budgeted money ($130k) is.”

The Bradenton Beach Police Department has also requested an additional $25,000 from WCIND to defray derelict and abandoned vessel removal costs.

Sometimes it’s possible to track an abandoned boat’s registration back to the owner, but the boats often change hands and neither the seller nor the buyer makes a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles to change the registration, or at least make a note that the boat was sold. Without that critical step, it’s impossible to trace who owns the boat from that point forward. In every case, though, authorities try to recoup the removal fees.

“Lots of times the person can’t be located,” McBride said. “They're dead or incarcerated. And some of them, they don't have the money to take care of the boat now and there are no funds to go after. It’s blood from a turnip.

“I see the need for private property,” he added. “I don't want to be cavalier about it and remove people’s property. But we have to protect the public interest from trash and garbage.”

The problem of derelict boats extends beyond Manatee County, bleeding into the rest of Florida. In Fort Lauderdale, marine unit officers with the Fort Lauderdale Police Department handle derelict boat investigations. The only designated anchorage the city has is a mooring field located just south of the Las Olas Bridge in the Intracoastal Waterway. According to Fort Lauderdale Police Det. Tracy Figone, anchoring in the city is allowed as long as it is outside of a marked channel and is not a hazard to navigation.

“The only area with additional anchoring restrictions is the Middle River,” Figone said in an email. “Anchoring in the Middle River is allowed during the day, but boats are required to leave at night.”

Speciale said his department, under a law adopted in 2006, was given some authority to police surrounding waters, but it still wasn’t allowed to use mooring balls.

“We have a sovereign submerged land lease under the city pier and the day dock,” Speciale said. “The thing is, over in the anchorage area, I do have regulatory powers over the water in that area. I don't have it for the ground. The state bill gave us the right to create ordinances to regulate behavior on the water. We cannot place any type of mooring balls on the ground.”

Bradenton Beach has enacted an ordinance, found in chapter 27 of the town’s municipal code, that is dedicated to controlling that behavior. Speciale said the ordinance was enacted back when Bradenton Beach attempted to have a managed mooring field, which never came to fruition. Speciale intends to take the ordinance back to the Bradenton Beach city commission within the next month or two to “strike out reference to mooring field and basically updating it so the municipal codes correctly relate to the laws.”

For now, Speciale said his department, in coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, conducts boat checks “every couple of months” to assure boaters have required lighting, floatation devices and sanitation procedures.

This story was originally published August 6, 2016 at 7:10 PM with the headline "Officials struggle to keep heads above water with abandoned, derelict boats."