THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 11, 1997 TAG: 9702110219
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 73 lines
``They want to draw the line right through here,'' Randy Zehmer said Monday, stretching out his arms on a walkway about a fourth of the way from the back of his property line at Sandbridge.
The line is the boundary of an easement that all oceanfront property owners must sign before the city can come to the rescue of Sandbridge's fast-fading shoreline.
And Zehmer, among others, is not signing. Not if he has to tear down the bulkhead he has recently shored up, move it back 15 feet toward his house and rebuild it.
He is one of about 20 of the 241 beachfront owners who has yet to agree to granting a perpetual easement for public use of the beach in order for the city to begin a significant beach restoration project later this year.
At least 10 more are leaning toward signing, with nine or 10 refusing to go along.
The deadline for obtaining the signatures was to have been today, but the city Monday decided to hold off for another two weeks in hopes of getting unanimous agreement from the property owners.
That's what it will take - 100 percent - before the state will turn over $2.8 million that was set aside for sand replenishment, and before the Army Corps of Engineers will manage the project.
Although Beach officials have discussed using the ultimate weapon, condemnation, they are now declining to even discuss it as a possibility.
``It's not an option under consideration,'' said City Attorney Les Lilley. ``We're trying to achieve completely voluntary compliance, and that's where all our energies are focused.''
Deciding that Sandbridge was on the brink of serious property damage from steadily eroding beaches, the City Council agreed last fall to a one-time city-funded project that would dump 1.5 million cubic feet of sand on the beach, raising and widening the beach to absorb punishment from storms.
The catch was that Congress has not agreed to participate, although the city intends to lobby long and hard for federal assistance.
The Corps of Engineers would do the work, but as a contractor, at a cost of $8 million.
But first, the city needs to get easements from all the property owners - not an easy task when there is lingering suspicion of the city's intentions that tie in with the issue of failed bulkheads.
The city threatened last year to remove some of the faulty steel bulkheads, declaring them a public hazard, and bill the owners, but the city backed off after losing in court its right to take such action.
But the big issue with most of the reluctant owners now is granting a ``perpetual'' easement when there is no guarantee that the project, once started, will continue after the next wave of storms washes the sand out to sea.
The city says the easements will revert to the landowners if the work isn't done.
``But how can they give it back if you're giving them a perpetual easement to begin with?'' said Zehmer, a builder on the Sandbridge oceanfront since 1972.
And the City Council action was merely to approve a ``concept'' of the project, he pointed out, not an ironclad commitment. ``Let them put their money where their mouth is.''
City Coastal Engineer Phillip Roehrs said the public should have guaranteed beach access, which it already informally has, once the project begins. ``Once we spend public funds on the beach, that zone of property has to remain forever in the public domain,'' he said Monday.
Said Sandbridge Civic League president Fred Greene, who took four new signatures to City Hall over the weekend, ``It's going to be very interesting to see what happens here.'' ILLUSTRATION: D. KEVIN ELLIOTT
The Virginian-Pilot
Randy Zehmer, at his Sandbridge home on Sandfiddler Road, has doubts
about the easement the city wants him to sign.
KEYWORDS: EROSION BEACH RESTORATION