complete agenda - Florida Department of Environmental Protection

ARC Summary August 13, 2010
zeros are put in the weighting factors, everything comes out as zero because zero times
anything is zero.
Mrs. Ball thanked Dr. Brock again for the tutorial. She said she found the spreadsheet to be
extremely helpful in her deliberations, but she cautioned that if the spreadsheet and tutorial was
put on the web that it be made clear that this is not the only tool that ARC uses. One can’t do
everything using a computer model with all the fruit in the basket that ARC has to consider. Dr.
Brock concurred with that and added that he had been playing these games for 25 years and
had never come up with a formula that provided results indicating what he thought the world
should look like. There is always something that doesn’t quite gel. The historical and
archeological projects are a great example. Because we’re trying to consider so many different
resource types, there’s nothing much you can do for projects like the DeSoto or Windover
unless you decide to give archeological and historical sites 1000 times more weight than
anything else. Even if you do that, however, Windover doesn’t succeed because there are a lot
of larger projects with more resources that have archeological importance, and they will float
above the Windover or the DeSoto sites. There always has to be that caveat that a level of
intellect and knowledge needs to be applied outside the ability of these systems to give
guidance.
Mr. Stroh thanked Dr. Brock and staff and Dr. Frederick, giving ARC the opportunity by way of
his questions, to get this additional insight. He agreed with Dr. Brock – that is the reality for
archaeological and historical sites. Many are much smaller in size. Many don’t have the same
ecosystem or ecological value of some of the other properties. He asked ARC and staff to
seriously consider an additional category for historical and archaeological sites. Right now
these sites are lumped in with the other existing five categories and there is a natural weighting
against them because they are typically smaller. It’s timely, it’s important that these
archeological, historical and cultural sites be given the opportunity to benefit from their own
category that focuses on cultural resources in a primary sense. If there are other ancillary
environmental benefits, then, that’s great, but the environmental benefits are strongly covered in
the other categories. When a site like Windover gets ranked highly in another category often
because of public support, it’s more of an unnatural outcome rather than an organic outcome
associated with this formula. He said he knows that it [separate category] has been considered
over the years and he encourage ARC and staff to consider it strongly now so that more
attention can be placed on these cultural resources which are incredibly important. Also,
heritage tourism and ecotourism are virtually one and the same – same audiences, same
demographic, same overall economic value. He thanked ARC for giving thought to the
possibility of a separate category.
Mr. Greene said he was going back to the previous meeting notes after the ranking. There was
this same sentiment and he agreed with Mr. Stroh. He brought up the legal question of whether
and how ARC could add a category and he thought that staff was supposed to have ARC an
answer. Dr. Brock said he had asked Sandra Stockwell, counsel for DEP and ARC, and her
original opinion was that ARC could create another category but it couldn’t be funded. Since
then, Ms. Stockwell has had discussions with other attorneys and she now believes that ARC
could create other categories and recommend that those get some funding. The Division of
State Lands could then develop a funding formula as was done this time. He said that once one
resource type was funded in a separate category, then others would probably be brought to
ARC’s attention and if they were as reasonable as the archeological and historical resources
category sounds, then ARC would have to try and balance it all out. Dr. Frederick said he would
be very supportive of this and that he didn’t see many other categories staring ARC in the face
right now. He said that although ARC may be setting a precedent by doing this, they would be
setting a precedent by not doing it too. He said that he felt that this was a real recognized need
and now is the time to do it.
Dr. Brock asked for the Division of Historical Resources’ help on the new category. Because
some historical and archeological projects are so large with varied resources, they could fare
better in a category such as Critical Natural Lands or Less-Than-Fee, for example. He said staff
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