About six weeks after Navarre Landing began raising their elevation above our land that caused extensive flooding over most of our land their contractor on October 4, 2004 trespassed onto our land with two bulldozers.
Navarre Landing’s contractor Russell Construction of Alabama, Inc. crossed over into the middle of our land without our knowledge or consent. I received a phone call that day from my neighbor Paul Mitchell adjacent to Navarre Landing’s east boundary and told me to hurry and come immediately to my residence, because two bulldozers were stuck up to their cabs in the middle of my property. Upon arriving about thirty minutes later I immediately requested that Russell Construction remove the two bulldozers from my property. It took them several hours to remove the two bulldozers off of our property. During this time I captured this destruction to my property by taking dozens of photos while the bulldozers were trespassing on our property.
Click here for photos.
The photos clearly show what happened during the time the bulldozers were on our property, when they were removed, and what happened to our land once they were removed. What happened is that once the bulldozers were removed the scouring of our land caused a rupture in the hydrological water system several feet under the ground. Over the next few hours the rupture caused the water to rise into the ruptured areas and then rose to such a high level that most of this area became flooded. The flooding from this rupture has increased and continued daily for months and months.
The entire area of our property where the bulldozers were located was on federal and the State of Florida protected Wetlands. By operating heavy equipment on our land and in our Wetlands Navarre Landing and their contractor Russell Construction were in total violation of both Federal and the state of Florida Wetland regulations. While bulldozers were on our property that first day we called Stacy Owens with the Florida Department of Protection in the Pensacola office and clearly advised her as to what was happening to our land. She said that her state agency had no jurisdiction over the trespassing of the bulldozers even if it was in federal and state protected Wetlands. She said that I should call the Santa Rosa County Sheriffs department since this was just simply a trespassing issue. The next day several deputy sheriffs arrived at our residence. One of the deputies said that since our land was in Wetlands that the jurisdiction belonged to the Florida DEP. I then called Craig Martin with Wetland Sciences in Pensacola, Florida and Craig suggested that I contact Rick Holden with the US Corps of Engineers. In talking with Rick Holden with the Corps he said that I really needed to contact Santa Rosa County Engineering. Yep, you guessed right, Santa Rosa County said I needed to contact the Florida DEP.
The most disturbing thing to us was when Stacey Owens with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection made an unbelievable comment to me on the phone about my photos of Navarre Landing’s bulldozers in an e-mail dated October 4, 2004 where Stacy was copied. Stacy said the following:
| “Mr. Wilder, my supervisor Matt Dimitroff said how do we know that these bulldozers are not Mr. Wilder’s Bulldozers? Photos do not really mean anything to the DEP. The DEP has no jurisdiction over the flooding of your property. You need to contact Santa Rosa County or the Corps of Engineers.” |
I believe the above statement of Ms. Owens is consistent with the responses that we have received from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from the top to the bottom. The e-mail responses that we have received from the Florida DEP have been mostly self serving responses that never address the real issue and that being the constant flooding of our property since August 2003.
We have the US Corps of Engineers, Florida Department of Environmental Protection protecting the condo developer adjacent to our east boundary and not enforcing their regulations to protect our property rights. We have the condo developer flooding our property everyday with their red clay dam that restricts The Natural Flow of Water from moving east off of our property that is being allowed to happen by the big 3 government agencies. We have the condo developer/contractor’s big bulldozers coming on to our land and destroying it and being allowed to destroy it by the big 3 government agencies. We have the condo developer/contractor’s big bulldozers destroying our Wetlands and being allowed to be destroyed by the big 3 government agencies even though these Wetlands are Federal and State protected Wetlands are supposed to be protected by federal and state regulations. We face a big mountain of obstacles that would make a lot of people give up. We will not give up this battle, because we are right. We will in the end win this battle God willing!
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