User:Admin

Indian River Lagoon Project User Page for Admin

Administrator of the Indian River Lagoon Project website.

Watching Us!

Born and raised in West Melbourne, I grew up fishin, clammin, shrimpin and swimmin in the Indian River lagoon from Wabasso to Titusville. In those days a young scout could paddle over to Grant's Grange Island to spend the weekend swimming in the river and harvest shellfish, shrimp, crab and seatrout for a campfire feast that a troop might never forget. Today, I can't see my toes in ankle deep water and I don't swim or harvest in the IRL for fear of bacteria illness. Not much can survive in the lagoon these days because of the loss of seagrass habitat due to human impact.

The Space Boom in the 1960's put Brevard County on the world map. As people flooded here to take advantage of the economic prosperity that came with the space program, huge housing developments sprang up from Titusville to Palm Bay. Large canals were dug to drain the wetlands and to carry stormwater runoff to the IRL. Residential canals were dug to provide waterfront access to thousands of homes, each with it's own septic drain field and over-fertilized yard that continue to leech nitrogen and phosphorous into the estuary.

New roads and causeways along the estuary and to the beach were built to accommodate Brevard's new residents, and the tourists that flocked here to view the almost weekly Mercury and Redstone rocket launches. The access provided by these new roads and bridges allowed for unbridled development along the barrier island Atlantic Coast and Indian River lagoon shores. In a rush to accommodate the flurry of new hotels, condominiums, and office buildings they approved, underfunded municipalities quickly installed "cost effective" utility systems that were not designed for longevity or future population growth.

In the 1950s NASA used eminent domain to take Brevard's natural resources in the name of "National Security". The safety buffer they provided around the Kennedy Space Center became the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore, and KSC's three brackish water lagoons became the foundation for the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary. If NASA had not acquired and preserved these nature areas the largest tract of undeveloped primitive beach remaining on Florida's East Coast would be urban sprawl today.

I began earnestly researching the demise of the IRL estuary in order to educate myself. When my research archive grew difficult to manage, it was organized using content management software on a local server. The desire to access the files remotely and share the archive with others eventually prompted me to publish the information on the internet.

Indian River Lagoon News began as an online project documenting the IRL estuary for educational purposes and has now grown to include a virtual library, resource directory, document archive, local news and community events. Since it's 2019 inception IndianRiverLagoonNews.org has published over 800 web pages and hosted over 59,000 unique visitors searching for Indian River Lagoon information.