Chapter Meeting Minutes
May 18, 2011 at 7 PM
Paradise Beach Park in Indialantic, FL
Attendance: 12 people

Next meeting: Wednesday, June 15th, same place/same time
General
. Rick and Devon working on chapter t-shirts.
. Eric taking over cigarette butts project. Will see how much the Cocoa Beach ones cost. Big Bruce is chapter chair of the Cocoa Beach Surfrider and should know.
. It was suggested for our chapter to look into having a booth at the downtown Melbourne Friday fest.
. Devon to head the Adopt a Shore project with regular cleanups.
. Surfrider film being shown on Father's day at the reef place down near Sebastian and they want a couple Surfrider reps to be there.
. Alec had Surfrider setup at Founder's Day with "oil is not the answer" literature and got many people to sign ~ 40 petitions!
. Waterman's Challenge a surfing contest set up by Cocoa Beach chapter and is $125/team on 6/11 weekend. Volunteer surfers to represent us?. Our chapter won it last year.

Events Scheduled
. Hands Across the Sand. Mike organizing with Junko Soonja Okamura-Nam. It will be at noon on 6/25 at Pelican Beach Park. This is to raise awareness against offshore drilling. We should get our friends and neighbors involved.
. International Surfing Day. Eric and Shannon organizing our chapter event at Paradise Beach similar to last year on Saturday 6/18 (official ISD is 6/20). Will start at 9 am with a beach cleanup. Brian Gale did the free surf lessons last year and he is confirmed to them again this year. Shannon's yoga teacher will be doing a free yoga demo aimed for children and asana specific for surfing. Longdoggers to do catering, live music, etc... Working on getting fliers done ASAP to start promoting. The fliers will also incorporate the Hands Across the Sand event which is the Saturday right after the ISD event.
. Need to start thinking about our end of the year fundraiser. That is when we will raffle off the surfboard.

Miscellaneous
. The MailChimp is set up and the Surfrider chapters to start using for sending blast emails to our local members regarding meeting minutes, upcoming events, etc... Ericka to have Shannon take over this task thus forth.

Campaign Summary
. Midreach- from Ericka's email- The Midreach Dredge and Fill Project campaign is still kicking. Per recent conversations with the ACOE the final report EIS review is in DC and should be out for public comment come March or April with a 30 day review period. In addition, due to the controversial nature and overwhelming proposed cost of this project the ACOE has also been required, per Council of Environmental Quality's interagency initiative to revise the Principles and Guidelines (P&G) in response to the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2007, to perform an external peer review with independent scientists. To read more about this meaningful "Reform" to go

www.corpsreform.org/sitepages/CRN-hillRpt-H2oResourceBill07.html.

It is expected this report will be out sometime early summer. While this document cannot be commented on by the public its availability to the public is crucial as this is one of the first projects undergoing this type of scrutiny. It would be our expectation that a permit decision would be decided upon sometime in late summer. Stay tuned as we will inform you when you will be able to submit comment
12 soon to be 13 chapters in Florida.

. What we can do now as concerned Surfrider members: go on their websites and look at what they are claiming they are trying to do. Mike explained that our best angle could be the point that they will only proceed with their plan if it can be funded and there could be many other, better ways for them to spend our federal money. They are claiming it will provide income to county and get people to the beaches and leaning on a study done years ago about a "restoration" down south. But we are not really a high tourist area and the condo owners really want it the most because they don't want "rocks" on their beach. They are claiming there will be $10 billion less storm damage over 50 years if they proceed with this project. They are also claiming they will mitigate environmental issues by building another reef further out in the ocean but this won't work with the fish.
www.saj.usace.army.mil - Check out website
. Curb loss of beach access: if we see places where we might be losing beach access (condos being build, etc...) approach county commissioner to try to stop.
. Priorities for 2011 National Surfrider Foundation:
o Oil Drilling Ban - Petition signing to get an amendment on the ballot for 2012 to ban near shore drilling, need 700,000 signatures by March 2012 - www.sosbs.org
o School Clubs - Want to charter school clubs from elementary school thru college, discounted memberships, club projects
. Rise Against Plastics


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http://www.crsurf.com ~ CR Surf Travel Company

http://www.dadecosurf.com ~ South Florida Surf Site

http://www.surfrider.org ~ Find your Surfrider chapter