In the face of growing public concern over the future of the Chassahowitzka River Campground, leaders of the state agency that owns the land on Tuesday said any decision to sell the property is still months away.
On Aug. 15, the Southwest Florida Water Management District announced that the 40-acre campground in Citrus County will close Oct. 1 for a full assessment of hurricane damage to a camp store and a deck. But they added that repairing those damages “is not an effective way to utilize taxpayer dollars” and hinted the land could be sold in the future.
Those assessments are going to take time before final decisions are made, the district said during a public meeting in Brooksville Tuesday.
“We need to collect the data,” said Brian Armstrong, executive director of the district. “We need to let ideas play out to see if they’re good or bad.”
Floridians — already on edge after repeated public lands controversies over the past year — were quick to garner petitions and plan protests urging the government to keep the site in public hands. They argue that the campground offers an increasingly rare opportunity for Floridians to experience, and in turn want to protect, an environment unimpeded by human development.
The campground issue wasn’t on the district’s meeting agenda Tuesday, but roughly 20 people spoke during a public comment period opposing a potential sale, including staff who have managed the camp for more than a decade.
Also joining in the opposition this week was Sonny Vergara, who served as the head of the water management district for six years.
In a letter to the governing board Monday, Vergara urged the group to “consider the broader implications” of potentially opening up the land for sale, and disagreed with the district’s argument that it doesn’t have conservation value.
“The campground has served as a vital point of public engagement with nature, fostering environmental appreciation and stewardship,” Vergara wrote. “Its closure and potential sale risk severing that connection and diminishing the District’s legacy of conservation leadership.”
Still, districtofficials signaled during the meeting that they no longer want to manage the campground. The agency’s lawyer pointed to “dangerous conditions” at the site and recommended limiting its liability.
“We don’t want to be in the public campground business,” said John Mitten, a district governing board member. “I encourage those that are here, if you want to keep it functioning, call your county.”
State Rep. J.J. Grow, a Republican from Inverness, told the Tampa Bay Times last week that he was against opening up the land for sale, and said that his goal is to work on an agreement where the property could be cheaply leased to Citrus County, which could fund storm repairs and manage the property. The district has said it’s open to the idea.
Operations of the campground have been a matter of a legal dispute that was recently settled between the county and the water district in May, when the boat dock and parking lot were determined to belong to the county. On Tuesday, county commissioners were slated to vote on finalizing the deed for those facilities.
Last week, theTimes visited the campground and spoke with staff who felt blindsided by the announcement of the closure. Dennis Blauer, the campground’s general manager, said he was told to remove all equipment, including five dozen rental kayaks, by the end of September.
His daughter Heather, the camp’s property supervisor, has been fielding an increase in calls from campers about their reservations that were made past the closing date.
Governing board members on Tuesday appeared to question why camp staff continued to book reservations after their contract was slated to end in September.
After the meeting, the campground’s administrator, Elaine Moore, said she took issue with that. She said the district has been extending her contracts on a monthly basis, and she had no reason to believe the end was near.
“Never once was I told the campground was going to close,” Moore said.
“It’s not fair to say we shouldn’t have been taking reservations. I figured, if someone else takes over the campground, they would all want our future bookings.”
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