Incumbent Loxahatchee Groves Water Control Supervisor Robert Snowball and challenger Laura Danowski faced off Thursday, May 28 in a forum conducted by the Loxahatchee Groves Landowners’ Association.
Snowball’s Seat 1 is the only one filled by a vote of qualified electors, rather than a proxy vote based on acreage. Qualified electors are registered voters who also own property. The election will be held Monday, June 22.
Danowski said one of the hazards of politics is that candidates sometimes make the race personal, and she does not intend to go down that road.
“It is not my intent to sit up here and denigrate [anyone] at the water district or anything that they have accomplished or the goals that are on their list,” she said. “They volunteered their time and cared enough about their community to come out and do this. My focus is going to be on decisions and futures… I think we’re all quite aware of the things that are good and things that are in discord. I want to go forward, and that is my principal platform.”
Danowski is originally from New York. She has lived in Loxahatchee Groves for about 11 years.
“I spend my days taking care of our horse farm,” she said. “My 92-year-old mom lives with us. I attend to her needs, and I also tutor math and English.”
Danowski said she is running because she is interested in the community and wants to preserve the agricultural lifestyle.
“I was raised that you need to give back to your community either through an organization or volunteering,” she said. “My dad was a volunteer fireman for 60 years, and he has instilled a sense of community in me.”
Danowski called Loxahatchee Groves “an unguarded treasure.”
“I think that some of the decisions that we’ve made are parceling it out and selling it out to the highest bidder,” she said. “I am terrified of Minto. I am terrified of urban sprawl. I don’t like the idea of our roadways becoming arteries and cut-throughs for a large amount of urban traffic. I think that’s something we really need to focus on.”
Danowski added that she has personal experience over a 10-year span in restoring eroded lake banks.
“I have experience in industrial water controls, pumps, motors, control panels, gate systems, and I also have experience with algae control and demucking using microbic organisms and ultrasound,” she said. “I look forward to our future, and we are all in this together.”
Snowball, a roofing supplies distributor, has been a LGWCD supervisor for 15 years. He and his wife Darlene have two children.
“I want to stay on the board to keep things moving forward,” he said. “I think the 10 of us we’ve got, between the council and the board, don’t agree, I’m sure. But the 10 of us work pretty good right now. We’re moving things forward. I would like to see it stay that way.”
Snowball said he didn’t think he needed to go into detail about himself because people already know him.
“Where I stand at the end of the day is you can only do what you can do legally when it comes to the horse trails and whatnot. There’s a lot of things in the district that are not platted correctly. They are not recorded correctly, and anything that I’m involved in, I want to make sure it’s done properly and it’s recorded properly, so that when it’s all done… no one can come back and say, ‘You guys did this wrong… Now you can’t use the trails.’ Every time we do a project, it seems like we run into a brick wall, and it always seems to be the legal part, and it’s very hard to overcome that.”
Choosing from questions selected randomly, moderator Ken Johnson asked candidates whether they would accept the $50-a-month stipend available to supervisors. Danowski said she might donate it to an animal welfare organization, while Snowball said he has never taken it.
Asked to explain why canal levels are lower at certain times of the year, and about South Florida Water Management District restrictions on back-pumping, Snowball said the canals work hydraulically. “The north end is the high end; the south end is the low end,” he said. “During the times of the month when we don’t have the rain, we don’t have the water in the canals. We have a lot of farms drawing out of the canals every day, and we have a permit with the SFWMD to back-pump. We even have an extra exemption to pump more during certain times of the year. We pump our allotted amount every day, and we still can’t fill the canals up. We need rain for the canals to stay full.”
Danowski said she was not familiar with specific water allotments and permits for the district but that she’d read on the SFWMD web site that annual runoff from the LGWCD is about 13 billion gallons.
“Here’s some thinking out of the box: Imagine if we could apply for a grant or some sort of construction project to build containers to funnel the runoff, siphon the runoff to do something with the runoff so that in times of dry periods, we could use it… I think there’s some better way to deal with runoff.”
Asked whether the LGWCD should become dependent to the town, both said it should.
“There is no secret that we whisper about conflict and how things get done or don’t get done,” Danowski said. “Personally, I feel there is a transition period where the brain trust of the water control district could act in a consulting position to the town, gather information, speak to outside personnel, professionals about how to deal with and solve some of our problems, bring that information back to the town. Let the council and town management talk about it and budget it and plan it, and have the water control district focus solely on water.”
Snowball said he has always anticipated the LGWCD becoming dependent.
“There’s no reason for 10 people to be running it,” he said. “But until the town council has their feet on the ground and says, ‘Hey, we’re ready,’ I’m going to be here for them, because at this point in time, I don’t see how they’re going to have time to do our job and their job.”
Asked whether they would support the removal of barriers on district canal maintenance right of way to develop riding trails, Snowball said he supported it, but that issues remained about controlling access by motor vehicles.
“When it was first started, we talked about how to keep the motorized vehicles off of it,” he said. “The equestrian community came and told us about certain paths, cross-throughs that horses [and bicyclists] could get through.”
He pointed out that the canal easements are owned by landowners, and agreements must be reached in order to make them accessible to riders.
“Once all the legal mumbo-jumbo is taken care of… we’re going to be able to walk or ride up and down our canal banks,” he said. “Yes, we should be taking the gates down and we should be putting up poles or something to keep out the motorized stuff. That has always been in our conversations from the very beginning. I’m ready for it, but we can’t do it illegally.”
Danowski said that as a lifelong equestrian, she strongly favors the development of horse trails.
“I sat for a year on the trails committee, and I do agree that we need ‘T’s crossed and ‘I’s dotted,” she said, adding that equestrians understand that they ride at their own risk. “I understand the district’s concern as far as suing. Everybody can sue for anything. I agree that it has to be systematic.”
She also favors fencing to separate the trails from private property, both for the property owners’ privacy and to protect riders.
“As a rider, I would love to have a fence between me and somebody’s large dog,” she said, adding that she would consider giving a tax credit or other incentive for property owners to put their own fences up.
Candidates were also asked about recent legislation regarding stormwater runoff and how the LGWCD and the town could use it to their advantage while working toward controlling nutrients in runoff from agricultural property.
“Sooner or later, the government’s going to come knocking,” Snowball said. “Luckily we’re a town now, and those guys have got to deal with it. We are tasked with getting rid of the water. Personally, I don’t want any of the runoff going into the canals at this point until we find out just how badly off we really are.”
Danowski said there are methods such as ultrasound to kill algae growth, and that phosphorus runoff can be contained through responsible land ownership.
“It is a valid concern,” she said. “It grows weeds, it takes away the foods that our fish and the turtles eat, and the underwater foods and plant life that feed other forms of life in the canals.”
Asked if the LGWCD should be involved in town council elections, both candidates said no.
During closing comments, Danowski thanked the two dozen people who came out for the forum.
“The fact that we’re sitting here listening and talking and making our own judgments, that’s important,” she said, adding that she felt that despite differences of opinion, most residents had settled in Loxahatchee Groves for a common reason — peace, quiet and wildlife. “I don’t want to lose that aspect of our community.”
Danowski said she would like to see more disclosure from the district. She complimented town management for its cooperation on various issues.
She added that she was concerned about who will monitor the tabulation of the election, explaining that it is currently the LGWCD’s accounting firm, and said she has an attorney talking to the Supervisor of Elections Office to see if some other monitor might be permitted.
“Exercise your right to vote and get your neighbors out to vote,” she said. “Whether it’s for Mr. Snowball or myself… make a choice and be part of the solution.”
Snowball said he thought whoever is elected will do a good job.
“It’s obvious that Laura has a good heart,” he said. “She’s in the right place. We’re both going to do a good job. I’m not going to put signs up… Everybody knows who I am. You know my record. You know what I’m here for. I will keep doing it if you want me to.”
ABOVE: Laura Danowski and Robert Snowball.
