Is Lake Denton Re-Open Plan Illegal?

SEBRING - Some Highlands County citizens are calling the tentative plan to re-open popular Lake Denton illegal.

Others are calling it ridiculous.

One who is doing both is Ken Melvin, one of the seven members of the special Lake Denton Citizens Advisory Committee. On Jan. 2, the Highlands County commissioners are scheduled to at least discuss, and possibly vote on, the committee's controversial, four-point recommendation to re-open this closed public lake.

"I think it's illegal," Melvin said about the committee's recommendation to severely restrict public access and charge weekend "user's fees" of $25 per day to scuba divers, boaters, fishermen, swimmers and sunbathers.

"I'm going to say that to the commissioners on Wednesday," Melvin said. He was sick for several months and missed the last two advisory committee meetings.

Melvin said a recommendation to charge any amount of money to anybody who wants to use the lake, at any time for any reason, is clearly illegal.

Also, Melvin called plans to limit access to this public lake, by restricted parking to no more than eight vehicle-loads of people, "ridiculous."

County officials have been calling the public-access road to Lake Denton, which the commissioners voted 3-2 to close for one year, a "boat ramp."

But according to county legal documents and a firsthand visit to the site, what it actually is, is a poorly maintained, dedicated public road. Without a doubt, Melvin said, that alone makes restricting access or charging for access to Lake Denton absolutely against the law.

According to the official plat map of Lake Denton Drive, filed on Feb. 2, 1954, in Sebring, what the county has been calling the "boat ramp" on Lake Denton actually is a donated, dedicated public road for public use.

Furthermore, in dedicating that 30-foot-wide road, along with the other roadways around Lake Denton, the county agreed to keep it open as a public-access street for all time.

The documents also show that the county legally agreed that if this public-access street (so-called "boat ramp") was ever closed to public use, the county would lose title to it and the 30-foot-wide strip of land to the lake would revert back to the original owners, or to their heirs.

Under the heading of "dedication" in the Lake Denton Drive Plat Map, the original landowners, John Albert and Allie H. Cain, said:

"Know all men by these presents, that we, John Albert Cain and wife Allie H. Cain, owners of the land shown heron and described in the title hereof, have caused the same to be surveyed, subdivided and mapped and do hereby dedicate to the perpetual use of the public all streets or roads shown hereon, provided that such streets or roads shall revert unto its owners or successors in the event such streets or roads are vacated, abandoned or otherwise cease to be used as public thoroughfares or are discontinued by law.

"Dated at Sebring, Highlands County, Florida, this 2nd day of February, 1954."

The plat map clearly shows that what the county calls a "boat ramp" actually is a dedicated part of Lake Denton Drive, running down to the lake water's edge.

In addition to John and Allie Cain, the "dedication" was also signed and by two county officials, Robert Bird and Francis W. Miller.

At the first meeting of the Lake Denton Citizens Advisory Committee, committee members and several county employees said there were questions about who owned Lake Denton and the public access to it.

Erin McCarta, the county's assistant lakes manager, said state law makes one thing as crystal clear as Lake Denton's beautiful, clean, clear and deep waters - that the water in the lake itself is owned collectively by every citizen of Florida.

No matter how a citizen gets into Lake Denton - whether by the county's road access or dropping down into it from a helicopter - once you're in that lake, you can do anything you want. At least, that's how McCarta described it and nobody argued with her.

Land access to the lake, however, is a different matter. The only way the public can legally walk, run, drive or pedal to the lake's edge is on the county's 30-foot wide road. The fact that this so-called boat ramp is not a boat ramp but, in fact, a dedicated public road is clear from the 1954 plat map and road dedication.

Ironically, McCarta and others at the first citizens advisory committee meeting said the ownership of the lake and the public access to it were in question, and those questions should be settled before the committee did anything else.

Also, the county has been posting "no swimming" signs on that road (so-called "boat ramp") near the water's edge for years. However, everybody in the state has the legal right to go into the public waters of Lake Denton, at any time for any purpose (including a swim), by using the county's public road to the lake.

One longtime Lake Denton Drive lakefront homeowner shed light on how the public road to the lake later became known, illegally, as a "boat ramp." At one of the advisory committee meetings, she said the 30-foot-wide road from Lake Denton Drive down to the lake was built and dedicated as part of Lake Denton Drive for the benefit of local citrus growers.

Those citrus growers , she said, drove their tanker trucks down that part of Lake Denton Drive to the water's edge so that they could park at the lake, fill up their tanks, and then drive off to water their citrus groves.

Over the years, other water sources became available to the local citrus growers. After they stopped using the public road to draw water out of this public lake to water their crops, county officials erroneously began calling the road to Lake Denton's shore a "boat ramp."