The lagoon cannot afford another lost decade. Neither can Brevard.
The Indian River Lagoon has not fully recovered. That is not a reason to hide disappointing outcomes or accept weak accountability. It is a reason to improve the work while preserving the capacity to keep doing it. The decision before voters is whether to continue a dedicated restoration funding mechanism — or interrupt it without an approved replacement plan.
This is a continuation decision, not a blank-sheet referendum. Voters should understand what the existing mechanism funds, what safeguards apply, what has and has not been achieved, and what happens if the renewal is rejected.
Published by Brevard County as the 2026 renewal ballot language
The Save Our Indian River Lagoon Sales Tax will be provided on the November 2026 Ballot for the citizens of Brevard County to vote on renewing the initiative. The ballot language will read as follows:
RENEWAL OF THE SAVE OUR INDIAN RIVER LAGOON HALF-CENT SALES TAX
To restore the Indian River Lagoon through infrastructure, capital improvements, capital maintenance projects and programs designed to improve water quality and fish and wildlife habitat, remove muck, and reduce pollution, shall Brevard County renew the existing Save Our Indian River Lagoon half-cent sales tax for ten years, and require deposit of all revenue to a trust fund solely for such purposes, with continued citizen committee oversight and annual independent audits?
▢YES for the half cent sales tax.
▢NO against the half cent sales tax.
Source: Brevard County Save Our Indian River Lagoon page. Verified 2026-07-27. Adopted May 19, 2026 (Board of County Commissioners, agenda item H.3; Ordinance 2026-06). Final sample-ballot formatting pending confirmation via the Brevard Supervisor of Elections sample ballot.
Key dates and how to vote
2026 Brevard County General Election
Election Day
Nov 3, 2026
Polls open 7 AM to 7 PM. If you are in line at 7 PM, you may still vote.
All dates verified 2026-07-27 against the Brevard Supervisor of Elections calendar and Florida statutory requirements (F.S. 97.055 for registration deadline; F.S. 101.62 for vote-by-mail deadline). If any deadline changes, this block will be updated and the change logged in the corrections log.
Why this matters to you
Why should I care?
Clean water is not only an environmental issue. It touches nearly every part of daily life in Brevard.
Cleaner water for swimming, boating, and drinking-water source protection.
A stronger local economy that depends on tourism, waterfront businesses, and the lagoon-facing service sector.
Better fishing and boating as habitat and water quality continue to recover.
Healthier wildlife across the estuary, including manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, and the fish residents catch.
Property values that respond to visible lagoon health, especially in waterfront and near-water neighborhoods.
Lower future cleanup costs by continuing pollution-source reduction instead of paying more later.
Restoration continuity so projects already underway are not stopped midstream.
Every item above is a downstream benefit of continued restoration work. Specific dollar figures for property, tourism, and cleanup costs will be added as they are independently sourced.
What the vote does in practical terms
A YES vote and a NO vote, in plain terms
A YES vote
Continues the dedicated restoration funding mechanism while leaving room — and creating an obligation — to improve how projects are selected, measured, verified, and reported.
It does not mean every past decision was correct. It means reform and accountability can proceed without first dismantling the principal dedicated funding stream.
A NO vote
Rejects the renewal. It does not, by itself, establish a replacement plan, create a new funding source, preserve project continuity, or guarantee that a more comprehensive program will appear.
A NO vote may express dissatisfaction, but dissatisfaction alone does not finance wastewater work, septic conversions, stormwater projects, muck removal, habitat work, monitoring, or long-term maintenance.
YES Continuation
Funding continues without interruption
Existing project pipeline stays on schedule
Reporting, verification, and oversight can strengthen
HOLD annual revenue figure pending verification
NO Interruption or delay
The existing half-cent sales-tax authorization would not be renewed and would end after its current statutory expiration
Projects already funded from the trust fund would continue until those funds are spent; new SOIRL-funded projects would depend on future funding decisions
Project capacity and continuity may be delayed or reduced
Pollution sources, infrastructure needs, and restoration costs continue in the interim
Practical timeline. Statements are qualified. Specific annual-revenue figures and any next-cycle ballot opportunity are not projected here; the ~$580M raised 2016–2026 and the ~$800M ten-year projection cited by county officials are attributed to their sources on the fiscal-record page.
The honest record
What has — and has not — been achieved
The lagoon has not yet achieved lagoon-wide ecological recovery. That fact should not be hidden or softened. It also does not mean that wastewater upgrades, septic conversions, stormwater projects, muck removal, monitoring, and habitat work are meaningless. The public deserves to see the difference between work completed, pollution prevented or removed, localized environmental response, and actual lagoon-wide recovery.
A credible public record must show both progress and underperformance. It must identify which projects were completed, which were delayed, what reductions were modeled, what was directly measured, what ecological response occurred, and where the evidence remains uncertain.
Transparency
Follow the money. Measure the work. Publish the results.
Clean-water funding should come with clear rules, public reporting, independent oversight, and results residents can track. LagoonFacts distinguishes money collected from projects completed, modeled pollution reductions from measured reductions, and engineering progress from ecological recovery. Those are not the same thing—and the public deserves to see each one clearly.
Show what was collected, committed, spent, and still available.
Identify the project, location, responsible agency, schedule, and current status.
Label every result as measured, modeled, projected, or interpretive.
Correct the record publicly when better information becomes available.
1Revenue
2Approved plan
3Project
4Contract
5Construction
6Verification
7Public reporting
Where the money goes. Every stage should be visible to the public. Specific percentages and dollar amounts will be added as they are verified.
How results are labeled
Every result on this site should carry one of these plain-language labels so readers can tell what kind of evidence supports it.
Measured Result
A direct observation or reported result from a primary dataset.
Modeled Estimate
An estimated result produced by an accepted model rather than direct measurement.
Future Projection
A future expectation or scenario, not an accomplished result.
Interpretation
A plain-language conclusion drawn from multiple underlying facts.
Example — evidence card structure (data pending)
Example — evidence card structure (data pending)
Sample claim headline goes here.
Measured Result
One-sentence plain-language explanation of what this claim means in practice.
Source organization
HOLD — pending verification
Source title
HOLD — pending verification
Publication date
HOLD
Verification date
HOLD
Geographic scope
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Dataset period
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Methodology note
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Caveat
HOLD
Read the source link will appear here when the primary source is verified and cleared for publication.
Measurement ladder
Five layers of evidence — reported separately
Restoration progress lives at five different layers. Collapsing all of them into a single “success” number hides which parts are working, which parts are underperforming, and where the evidence is still uncertain. This site reports each layer separately.
1Funding
2Project design
3Construction
4Pollution source reduction
5Water-quality response
6Habitat response
7Wildlife and community response
Progress at one step does not prove completion of the next.
Each row shows what a layer of evidence can demonstrate, and what it cannot prove on its own.
Water quality, sediment, habitat, seagrass, dissolved oxygen, algal conditions, and site-level indicators.
That the same response occurred lagoon-wide.
Lagoon-wide recovery
Long-term ecological trends across representative regions, with limitations disclosed.
Certainty beyond the quality and coverage of the evidence.
Accountability for the next phase
Renewal should not mean business as usual.
Continued funding should come with clearer ecological benchmarks, transparent project ranking, stronger post-project verification, honest treatment of uncertainty, and public reporting that distinguishes activity from outcomes.
Publish project status, schedule, cost, and responsible entity in a consistent public format.
Show modeled benefits separately from directly measured results.
Disclose delays, cancellations, underperformance, changed assumptions, and corrective action.
Connect project-level reporting to local ecological indicators wherever technically feasible.
Track lagoon-wide ecological conditions over time without attributing every change to a single program.
Maintain independent audits and meaningful citizen oversight.
Hard Questions
Direct answers to the strongest objections
Has the lagoon already been fixed?
No. Some projects and indicators show progress, but recovery is incomplete and uneven. The honest answer is that parts of the system can improve while other areas remain impaired. LagoonFacts should show both.
Why approve more funding if money has already been spent?
Because large restoration programs take years, and the relevant question is not simply whether money was spent. It is what was built, what pollution source was reduced, what was measured, what remains unfunded, and whether the public can track the work.
Does every project produce an immediate ecological result?
No. Wastewater, septic, stormwater, dredging, habitat, monitoring, and research projects operate on different timelines. A completed project may reduce a pollution source before seagrass, wildlife, or water quality fully responds.
How do we know the numbers are not being exaggerated?
Every major numeric claim on this site is linked to a primary source (agency report, peer-reviewed paper, audited financial document, or official dataset) and labeled by claim type. Measured results are labeled as measured, modeled estimates are labeled as modeled, and forward-looking projections are labeled as projections. If a figure cannot be independently sourced yet, it is not published as a specific number. Where a claim later turns out to be wrong or outdated, the correction is logged publicly on the corrections page.
Is this only about wildlife?
No. Wildlife matters, but clean water also affects property, tourism, fishing, boating, public health, insurance exposure, local jobs, community identity, and quality of life.
What happens if the measure fails?
The practical consequence is that the dedicated local funding stream for lagoon restoration ends, planned revenue and project capacity are delayed or lost, and pollution sources, infrastructure needs, and restoration costs continue in the meantime. Under Florida sales-tax law, a failed local-option renewal typically cannot return to the ballot immediately, so a rejection is not a short-term reset. The exact legal, fiscal, and calendar consequences will be added as they are independently verified against Florida statutes and the Brevard County Supervisor of Elections.
Is LagoonFacts funded by the county or an agency?
No. LagoonFacts is an independently funded educational and editorial website created and paid for by David Sherrer, a Brevard resident who lived on the lagoon for close to a decade as a lagoon-front homeowner in Cocoa Beach before hurricane flooding damage forced him to sell, and who served on the SOIRL Citizen Oversight Committee. The site is not affiliated with Brevard County, any candidate campaign, or any political committee, and it does not receive government funding. It takes an editorial position in favor of renewing the SOIRL half-cent sales tax. Primary and authoritative source material cited on the site comes from agencies, universities, and research organizations; those sources do not sponsor or endorse LagoonFacts. Full disclosure lives on the About page.
Are scientists actually in agreement?
Scientists can disagree about methods, rates, and interpretation while still agreeing on the core observations: excess nitrogen and phosphorus have driven decades of algal blooms, seagrass loss and wildlife mortality followed, and sustained pollution-source reduction plus long-term monitoring is what changes the trajectory. The sources page links to the underlying reports and datasets so the reader can go past authority to the primary evidence.
Why should renters or people who do not live on the water care?
Clean water supports the regional economy, recreation, jobs, public spaces, community health, and long-term costs carried across the county. The benefit is broader than waterfront property.
Can the program be improved?
Yes. Continued funding should be paired with stronger reporting, clearer metrics, accessible project dashboards, independent review, and correction of claims that no longer match the evidence.
Last reviewed: 2026-07-25
Evidence — reference structure
Evidence card shell (demo — no figures yet)
This is a structural preview of the sourced evidence cards that will populate this page as ledger entries clear. Every field below is intentionally held pending verification. No figures have been invented for this shell.
Open the demo evidence cardDemo evidence cardHOLD — VERIFY
Claim
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Metric
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Geographic scope
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Time period
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Method
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Limitations
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Source title
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Source link
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A note on this site's public availability.
IRL Facts is an independently funded editorial and informational site. It uses informational calls to action (“Vote Information,” “Learn About the Referendum,” “See the Science,” “Browse Sources”) and takes an editorial position in favor of renewing the Save Our Indian River Lagoon half-cent sales tax on the November 3, 2026 ballot. That editorial position and independent funding are disclosed in the site footer and on the About page.
The site's ordinary public availability at irlfacts.org is provided as a matter of publishing an editorial and informational resource. Any paid, targeted, boosted, coordinated, or campaign-integrated promotion of this site is a separate workflow, subject to applicable disclaimer, platform advertiser setup, landing-page and privacy review, and a personal spending cap. Ads may expressly advocate YES on the renewal and, when they do, carry the required payer disclaimer.
Vote on the full record — not a slogan.
The lagoon needs honest accounting, stronger measurement, and sustained work. Review the evidence. Examine what was completed, what underperformed, what remains uncertain, and what each ballot choice actually does. Then vote with the lagoon’s long-term future in mind.
Below is the past the lagoon already lived through. Same water. Same shoreline. Same county. Real cameras. Ten years ago.
MARCH 2016
The canals were paved with belly-up dead fish.
Brown tide algae bloomed all winter on decades of fertilizer, sewage, and septic runoff. When it died in March, bacteria consuming it stripped the oxygen out of the water. Between March 18 and March 20, dissolved oxygen bottomed to zero at 3 AM. Fish across at least 30 species suffocated. Hundreds of thousands of them.
Photo: Alex Gorichky, Local Lines Guide Service, via CNN.
MARCH 2016
A visceral 2016 memory.
That is Captain Alex Gorichky's quote, verbatim. From above, the collapse was visible for 30 miles. Titusville to Palm Bay. The estuary that draws two million visitors a year, opaque brown, unable to support life below it because sunlight could not reach the seagrass.
What the 2016 fish kill was like on the shoreline.
Local reporting during the 2016 brown-tide fish kill described dead fish stacked in canals from Titusville to Melbourne, temporary business impacts on waterfront restaurants and boat rental operators, and a lasting smell in shoreline neighborhoods including Snug Harbor, Sykes Creek, Cocoa Beach, and Merritt Island. Cleanup required county-organized dumpsters at five waterfront parks. Source: Florida Today, March 22, 2016.
65,000 lbs
of dead fish collected in days — and volunteers say for every one on the surface, several more had already sunk and rotted on the bottom.
30+ species
wiped out at once — from six-inch pinfish to 50-pound black drum and 40-inch redfish. Not a size-class problem. A whole-ecosystem problem.
200 residents
marched in protest in Cocoa Beach a week later under the March heat. When your neighbors organize a rally about the water, the water has gone very wrong.
Seagrass in the Mosquito Lagoon and Northern IRL has grown substantially from its low point. Basin health across parts of the system has stopped falling. Manatees have been observed grazing again in some shallows. This is not a claim of lagoon-wide recovery — the lagoon remains fragile, still recovering, and still well below the seagrass acreage of the 1990s.
The 2016 photo predates the SOIRL half-cent tax that voters approved later that same year. The 2025 photo comes after almost a decade of dedicated lagoon spending on septic conversions, muck dredging, wastewater upgrades, and stormwater projects. The recovery has multiple drivers — weather, statewide programs, federal partners, and long-running research all matter — and it is described by MRC and IRLNEP as measurable but fragile. The November 3 ballot asks whether the Brevard-specific portion of that dedicated funding continues.
This is not only about fish
This is about your street.
A lot of the money in the SOIRL program does not go into the water at all. It goes into the pipes, drains, retention ponds, and wastewater plants that decide where rain ends up when it stops falling. If you have ever watched a storm come through Brevard and worried about your street, your yard, your neighbor's yard, or your seawall, the lagoon program is one of the things standing between you and worse.
Stormwater
Retention ponds and drainage retrofits that keep runoff, oil, and fertilizer from washing into the streets and the lagoon
Sewer
Septic-to-sewer conversions in low-lying neighborhoods where failing septic tanks contribute to flood-water contamination
Infrastructure
Wastewater plant upgrades so storm surges do not overwhelm the treatment system and back up into homes
A neighborhood that floods is a neighborhood whose home values drop, whose insurance premiums rise, and whose streets get worse every year. A lagoon program that funds stormwater and sewer infrastructure is one factor in protecting streets, driveways, and the ground people build on, alongside the many other flood-mitigation programs that operate independently of the lagoon tax.
The largest single stretch of the lagoon runs through Brevard.
The Indian River Lagoon spans five counties on the water (Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin) and a seven-county watershed that adds Palm Beach and Osceola. Brevard County contains the largest single stretch of the lagoon shoreline and is the only Brevard-specific local funding source on the November 3 ballot. State, federal, regional, nonprofit, and research partners also contribute across the whole 156-mile system.
72 miles
of Brevard shoreline on the lagoon
The lagoon system runs 156 miles tip-to-tip. Brevard County lines 72 miles of that shoreline — the largest single stretch of any county on the water. Every barrier island neighborhood, every causeway, and the launch corridor itself sit against it.
The lagoon runs 156 miles tip-to-tip as the crow flies. But once you count every finger canal, every spoil island, every cove, every creek, every residential seawall, the actual water’s edge multiplies. A UCF field study documented 374 miles of shoreline just in the northern half from Ponce Inlet to Sebastian Inlet. Add the middle and southern segments and the real number pushes past 600 miles.
The Indian River Lagoon is one of the most biodiverse estuaries in the Northern Hemisphere. Thousands of species of plants and animals live here — manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, redfish, snook, tarpon, mangroves, and seagrass. For a precise species inventory, see the science pages.
Other partners contribute across the wider system. Brevard's funding mechanism is specific to the county's own stretch of shoreline.
Scale, for context:
How the half-cent tax compares to other public and economic figures in Brevard
HOLD — VERIFY
share of Brevard County’s total annual budget
Precise annual collection and share-of-budget figures require verification against the current official budget and are held pending v0.2B. Brevard County's adopted FY2025-26 budget document is the primary source to be verified against.
HOLD — VERIFY
relative to Brevard's tourism economy
Brevard tourism generated economic impact reported by the Space Coast Office of Tourism. A precise scale comparison against the lagoon program is held pending verification rather than restated as an economic-return calculation.
This site does not present a household-cost figure, a leverage ratio, or a return-on-investment number for the renewal. Those calculations depend on the final verified ballot language and official fiscal figures, which are held per the v0.2A publication holds.
The Part Most People Miss
A no vote is not “try again next year.”
A common assumption is that if the ballot measure fails, voters simply get another chance the next year. Under Florida law, that is not automatically how this works.
Florida Statute §212.055(10):
“A referendum to reenact an expiring surtax must be held at a general election occurring within the 48-month period immediately preceding the effective date of the reenacted surtax. Such a referendum may appear on the ballot only once within the 48-month period.”
In plain English: if the November 3, 2026 renewal fails, Brevard County cannot put the same lagoon-tax reenactment question back on the ballot until the next general election within the 48-month window that follows. The exact resulting gap in local dedicated funding depends on the current tax's expiration date and is held pending verification of the final official ballot language (see Ballot at a glance above).
Physical project timing does not restart on a dime either.
Set the statutory clock aside for a moment. The physical work of lagoon restoration — septic-to-sewer conversion, wastewater plant construction, muck dredging, stormwater retrofit — follows the same kind of engineering and permitting timeline as other large civil infrastructure.
1
Permits: 1–2 years
Every project needs state DEP, water management district, Army Corps of Engineers, and often federal environmental reviews before a shovel moves.
2
Competitive bid: 6–12 months
Draft the RFP. Advertise. Collect bids. Evaluate. Negotiate scope. Award. Contract. Only then does construction start.
3
Contractors do not wait indefinitely
If funding lapses mid-stream, contractors may redeploy crews to other jobs, bids can expire, and prices can reset.
4
Permits can expire
Environmental review windows close. Design drawings can age out of code compliance. Restarting can mean redoing much of the work from square one.
The realistic setback if the tax expires:
HOLD — VERIFY
A specific number of years of delay is not stated here. It depends on which projects are mid-stream at expiration and is held pending case-by-case verification rather than presented as a single projected figure.
The statutory and engineering timing above both point in the same direction: renewal and non-renewal are not symmetric options with an easy do-over.
Tourists Pay Too
Tourists pay the same sales tax rate as residents.
Florida is one of the biggest tourism economies in the country. Cocoa Beach alone hosts a large annual visitor population against a much smaller resident population. Every visitor — every rental car, every hotel stay, every gas fill-up, every dinner, every souvenir — pays the same half-cent sales tax residents do.
HOLD — VERIFY
share of the SOIRL tax paid by visitors — final figure to be verified against current source data
HOLD — VERIFY
visitors per year to Cocoa Beach vs. resident population — figures to be verified
HOLD — VERIFY
estimated tourist contribution to the lagoon tax each year — figure to be verified
Because this is a sales tax, visitors contribute automatically alongside residents every time they make a taxable purchase in Brevard. Specific dollar and percentage estimates are held pending verification per the v0.2A publication holds.
The Real Math For Your Home
The calculator. What is this worth to you?
Here is the math on what households already pay for this program — and estimated categories of value it may help protect for a house, a neighborhood, and the water. Household-value estimates below are illustrative modeling, not verified official figures; treat the multiplier and dollar outputs as estimates pending further review.
Assumptions, data date, methodology, and limitations — open before using the numbers
Data date: All figures below reflect data current as of 2026-07-26. Regenerate the model when Balmoral, Brevard County, or Florida Department of Revenue publish updates.
Tax-cost side (input A): The user enters annual household taxable spending in Brevard. The tool applies the half-cent SOIRL sales-tax rate (0.005) directly to that number. Groceries and prescription medicines are exempt under Florida law and should be excluded from the spending input. Source: Florida Department of Revenue — Sales and Use Tax. This side is a straight arithmetic calculation and does not depend on any modeling.
Value-protected side (input B): The tool models three categories of value the lagoon may help protect for a household:
Home-value factor tied to lagoon proximity — derived from the hedonic-regression coefficients in the Balmoral Group 2025 IRL Economic Valuation, Technical Report. The distance multiplier (1.0 waterfront, 0.35 within a mile, 0.15 within 1–5 miles, 0.06 farther inland) is a simplified stand-in for the study's distance decay function; individual homes will vary. The number displayed is a modeled portion of home value potentially tied to lagoon proximity, not a claim about what the home would sell for.
Recreation, fishing, and boating benefit — modeled from the Balmoral 2025 recreation-value estimates apportioned by household spending category. Not a direct measurement of household spending on these activities.
Water quality and flood-mitigation benefit — modeled from the ecosystem-services values in the same Balmoral 2025 report, scaled to a household level.
Ratio (“24×”): This is the modeled sum of the value-protected side divided by the tax-cost side, at the current input values. It is an estimate and not a verified return-on-investment figure. The Balmoral 2025 report itself reports approximately $24 in benefits per dollar invested for the nine selected NOAA-funded restoration projects examined in that analysis; the tool's ratio is derived on the same modeling family, not measured across every SOIRL project. Every SOIRL dollar and every lagoon project is different; do not read this as a program-wide measured return.
Known limitations:
The tool uses generalized coefficients; it cannot substitute for a licensed real-estate appraisal, a personalized tax preparation, or a project-specific economic analysis.
The visitor share of collections used elsewhere on the site is being verified independently against current Brevard County program planning documents and is not surfaced in this tool.
The tool does not model tax burden by income bracket. All sales taxes have some regressive properties; this tool does not attempt to correct for that.
The Balmoral study covers the full multi-county Indian River Lagoon economic region; individual Brevard County allocations may differ.
Peer review status: The Balmoral Group 2025 study is a commissioned technical valuation for IRLNEP, not a peer-reviewed academic paper. Treat its figures as authoritative for its analytical scope and cite them explicitly where used.
A
What you pay for the lagoon each year
$30,000 / yr
Your annual lagoon tax:
$150
This is a sales tax — charged on what you buy in Brevard, not where you live. Half a cent on each dollar of taxable spending. Visitor share of collections will be added when the current figure is independently verified.
B
Modeled value lagoon health may protect each year
$400,000
Modeled home-value factor tied to lagoon proximity (estimate):
$49,000
This is a modeled estimate, not a verified figure, based on the Balmoral Group 2025 hedonic analysis. Treat this and the multiplier below as illustrative, not a guarantee.
$1,240Modeled recreation, fishing, boating benefit / year
$180Modeled water quality, safer beaches benefit / year
$160Modeled flood mitigation benefit / year
24×
Modeled ratio of estimated protected value to tax paid, based on the assumptions above. ESTIMATE — not a verified return-on-investment figure.
Tax math: half-cent sales tax rate applied to household taxable spending (Florida Dept. of Revenue). Home premium and ecosystem value math from Balmoral Group 2025 IRL Economic Valuation. These are modeled estimates for illustration; actual value depends on your specific home, location, and spending, and household-cost/return figures remain subject to the v0.2A publication holds.
Dig Deeper
The full picture. One tap away.
The sections above are the short version. Deeper pages cover the science, the money, the projects, the critiques, and how to vote.
