The SOIRL half-cent sales tax renewal on the November 3 ballot is one program — the biggest and most visible, but not the only one. Brevard County has a separate, older, property-tax-funded land-conservation program that has already preserved 37+ miles of shoreline along the Indian River Lagoon and its tributaries. It is not on the ballot. It exists. Voters should know it exists.
Brevard County has two separate voter-approved programs whose work touches the Indian River Lagoon. It is easy to confuse them. They are not the same.
Program 1
Program 2
Both programs have their own oversight, their own funding stream, and their own accounting. Neither replaces the other.
Since Brevard voters approved the program in 1990, EEL has helped preserve approximately 28,000 acres of natural land in the county. Roughly 37 miles of that preserved land is natural shoreline along the Indian River Lagoon and its major tributaries, the headwaters and drainage areas that determine what flows into the lagoon in the first place.
EEL is currently prioritizing two acquisition targets: the Brevard Coastal Scrub Ecosystem across the county, and the North Indian River Lagoon Blueways project, which targets lands in North Brevard County to protect the headwaters of the Indian River Lagoon. Protecting headwaters means the water that eventually reaches the lagoon is filtered by natural systems before it gets there, rather than after.
Sources: Brevard County EEL Program FAQ, Brevard IRL Coalition EEL microsite, IRLNEP Habitat Restoration Strategy (PDF).
Nine days ago, the Board of County Commissioners approved a resolution authorizing a loan of up to $17 million from the Florida Local Government Finance Commission to finance land purchases under the Environmentally Endangered Lands Program. It was Item I.1 on the July 21, 2026 agenda. The vote was unanimous.
The EEL Selection and Management Committee has identified 12 candidate properties with a total estimated value of approximately $80 million that fit the program’s conservation criteria. The $17 million approved this month funds the first wave of acquisitions from that list. Each individual property still requires a separate BOCC vote to close.
The Selection and Management Committee meets monthly and is open to the public, with public comment periods at both the beginning and end of each meeting. If you want to see which properties are being evaluated, or comment on the criteria being used, the meetings are the place. EEL Program Calendar →
Sources: Brevard County Commission Meeting recording, July 21, 2026 (Item I.1), EEL Selection and Management Committee.
SOIRL removes pollution loads that are already in the lagoon or on their way there: legacy muck, septic leachate, stormwater nitrogen. EEL prevents new pollution loads by putting undeveloped, ecologically important land into permanent conservation. Different tools, same lagoon.
These programs already collaborate in specific, documented ways:
Sources: Florida Living Shorelines project profile, Pine Island Conservation Area, IRLNEP Habitat Restoration Strategy (PDF).
To be clear
The 2026 ballot renewal question is only about the SOIRL half-cent sales tax. EEL’s current property-tax funding is authorized through its 2004 voter reaffirmation and is not affected by how you vote on SOIRL in November. A YES or NO on SOIRL does not change EEL. A YES or NO on EEL in some future election would not undo SOIRL projects already funded.
This page exists because these two programs are often conflated, and both quietly protect the same body of water. Voters should be able to see the whole picture before deciding what they think about any single ballot question.
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