Our Marine Service Area: Pasco County, North Pinellas and NW Hillsborough

Our service area in Pasco County: canal and river towns

This stretch is canal and river country: canal lots, river frontage and short runs of open Gulf shore. Pick your town:

• Hudson: Gulf canals cut from the shore, with VE wave zones along the outer edge.
• Bayonet Point: mostly inland, with Port Richey and Hudson canals close by.
• Port Richey: city canals and the Cotee River, under the city's own dock chapter.
• Gulf Harbors: unincorporated canal neighborhood between Port Richey and New Port Richey.
• New Port Richey: the Pithlachascotee River and the canals that feed it.
• Beacon Square: Sawyers Basin and the canal off Kingsbury Drive.
• Elfers: inland between New Port Richey and Holiday.
• Holiday: the Pasco bank of the Anclote River and its canals.

Lots outside city limits go to Pasco County Building Construction Services, which wants a separate application for each in-water structure. Lots inside the cities of New Port Richey and Port Richey answer to city dock rules.

North Pinellas bayous, sound and bay shore

South of the Anclote River the water changes from canals to bayous, St. Joseph Sound, Lake Tarpon and Old Tampa Bay:

• Tarpon Springs: Spring, Whitcomb and Minetta bayous and the Anclote River.
• Palm Harbor: St. Joseph Sound, Ozona and Crystal Beach bayous.
• East Lake: freshwater docks and lifts on Lake Tarpon.
• Dunedin and Clearwater: sound and harbor frontage farther south.
• Oldsmar and Safety Harbor: the top of Old Tampa Bay and its creek mouths.

New docks and new seawalls here, city or not, also go through Pinellas County Water and Navigation. Palm Harbor and East Lake have no city hall, so the county also handles the building permit.

Freshwater lakes around Odessa and Keystone

Inland, the job is lake docks, boat lifts and lake-shore walls, not Gulf seawalls. Odessa covers Lake Ann, Lake Geneva, Lake Minniola, Black Lake and their neighbors, and the 2020 Odessa census area sits entirely in unincorporated Pasco, so the county permits those lots.

Keystone is across the line in Hillsborough, around Lake Keystone, Lake Josephine and Island Ford Lake. Work in or over those lakes is reviewed by the EPC of Hillsborough County Wetlands Division, which handles Lake Keystone through a Minor Work Permit. Some Odessa mailing addresses fall on the Hillsborough side, so check your tax bill before you plan anything.

Hernando Beach canals and the Aripeka coast

Our northern edge is Gulf-front canal country. Hernando Beach sits wholly inside its own county, with a grid of named canals such as Blue Jay, Eagle, Marlin and Snapper, and Indian Bay and Little Pine Island Bay along its shore. Seawalls, docks and lifts there go through the Hernando County Building Division under its Marine Construction Code, and rules from farther south do not carry over.

Aripeka straddles the county line, with about 80 percent of its census area in Pasco and 20 percent in Hernando. Its lots front Hammock Creek and the open Gulf. Confirm which side of the line your parcel is on first, because that decides the permit office and the code your new wall or dock is built to.

Neighborhoods we cover without a page of their own

These Pasco communities have less waterfront, so they share this page. All sit outside city limits, so the county permits the work:

• Trinity: lake and pond docks in a planned community with no Gulf frontage.
• Jasmine Estates: small lakes such as Lake Lisa and Palm Lake, plus drainage canals.
• New Port Richey East: Orchid Lake, outside the City of New Port Richey despite the name.
• River Ridge: the Pithlachascotee River runs through it.
• Moon Lake: docks on the lake of the same name, about 108 acres.

Whichever town you're in, the work is the same: seawall repair and new walls, dock building, dock repair and boat lift installation. For the paperwork side, the Pasco and Pinellas permit guide goes office by office.

Not sure whether your street falls inside our service area in Pasco County or just across the line? Send the address through the contact page and we'll tell you.