Mainland development will affect the Keys
Last week, a parade of
Keys citizens told members of the South Florida Regional Planning
Council that a proposed development in south Miami-Dade County was a bad
idea.
This proposal would place
6,000 homes, 300,000 square feet of retail space, 90,000 square feet of
office space, a theater, two schools and a hotel at the southern end of
the county, near where Card Sound Road meets U.S. 1.
The proposed land for
this development is outside of Miami-Dade's 2005 urban development
boundary and outside of the county's 2015 urban expansion area. Florida
City also wants to annex the area and is pushing the county for
permission to do so.
The Monroe County
Commission and the Marathon and Islamorada councils have all publicly
voiced their displeasure with this project, concerned with hurricane
evacuation as well as the inequity in growth management standards
applied to the Keys versus a piece of environmentally sensitive land
just a few miles north.
The land in question also
is in the footprint of an Everglades restoration project.
At the regional planning
council meeting this week, two people — Monroe Planning Commissioner
Lynn Mapes and 1000 Friends of Florida Executive Director Charles
Pattison — made the same suggestion: The state should declare these
lands an Area of Critical Concern.
Some regional planning
councilors like the idea and directed their staff to research the issue
and bring it back to them for action at their next meeting.
It has been many years
since the state created a new Area of Critical Concern but this is an
idea well worth pursuing. Certainly it is critical for the state to put
the brakes on inappropriate development that is marching forward into
lands that are needed for Everglades restoration projects.
Restoring the Everglades
is, after all, the stated aim of an $8 billion plan that the U.S. and
the state of Florida have made their highest environmental priority.
It's quite a feat they're attempting, setting the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District on the task of
repairing an ecosystem destroyed by an intricate and extensive system of
canals, levees and pumps.
At the same time, they're
supposed to ensure water supply and flood protection for South Florida
while coping with population projections expected to hit 20 million
within our lifetimes.
In development-happy
South Florida, it's no surprise to see projects proposed for lands that
have already been outlined as necessary for restoration. The Florida
City development currently under consideration is in the footprint of
the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands project, a component of Everglades
restoration.
This isn't the first
development proposed for land needed for Everglades restoration. The
South Florida Water Management District already approved an earlier
request in South Dade and is now considering a development in Martin
County on land needed to help restore the Indian River Lagoon.
All this reveals a vast
divide in the state's official attitude toward ecosystem restoration. On
one hand, it touts its unprecedented commitment toward restoration and
spends hundreds of millions buying land. It also devotes tremendous
time, energy and money to buying land and improving water quality in the
Florida Keys, the southern end of the ecosystem in question.
On the other, it allows
development to plunge forward on lands essential to Everglades
restoration and directly adjacent to the Florida Keys.
This is a double
standard. The Keys have always been a place for state politicians,
Republicans and Democrats alike, to collect environmental credits
without political consequences. We have internationally significant
resources but few voters to exact revenge for unpopular policies. This
has, in general, worked for the protection of the Keys environment.
But
if South Florida is truly a single region and restoring the ecosystem is
truly the goal, the state's critical concern should not stop at the
arbitrary border of the Monroe-Miami-Dade county line. Protecting the
Keys and indeed providing for the sustainability of South Florida will
require the political will to see the connections — including, if
necessary, extending the Area of Critical Concern to mainland
Miami-Dade.
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