|
Make sure backcountry stays wild
If you love
the Lower Keys backcountry, there is a tangible action you can take to
help protect the quality of the fishing and the wild atmosphere of the
area.
Contact your
county commissioner and ask for the plug to be pulled once and for all
on the backdoor plan to plunk navigation markers along the north side of
Niles Channel, a natural, shallow-water passageway leading into the
backcountry.
There are a
million reasons why these markers are a bad idea, but let me start with
this one: The word backcountry is supposed to connote a wild, untamed
place. What's next? A floating rest area and gas station?
Maybe just as
importantly, the story of how this proposal came to be resurrected last
spring is a study in how not to make environmental decisions.
Here are the
facts as described by those involved. In March, Billy Causey of the
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary issued a letter of support to
Monroe County officials who were applying to the Army Corps of Engineers
for a new permit to mark the channel.
Opponents of
the marking plan were mystified. They thought they had buried the
proposal years ago under the weight of an expensive compromise. Monroe
County officials could install the markers but they had to be temporary
markers; a system had to be established to monitor the number of boats
using the passage. If there was a sudden spike of boaters into the
backcountry, opponents wanted to know about it.
The County
never acted because the plan was too expensive.
Lo and behold,
the new permit issued by the Army Corps last spring dropped those
requirements.
Causey said he
never meant to commit the Sanctuary to a revised plan. "What we thought
we were supporting was the project we had agreed to three or four years
ago," he said.
Most
mysteriously of all, no one asked Phil Frank, manager of the Great White
Heron Refuge, what he thought. The Refuge is included within the
Sanctuary and Frank is supposed to have a say on such matters. I
couldn't reach him, but those who know him said I can safely report that
he was hot.
Sensing a
snookering, the Army Corps of Engineers has asked Monroe County
officials to yield the permit, and that's where things stand.
"This is a
hotly contested issue. I don't know what will happen to it, but it will
not happen immediately or quickly," said George Garrett, the Monroe
County director of marine resources. The county still needs a permit
from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, he added.
Perhaps most
disturbing, no one seems to know who initiated the latest round of
lobbying for the plan.
"That's a good
question at this time," said Garrett.
He was about
to get on a plane with County Commissioner George Nugent to take a
fact-finding tour of Niles Channel when I reached him.
The proposal
has a fascinating history that is directly linked to the debate over
establishment of the Sanctuary back in the 1990s.
Niles Channel
is the major passageway into the backcountry for commercial lobster
fishermen in the area. It has the only bridge on U.S. 1 that's high
enough to handle their boats. The problem was, the lobstermen routinely
kicked up silt in Niles Channel, and some commercial fishermen believed
the markers would shelter them from legal claims leveled by the
Sanctuary.
"That's a
misconception," Causey said. "Just because they're in a marked channel
does not mean they can harm the natural resources," he said.
With the
advent of GPS, and the brouhaha, Causey and others are now re-thinking
the whole concept of the markers. With some public input, perhaps they
would drop it altogether.
Building this
superhighway for the clueless will invite more environmental damage than
it will stop. A boater who needs markers to pick his way through Niles
Channel is going to be panicked once he sees the treacherous limestone
outcroppings and sea grass flats that make the backcountry so beautiful.
biannotta@aol.com |
