State to defend agreement with county
Environmentalists will face DCA lawyers in legal challenge
By TRAVIS JAMES
TRITTEN
Citizen Staff
Writer
County Mayor
Murray Nelson canceled a planned trip to Tallahassee today meant to gain
state support to defend his long-term conservation plan for Monroe
County.
The trip is not
necessary — the state has already agreed to stand by the county while
two local environmental groups challenge the plan this fall before a
Tallahassee administrative judge.
Attorneys for
the Department of Community Affairs, along with county counsel, are
mounting a legal defense against claims by Florida Keys Citizens
Coalition and Last Stand that the new three-year plan puts off needed
environmental initiatives and allows too much new growth.
"Basically, the
issue here is whether the policy the governor and Cabinet want to adopt
by rule, whether that is in their statutory power," DCA attorney David
Jordan said.
Jordan said
counsel will argue the answer to that question is "yes." This summer,
Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Cabinet approved the county's proposal
that, along with similar conservation and housing agreements with
Marathon and Islamorada, will pump hundreds of millions of dollars into
Florida Keys conservation, sewer upgrades and new housing.
Jordan will be
going head to head with his former colleague at DCA, land-use attorney
Richard Grosso, who is representing Florida Keys Citizen Coalition and
Last Stand.
"We aren't
arguing they don't have the power to adopt such a rule," Grosso said.
"The problem is that the state didn't use its power as much as it should
have."
Grosso said he
will argue that the rule changes violate the Florida Keys' critical
environmental status designated by the state and existing growth
management laws relating to habitat protection, hurricane evacuation and
water quality.
"All in all,
the state is ignoring its own laws and studies, and making a mockery of
its existing legal requirements, by allowing all of these problems to
get worse," Grosso said.
Both the state
and the environmental groups have asked for a time extension for the
legal hearing and the date is expected to be scheduled in late September
or October.
The hearings
will last 10 days and the administrative judge will likely hand down a
decision within a month of the conclusion, Jordan said.
"It's going to
come down to a hearing officer's decision on whether we made substantial
progress or not and I think clearly both sides can make a case," County
Commissioner George Neugent said.
Neugent said he
expects the hearing to result in a modified agreement between the state
and Monroe County.
Florida Keys
Citizens Coalition and Last Stand hope that the judge will support
retooling the agreement by reducing the amount of new market-rate
housing, stop the county from gaining credit for sewer projects that are
not yet finished and bar the reinstatement of home-building permits lost
in the past due to a lackluster environmental record.
"We are not
trying to torpedo the deal and we are not trying to torpedo affordable
housing," said Dennis Henize, vice president of Last Stand.
The progress
being made by the county is planning for initiatives that should have
been done years ago, Henize said.
A past legal
challenge in 1998 resulted in the creation of a five-year environmental
work plan for the county, which was subsequently extended to seven
years. The proposed changes would extend the plan to 10 years.
The county's
proposed revisions, drafted and brokered by Nelson, are meant to make up
for a poor environmental record in 2003 and could be the largest
infusion of conservation funding for an island chain considered a top
Florida natural resource.
Nelson said the
legal challenge may set the county back just as it is on the cusp of
major environmental work.
"It is
self-defeating," he said. "All the things [environmental groups] have
been asking for all these years ... this agreement with DCA gives them."
ttritten@keysnews.com |
