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Ban buys county a year
Commission now facing final land protection
BY TRAVIS JAMES TRITTEN
Citizen Staff Writer
Most tropical
hammocks and pine uplands throughout the county were placed under a
one-year building ban Wednesday.
The county
commission's approval marks the end of a year of turbulent debate over a
moratorium and the beginning of another year of debate to create
permanent county laws to protect Florida Keys habitat.
The coming
debates most likely won't include smaller patches of natural land — all
county tracts smaller than 2 acres that were left out of the moratorium
and that are important to wildlife, environmental groups say.
On Wednesday,
the commission laid the basis for protecting those patches by promising
to purchase them from private owners.
"What staff is
recommending is buying the larger parcels first," said Marlene Conaway,
director of county planning and environmental resources.
The natural
land falls outside existing state protection programs and the new
moratorium on 2-acre or larger patches in the county's designated
Conservation and Natural Area.
Conaway and
Growth Management staff will place such land into four groups by order
of importance:
l The highest
priority will be parcels smaller than 2 acres within the Conservation
and Natural Area;
l 2- to 4-acre
patches outside the special conservation area will be purchased next for
protection.
l Linear
stretches of habitat of 200 feet or more along U.S. 1 should be
protected because they provide community character in the Upper Keys and
insulate homes from traffic noise, Conaway said.
l The smallest
miscellaneous patches will be the lowest purchase priority.
County
protection will likely depend on finding willing property sellers,
County Commissioner Charles "Sonny" McCoy said.
Meanwhile, the
county is waiting to see what Keys land will be purchased under the
state's Florida Forever conservation program, McCoy said.
The program
had targeted much larger parcels of land — over 14 acres — for purchase
and conservation, but the state might lower the threshold, he said.
"We are
keeping this very loose until we know what that threshold is," McCoy
said. "This is just to pick up those little things under there."
The state
promised to speed up the purchase of $93 million worth of sensitive
environmental lands in the Keys if the county passed a moratorium and
followed through with its environmental responsibilities to rein in
growth and upgrade sewer treatment systems.
The patches
outlined by Conaway on Wednesday were cut out of moratorium plans last
month and will most likely not be included in the Florida Forever
program.
County Mayor
Murray Nelson has said the county has $2 million in tourism tax revenue
that can be used to begin the purchases.
"I think this
goes along with us buying as much land as possible and preserving it
forever," Nelson said.
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