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State and county- Don't let new deal gloss over crucial fixes
Monroe County
Mayor Murray Nelson returned from Tallahassee in triumph this week,
broker of and victor in a new deal with the state that will increase the
number of building permits in the Keys for the first time in a decade.
"A new dawn
has risen over Monroe County and the state of Florida," Nelson
proclaimed before Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet members.
He's right. It
is a new day when the state approves increased development to Monroe
County, based on some promises on both sides and a short-term protection
for some of the remaining habitat.
Environmentalists are frustrated after years of waiting for the state
and county to implement the Carrying Capacity Study, a problematic
process but one with at least one solid finding — that the natural
terrestrial areas of the Keys have exceeded their ability to withstand
further development.
Then there's
hurricane evacuation. Remember hurricane evacuation?
The ability to
evacuate the Keys in 24 hours was the basis for the Rate of Growth
Ordinance, or ROGO, the growth management scheme that has governed our
lives since the early 1990s. Back in the early 1990s, the county and
state calculated how many more units could be built before meeting that
deadline — and then proceeded to give out all of those units within the
first 10 years of a 20-year comprehensive plan.
How the county
and cities in the Keys have continued to permit development beyond that
initial allotment has never been satisfactorily explained.
The new deal
between the Keys and the state undoubtedly has some positive elements.
One of the most important is the state's plan to send a team of
land-buying specialists to the Keys. The state's commitment of
significant amounts of money to buy environmentally sensitive land is
important, but all the money in the world is useless unless there are
people on the ground to make the deals happen.
Also important
is the commitment on the part of the county — and Islamorada and
Marathon — to bond for water quality improvements. This move is long
overdue.
All over the
country, people pay significant amounts of money for sewer and
stormwater systems. As one of the nation's special places, the Keys
deserve state and national help with these issues, and we are receiving
it. But we also need to do our share, hopefully financed with the sales
tax revenues provided largely by our plentiful visitors.
We can only
hope that all the good will exhibited in the Cabinet chambers this week
continues as the state and county grind through the details of writing
the rules that will implement this deal.
In a letter
last week written to "friends of the environment" along with local
media, Nelson wrote that "we must not focus on the past or place blame
for things not accomplished." Fair enough. But the current county
commission — and Cabinet — cannot expect all of us to suddenly develop
amnesia and forget the Keys' long and sorry history of unwise
development — the history that made us an Area of Critical State Concern
in the first place, that led a state hearing officer to find, back in
1996, that we had exceeded our carrying capacity. It is this history
that has resulted in degradation of our natural resources and endangers
the tourism economy that depends on a healthy ecosystem.
We hope that,
at the very least, the new rules will tie new permits to the fulfillment
of promises that are part of this deal — bonding for wastewater, land
acquisition and protection of habitat. We hope that the highest priority
for any new development is for affordable housing and that if tough
choices need to be made, that the county, cities and state will protect
those units first.
We also hope
that our leaders in Tallahassee and at home will ask themselves how
future development will affect the Keys, both for the natural
environment and the humans who live and work here. |
