Two #AudubonOfFlorida Legal Success Stories..."Agreement ends decade-long fight to preserve north Collier wetlands" in @naplesnews

By ERIC STAATS  


Wednesday, August 22, 2012  


http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/aug/22/Mirasol-develop-wetlands-north-collier-agreement/  


NORTH NAPLES — A longstanding fight between developers and environmental groups over saving key wetlands in a northern Collier County slough has come to an end. 

 

The final piece of the preservation puzzle fell into place when a coalition of five environmental groups reached a deal with landowner IM Collier Joint Venture over plans for Mirasol at the northwest corner of Immokalee Road and Collier Boulevard, the groups announced Tuesday. 

 

Mirasol came to epitomize a decade-long push to stop new subdivisions that developers proposed putting in the middle of a flowway the groups wanted to protect for the sake of nearby Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary and foraging habitat for endangered wood storks that nest there. 

 

Since 2006, the groups filed a string of lawsuits and administrative challenges over Mirasol and two other projects, Parklands and Saturnia Falls, that together would have taken a 1,200-acre bite out of wetlands in the Cocohatchee Slough. 

 

The groups came to a truce with G.L. Homes in 2010 over Parklands and Saturnia Falls after the developer agreed to cut back its development footprint and boost its wetlands preservation plans. The deal over Mirasol found similar common ground. 

 

"I think this is a good ecological outcome for the region," said Brad Cornell, policy advocate for the Collier County Audubon Society, one of the groups in the coalition.

Other groups involved were the National Wildlife Federation, Audubon of Florida, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and the Florida Wildlife Federation.

The groups were preparing to go back to court over Mirasol's new federal wetlands permit, issued in 2011 after a judge revoked an earlier version of the permit in 2009.

The deal averts another lawsuit and paves the way for IM Collier Joint Venture to sell the land for Mirasol to another partnership led by development company Taylor Morrison. Development is expected to start in 2013.

"We felt we could solve these issues if we put our heads together in a positive way and in the end we came up with a solution that was acceptable to everyone," said Dennis Gilkey, who has a minority interest in the new partnership and spearheaded negotiations with the groups.

Landowners are petitioning Collier County to amend its approvals for Mirasol to reflect the deal; state and federal permit modifications also are pending.

Mirasol, which will be renamed, is adding 80 acres to its 1,800-acre project, dropping one of two planned golf courses and building 1,121 units instead of the original 799 units, Gilkey said.

The new project still will destroy more than 550 acres of wetlands, but the project will preserve some 1,100 acres of wetlands.

The deal calls for a net increase of 170 acres of wetlands to be preserved on site and funds restoration of another 1,000 acres of off-site farm fields to the kind of shallow wetlands that are important for providing food to trigger wood stork nesting at Corkscrew. A decline in those wetlands has been blamed for wood storks not nesting at the sanctuary for five of the past six years.

In all, the settlements with G.L. Homes and IM Collier will protect 3,500 acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat in the Cocohatchee Slough, according to the groups' figures.

 

Case #2 -
 

Earlier this year, in Friedman/Starkman v. SFWMD, Audubon Florida supported the Defendant SFWMD through a brief amicus curiae.   In this case, Plaintiff landowners had filed suit against the SFWMD, claiming that they had lost nearly all value of their land and should be compensated for the value of their property.  The arguments in support of this claim were, among others, that their properties had been identified on maps showing potential future restoration projects and other property nearby had been purchased by the SFWMD from willing sellers.  There was also an attempt to set a new precedent in Florida for compensating landowners under a theory of “precondemnation blight.”  We felt strongly that establishing this cause of action in Florida would impact the ability or willingness for agencies and local governments to participate in proactive land use planning and made the decision to support the SFWMD. More information about the facts of the case can be found in the attached memo.

 

Recently, the 5th District Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court and ruled in favor of SFWMD.  The good news is that after some additional motions by the landowners, their motion for rehearing was denied and a mandate was issued effectively dismissing the appeal. 

 

Thank you for your support, that enables us to participate in this important matter and help make sure this case didn’t open a new door of “precondemnation blight” litigation in Florida that would have severely hindered the ability to proactively plan for future land conservation and ecosystem restoration projects.

"DEP moving into new areas of possible water quality controversy" in The Florida Current

Bruce Ritchie, 05/02/2012 - 04:04 PM

DEP is responsible for protecting the quality of Florida’s drinking water as well as its rivers, lakes, wetlands and springs. The Federal Clean Water Act requires states to publicly review and update their water quality standards in what is called a "triennial review." 

The department has scheduled hearings for later this month in West Palm Beach, Orlando and Tallahassee to consider its "human health criteria" involving exposure to chemicals through fish consumption.

DEP was conducting a similar review in 2008 before some environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state's lack of numeric limits for nitrogen and phosphorus. That lawsuit led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set limits for nitrogen and phosphorus in Florida waterways, which prompted DEP to adopt replacement rules.

"That just became all-consuming," said Drew Bartlett, director of DEP's Division of Environmental Assessment and Restoration. "Now that we put that to rest, we can shift those resources consumed by the numeric nutrient criteria back onto this issue. We decided to pick it straight right back up."

The Legislature waived approval of those rules in February and the state sent them to the EPA for review. Environmental groups including the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, the Florida Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club have a legal challenge pending at the Division of Administrative Hearings.

In 2009, the Clean Water Network petitioned the federal EPA to set human health criteria for fish consumption. Other environmental groups had sued in 1995, arguing that previous human health criteria were based on low fish consumption rates by Floridians.

DEP has conducted studies and determined that Floridians do eat more fish than those in other states, so proposed new human health criteria will have to reflect that, Bartlett said.

"It is going to become more stringent than it is currently on the books for all of those (pollution) parameters," he said.

Although Bartlett said DEP is moving forward as planned, Clean Water Network's Linda Young said her group has warned it will sue if DEP delays action again.

"(The federal) EPA has to make sure the criteria adopted are protective of human health when those fish are consumed," said Young, the group's director.

After the hearings from May 15-17, DEP hopes to adopt updated rules by the end of the year, Bartlett said.

The department also is proposing limits for nitrogen and phosphorus in estuaries along the Florida Panhandle. And the department will consider setting new requirements for dissolved oxygen, which affects the amount of pollution that can be discharged into waterways.

Florida's dissolved oxygen criteria were based on national criteria from studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, Bartlett said.

He said in more recent years, DEP has invested in a "huge" monitoring system in Florida to determine what dissolved oxygen conditions exist naturally in Florida. That science also will be presented at the workshops.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida is tracking the dissolved oxygen issue and has raised serious concerns with DEP, said Jennifer Hecker, the group's director of natural resource policy.

"Sometimes by changing the goal and standard you can create compliance," Hecker said. "It doesn't necessarily make anything better -- that is the concern. We want to see things truly improve. I think that is what Floridians want as well."

Young warned that industry groups are seeking to allow pollution to continue by reducing dissolved oxygen -- along with setting weak nitrogen and phosphorus limits and creating new designated uses for waterways with their own pollution limits.

Bartlett responded the science behind dissolved oxygen standard needs to be updated based on new science, just like with the nitrogen and phosphorus limits. And he said DEP will looking for feedback from the public at its upcoming workshops.

"We can't really do anything at DEP that is not truly and soundly rooted in the science," Bartlett said. "There is no other way to do it really."

Reporter Bruce Ritchie can be reached at britchie@thefloridacurrent.com.

via thefloridacurrent.com