Posted on 07/07/2002 12:42:50 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
"The Wildlands Project," published in Wild Earth in 1992, chose a map of Florida to illustrate its concept of core wilderness areas, connected by corridors of wilderness, all surrounded by "buffer zones," managed for "conservation objectives." What are conservation objectives? Reed Noss, author of "The Wildlands Project," says "... the collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans."
The humans who live in South Florida are seeing the needs of non-human populations being given priority over the property rights and livelihoods of the people who live there. The entire Everglades is shown on the Wildlands map as a core wilderness area, surrounded by buffer zones that reach from Miami to Key West.
CERP – the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan – is the name used to describe 52 projects to transform South Florida into the Wildlands project's vision of how the state ought to be.
The initiative was launched by environmentalists who convinced the politicians that the Everglades has been destroyed, and must be restored to save biodiversity in the ecosystem.
Among the organizations that are promoting the restoration project are: the Nature Conservancy, which received more than $136 million in federal grants between 1997 and 2001; the Audubon Society, recipient of $10 million in federal grants during the same period; and the World Wildlife Fund, which has received more than $70 million in federal grants.
The Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society funded the writing of "The Wildlands Project," according to its author, Reed Noss.
Politicians, however, depend on votes and money from industry, as well as from environmental organizations, so the plan necessarily included input from the business community.
When the plan finally came together, it was supposed to achieve three equal priorities: expand water supplies for South Florida's exploding population; control water flows and prevent flooding; and provide sufficient water flows to restore the Everglades. This tenuous agreement was the basis on which President Clinton and Gov. Jeb Bush launched the $7.8 billion project on Dec. 11, 2000.
From day one, the project was in trouble. While the U.S. Corps of Engineers is the agency with overall responsibility, there are several other federal agencies, state agencies and county agencies involved – all with turf to protect and agendas to advance. Riding herd on all these agencies, is a network of environmental organizations, each with their own interests and agendas. Then comes the powerful industries that employ people and pay taxes. At the bottom of the list are the land owners – those who are most directly affected by the restoration plan.
At the moment, everyone is unhappy. The environmentalists are threatening to withdraw support if higher priority is not assigned to Everglades restoration. Scientists within the implementing agencies have no idea whether the plan will work. And the landowners are finally organizing to say "enough is enough."
According to an extensive report in the Washington Post, Stuart J. Appelbaum, the Army Corps of Engineers man in charge, says "We have no idea if this will work." The EPA's South Florida director says of the project, "It's falling apart before my eyes." And Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, Bob Gasaway, says "I don't see a shred of evidence that all this money will help the environment."
Shannon Estenoz, an engineer for the World Wildlife Fund, says he is getting angrier by the day and thinks his organization's folks may have been "suckers" for having supported the CERP.
All these problems with the CERP may be dwarfed by the trouble that is now brewing in the Florida swamp. The land owners are getting tired of seeing their property flooded, or condemned and taken, or devalued by the threat of future projects.
Homeowners associations, property-rights groups and legal-defense funds have sprung up all across South Florida. Edmund W. Antonowicz, secretary of the 15,000 Coalition, fired off a letter to President Bush, urging him to step in and prevent the massive land grabs that are going on. Madeleine Fortin's Legal Defense Foundation sued the Corps of Engineers, charging that the Corps lacked legislative authority to condemn land outside the original "footprint" authorized in 1989. A preliminary ruling finds in favor of the land owners.
These efforts have attracted the attention of the Paragon Foundation in Alamogordo, N.M., which sent Jay Walley, to meet with more than 40 representatives of area organizations in Homestead on June 29. The meeting produced a skeletal plan to create a broad coalition to guide a national effort to stop the erosion of private property rights in South Florida, and restore some semblance of sanity to the CERP.
As you can see from the quotes above, there is no guarantee that it will work for the Everglades, indeed there is increasing doubt. They would do better maintaining what they have. St. Augustine grass and melaleuca will destroy the everglades no matter how much land they have unless the Corpse and the State get their act together. In short, none of this effort will matter ecologically.
There's something very curious if not telling in your line there.
WTF kind of an elitist response is this? What are you saying, that people got what they deserve because they bought property in Golden Gate? I suppose they should expect their government and the pinko orgs it funds to make their lives miserable and destroy their nest egg? You know nothing about Golden Gate Estates, 99% of it is dry and the other 1% is only wet during the rainly season.
The last time I drove by Bonita Bay they looked like they were doing just fine. They are making so much money they can barely fit in all into their truckloads on their way to the banks.
You didn't read my post. If you did you would have gathered that Bonita Bay wasn't the developer that was stomped into the ground, it was the private individual that sold out to them that had his business and life ruined by these evil pigs, only to have the biggest developer in the area (Bonita Bay) continue the project exactly as he had.
Sorry m'am, many of us don't get the warm and fuzzy feeling you do when our elected officials are posing for photo ops with these facists.
Of course they do. It will make prices rise and put them in control of the "patronage for permits" control loop. Real estate manipulators love that.
Summer, I did a thirty year study, of rural land conversion to residential development, for a book on this topic. You are out of your league.
The eminent domain thing he did was great. I DO live here, I know.
On the reverse side of your argument, those people you talk about could say that everything Governor Bush does is wonderful in your eyes, no matter how ruinous the policy.
Tell me, are you capable of standing up and saying "this is just wrong" on any issue? These enviral policies are literally ruining people's lives.
The timberland owner who holds an amount of acreage beneath that upper bound that is the prime target of speculative takeovers. These people also hold those parcels, most affected by the current changes in zoning laws. What might explain some of the heat on Roger Burch is that he is effectively removing raw material from a tightly controlled, tract-to-acreage conversion market, by maintaining its use as economically productive timberland.SourceWe'll call this little scenario, "The Push":
1. Rezone tracts with future acreage potential to large minimum divisions. The price of those tracts will be depressed by the reduction in their development potential.
2. Big landowners buy timberland, log it to pay for it, and wait.
3. When the time is right, they log it again, develop it, and sell baronies.
4. The County puts up token resistance, justifies new zoning further afield, and environmental laws to prevent "that" from happening again.
5. The new zoning and environmental laws depress the resource value of new tracts and thus the price. The anointed buy the tracts and do it again or force their competitors into selling the property as parkland, thus raising the value of adjacent parcels.
One has to wonder if there were politicians out there clever enough to realize that they could serve the developers, the antidevelopment activists, and the environmentalists, all in one policy swoop. It all seemed so plausible, repetitive, and ubiquitous.
Consider a contemporary example: In 1999, the County banned commercial timber operations on SU zoned land, including large tracts with residential potential not limited to one house per 40 acres, as are TPZ. There is, thus, pressure to sell these tracts because of an unsustainable cash flow (big taxes, no harvest), unless they convert the zoning to TPZ (the next larger designation with but one residence per parcel). Control of that designation is at the sole discretion of the Planning Department. After sufficient delays and harassment to force the requisite number of sales, is the next step the "token resistance to development" part?
The decision, whether the physical attributes of a site could support a cluster of homes, or whether a site is unsuitable for construction at all, depends upon the individual physical circumstances more than property lines or County planner's zoning map, no matter how many "planning overlays" it has. The problem is that a civic management system simply cannot organize itself for an appropriate synthesis of all individual attributes, because of its demotivating structure and criteria subject to political interpretation.
The temptation to play God with other people's property is endemic to democracy because it is a way to acquire the control of wealth without paying for it. It is a personally gratifying thing to do. This disease particularly afflicts those we elect or hire into civic bureaucracy, no matter how well intentioned. A planner supposedly has no personal stake in decisions other than personal ideology, continued employment, promotions... unless there is graft involved, or acting under verbal orders of decision-makers... but that would be unheard of, wouldn't it?
Is it any wonder that our noted "anti-development" Supervisor, a man with an unchallenged reputation as a leader in protection of The Environment, came from a family of long-term residents of the County that had made a killing in real estate? Perhaps he really believes that he was protecting the County from those outside interests. Perhaps he and his friends agreed that what he did was the "right" thing, but whom did those measures benefit? Although there are certainly many happy owners of personal baronies, and a few very happy investors, the policy also made entry level housing unaffordable for many of his constituents. Guess what he plans to do about that?
[Snip (several pages)]
We'll call this one, "The Squeeze":
1. Rezone suburban lots with urban potential to a larger minimum size.
2. The owners of "worth-less" lots get to hold the bag and pay the taxes.
3. The County recognizes the "urban sprawl" and circumscribes the area by zoning "greenbelts."
4. Prices of residential housing rise due to a lack of available acreage.
5. The big landowners wait for the market to develop and buy the "worth-less" lots for the less that they are "worth."
6. The County recognizes the "housing shortage" and rezones the minimums for "in-fill."
7. The property, now worth a lot, gets developed, and the County rakes in additional taxes.
Now that those "worth-less" lots are worth lots, why didn't the bag-holders keep them?
8. To produce new lots, use environmental and zoning laws to require modifications to building codes that the current class of owners cannot afford. To take the dirt, condemn the property. Sell it to whom?
One has to wonder if there were politicians out there, clever enough to realize that they could serve the developers, the anti-development activists, and the environmentalists, all in one policy swoop. It all seemed so plausible, repetitive, and ubiquitous.
Is it any wonder that our noted "anti-development" Supervisor, a man with an unchallenged reputation as a leader in protection of The Environment, came from a family of long-term residents of the County that had made a killing in real estate? Perhaps he really believes that he was protecting the County from those outside interests. Perhaps he and his friends agreed that what he did was the "right" thing, but whom did those measures benefit? Although there are certainly many happy owners of personal baronies, and a few very happy investors, the policy also made entry level housing unaffordable for many of his constituents. Guess what he plans to do about that?
No wonder.
In our neck of the woods, the mightiest of real estate owners have championed the transfer of land care from private farmers to government agents such as The Nature Conservancy, ostensibly to conserve the enivronment and stop development, we are led to believe.
Yet the objective is to both support the plan, as well as fund the transfer of properties by way of taxpayers' dollars flowing through said government agents such as The Nature Conservancy. In the co-mingling of comittee-dom administering all this, it is understood that the afore-said "mightiest" real estate supporters of the plan ... shall have the government contracts for farming the land.
They will farm, they will sell, they will get a return on their investment, and they will pay no taxes.
While the greens believe they have stamped out human life on these lands, they enjoy "No Development Parties" at the very large estate(s) of the mightiest who now farm the land.
You may think this jades the greens, but no, because they are happy in the re-arrangment of labor, toward communism from private property rights. They witness the former farmers as now at the bottom of the totem pole, while the farm-townies become government workers on the government farms with government benefits. The left's assumes that eventually, the mightiest will get their just desserts; one step at a time, an all that Mao-ism.
The townies ... well, they voted for all this, wanting very much to improve their lot, so to speak. The ex-farmers are regarded as near-criminals for their selfish subsidies over the years as well as using their abundance as the "inclusive wealthy bio-terrorists" wielding over the heads of the earth's poor and hungry the fear that they will go hungry should they become communists, and America cuts off the grain.
In other words, do not bite the hand that feeds --- is something which the left seeks to control; and investors are for it(!); indeed they are desparate for something to invest in and foresee the near-post office operation of our formerly independent grocers, and the investment prospects.
Which grocery chains will hold out for independence?
Which grocery chains will buckle and bid for government contracts?
Well, you'll know that eventually by "the 'ttude" of the workers in the checkout line; you'll think you are at the post office.
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