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.
Since when should government be deciding how people use their property? That isn't balancing interests, it is controlling property value.
Maybe I know something about Sustainable Development that you don't. I was on the very first Agenda21 roundtable in the US in 1994. I promise you, the process is totally corrupt, unconstitutional, and, at least so far as many "open government" and "public disclosure" laws are concerned, illegal. Sustainable Development in Florida, Smart Growth in Portland, or anywhere else for that matter follows the same blueprint. If you want to learn more about how poorly the results of the system were in Portland, go HERE. I suggest you buy and read Mr. O'Toole's book. But then, perhaps you should also read mine.
I invented a free-market means to "balance" any competing claim on property that are actually just to rural property owners. It allows them to market the natural attributes of their property. It is FAR more sophisticated than anything the environmentalists propose. If you check the Reviews of the book you will note development interests, wildlife biologists, foresters, timbermen, and regulators are speaking nothing but praise for it. Maybe you should be a little more circumspect.
Sustainable Florida is precisely that, and it doesn't take eminent domain. All it takes is bureaucratic regulations.
Really, do your homework.
You haven't a clue what I propose and are willing to make cases based upon pure supposition. That doesn't say much for the integrity of your arguments, as your positions on education have so aptly demonstrated.
No, you're just another brainwashed socialist teacher, incapable of learning (just like Eska). You only answer the parts of my arguments that you can use and accused me of being against parks as if I don't want space for Nature. You paint yourself a subjective strawman for the purpose and won't read the reviews. You have no idea how real estate scams using public money work, because for now, you think that they benefit you. When they start to close Yellowstone and Yosemite against you, maybe you'll start to figure it out (that's already starting BTW).
We had lost or badly damaged houses in previous hurricanes, but we always rebuilt, at our own expense because we KNEW we could lose it all in any hurricane.
After Carla, and because of beach errosion (which rarely happened before the "cut," explained below), we were forbidden to rebuild because the envior-nazis are afraid we would "damage the environment!" It didn't matter that those houses had stood on that property since the early 1920's, or that they were a major source of income for us. Or that we kept them in tip-top shape, or that we respected the beach and kept it clean for the people who rented from us.
We fought the idiots who wanted to cut a pass (cut or canal) less than two miles west from our property that connected the Gulf Of Mexico with East Bay which was supposedly going to help fishing in the area. We knew it would only cause beach errosion, but even in the 1940's the enviro-nazis had the power to ignore private property rights in the name of "saving" trash fish. They won, we lost, and in twenty years we had lost over 500 feet of our pristine beach.
Without that buffer, hurricane Carla had a direct path to the homes that fronted the Gulf and whipped them out. Not just our houses, but all the beach front houses for twenty miles or more to the east of us.
Today, appoximately 900 feet or more of our property is under water. The portion that is above the high water mark is deemed "protected," and we are forbidden to rebuild on it.
However, even though 85 to 90% of the land is under water, we are expected to pay taxes on all of it.
No, we, the property owners knew more about our land and the effects nature had on it than the little bureaucrats miles away, but they had the power to overide experience and common sense, thus the beachfront property owners lost everything.
The same thing happened in Kalmath Falls, now Florida, and along the Missouri River. In other words, to hell with common sense and experience. Screw the property owners who are supposed to have the rights to the land they own to do with as they wish, right or wrong. Save a trash fish or bug or bird that may be endangered!
There's the phrase: "MAY be endangered." The enviro-nazies always fail to mention that the fish, bug, bird or animal may NOT be endangered and may well be able to adapt.
I realize my post #79 happened in Texas and is far from the Florida situation, but it may illustrate just how the enviro-nazis operate. Enviro-nazis do not want you to have property rights.
BTW, I still own the mineral rights to this property, a rarity nowadays. There is oil under it. Does anyone reading this thread think we would ever be allowed to drill for it?
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