2 local projects among those announced by governor

 

 

(Note: Think Global, ACT Local, is in action here. There's nothing 'local' about The Wildlands Project. The catchy name -- Acceler8 -- doesn't detract from the fact that, contrary to such articles, Jesse Hardy is NOT a 'holdout'. Jesse is a homeowner. Jesse owns his own home and his own property. There is nothing involved in using eminent domain against him that is constitutional/legal. Stealing his home and land when he has repeated, over and over and over, that it is NOT for sale, at any price -- and STEALING it to take Control of all the area's natural resources and NOT 'for the public good' at all -- is still THEFT.)

 

October 15, 2004

 

By Eric Staats emstaats@naplesnews.com

 

Naples Daily News

 

Naples, Florida

 

http://www.naplesnews.com

 

To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@naplesnews.com

 

Two Southwest Florida water projects are part of a plan unveiled Thursday to try to speed Everglades restoration.

Governor Jeb Bush announced the plan, dubbed Acceler8, at a Palm Beach County wildlife refuge on the edge of the Everglades.

Under the plan, a significant break from a 2000 federal-state agreement on Everglades restoration, Florida would take a lead role by pumping $1.5 billion into eight projects to be built by 2011 across South Florida, in some cases 10 years ahead of schedule.

The plan takes in the restoration of Southern Golden Gate Estates in eastern Collier County and a proposed reservoir on 11,000 acres of Hendry County farmland south of the Caloosahatchee River.

Of the two, Acceler8 will give the biggest boost to the reservoir project, which until Thursday was a project in search of money, said Ernie Barnett, the director of ecosystem restoration for the state Department of Environmental Protection. ernie.barnett@dep.state.fl.us or 850-488-4892

The $400 million project will provide a place for water managers to store water released from Lake Okeechobee to keep towns and farms from flooding.

The releases carry huge pulses of freshwater down the river, upsetting the balance of saltwater and chasing away or killing marine animals and plants such as seagrasses.

"It will dramatically reduce the frequency of those occurrences," Barnett said.

He said the river also will get help from another reservoir project, planned for south of Lake Okeechobee and targeted by Acceler8.

Acceler8 will not provide all the water storage the South Florida Water Management District says is needed in the Caloosahatchee River basin.

The reservoir would hold up to 52 billion gallons of water, but the basin needs almost 72 billion gallons of water storage capacity, according to district figures.

Steve Bortone, a marine biologist with the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, said the reservoir is needed but he worries about unintended consequences. sbortone@sccf.org or 239-395-4617

He said the reservoir probably will become a fishing spot, which could complicate decisions about when to release water into the river.

One theory goes that, without releases from Lake Okeechobee, polluted runoff from urbanizing areas along the river will linger longer and cause problems of its own.

"We might be creating a sort of nuisance out of this thing," Bortone said.

He said he hopes questions about operation of the reservoir can be answered before the reservoir opens under the accelerated timetable.

Construction wasn't scheduled to start until 2011, but the new schedule puts the start of work in 2008. It would be finished by 2011, under the new schedule.

Acceler8 doesn't do much acceleration when it comes to the restoration of Southern Golden Gate Estates, which already was on a faster track.

The project seeks to turn the abandoned subdivision back to nature by ripping out 290 miles of roads and plugging canals so water will flow more naturally to the estuaries of the Ten Thousand Islands.

Bush broke ground on a first phase of the project in 2003, and the DEP earlier this month signed off on the rest of the project, a move that enables the state to move ahead without having to wait for Congress to authorize money for it.

The restoration, which has been in the talking stages since the 1980s, wasn't scheduled to be finished until 2010. The new schedule puts that at 2009.

Florida already was budgeting money for Southern Golden Gate Estates, but the new plan provides more solid assurances that the restoration will get the $156 million it will take to build it, said Collier County Audubon Society environmental policy advocate Brad Cornell. millercornell@mindspring.com or 239-643-7822

"We need all the help we can get to get that project done," he said. "We've had too many unnecessary delays."

Property rights advocates, worried that the project will worsen flooding in Northern Golden Gate Estates, have voiced worries that the project is moving ahead too quickly and without adequate public input.

Despite a massive buyout that has put 19,000 parcels in public hands in Southern Golden Gate Estates, the DEP faces fights with holdouts Jesse Hardy and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians.

Barnett, at the DEP, said the accelerated schedule does not mean the state is planning to flood Hardy or the tribe off their land[s].

The Miccosukee Tribe has raised concerns that the state, in its rush to build Southern Golden Gate Estates, will short-circuit federal environmental reviews.

The tribe joined skeptical environmental groups Thursday in making the same complaint about the rest of Bush's new plan.

"The details aren't there about how they're going to do this," said tribe spokeswoman Joette Lorion. 305-281-0429

Copyright 2004, Naples Daily News.