| Corps of Engineers Pressures
Homeowners to Sell by Threatening to Condemn Their Land
June 20, 2003 By National Center for Public Policy Research 3712 North Broadway - PMB 279 Chicago, IL 60613 773-857-5086 Chris Burger CNSNews.com Special (Editor's Note: The following is the 74th of 100 stories regarding government regulation from the book Shattered Dreams, written by the National Center for Public Policy Research. CNSNews.com will publish an additional story each day.) An 8.5-square-mile area along the eastern edge of the Everglades National Park encompasses an unincorporated community of several thousand people -- mostly of Cuban descent -- who live on small, family owned farms. The community contains about 320 homes. Residents grow fruit, vegetables and flowers and raise pigs, goats, chickens and horses. A proposed Army Corps of Engineers' levee and seepage canal would require the taking of about 100 homes and would bisect the community. In 1989, Congress passed the Everglades National Park Protection and Expansion Act. It requires that the Corps, which controls the flow of fresh water in the Everglades area, "improve water deliveries into" the park. If these changes adversely affect the area, the Act requires the Corps to "construct a flood protection system for that portion of presently developed land within such area." The Corps' original 1992 plan sought construction of a levee on the western edge of the area. This plan would have protected all residents of the area and not condemned any homes. In 2002, the Corps, along with the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), decided on an alternative plan that would put the canal and levee right through the middle of the community, forcing residents out of all homes in the canal's path and north and west of the canal. The Corps pressured the affected homeowners to sign "offers to sell" by asserting that the Corps had the authority to condemn their land if they did not voluntarily sell. Some homeowners, thinking they had no other choice, sold their land to the Corps. Seven homeowners, with the support of a local organization, the 8.5 Square Mile Legal Defense Foundation, filed a lawsuit against the Corps. On July 5, 2002, a U.S. District Court ruled that the Corps' new plan violated the 1989 Everglades Act. The ruling halted the Corps' plan to flood a portion of the area. The Corps returned to Congress to ask for the funds and authority to condemn homes there. The U.S. House of Representatives has declined to provide funding for the plan, but the Senate has added funding to an appropriations bill that must be reconciled with the House bill. In 1999, DOI officials testified before a House Subcommittee that "acquisition of the area is not a requirement for restoration of Everglades National Park." The Corps' own Supplemental Environmental Impact Study shows the original 1992 plan meets the ecological goals of Everglades restoration at a cost of $50 million less and with less delay than the new plan. Area resident Madeleine Fortin says: "Congress ordered the Corps of Engineers to provide my community with flood protection, but it looks like Congress is no longer in control of its federal agencies. There is no environmental benefit to be derived by the destruction of my community." Sources: Madeline Fortin, Hunton & Williams, Washington Times http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200306\NAT20030620b.html |