Editorial - Ft. Myers News-Press
Protect local power, wetlands
Originally posted on April 14, 2007

When people start streamlining government, look out. Somebody’s looking to protect their income stream from meddling officials, who just may be meddling in the public interest.

That’s our reaction to a couple of pieces of legislation that would have the effect of crippling the home-rule power of local governments in two vital areas: rock mining and wetland protection.

We should urge lawmakers to vote down both bills, and are disappointed that our own Rep. Trudi Williams, R-Fort Myers, is sponsoring them. Lee County commissioners and the Florida Association of Counties have opposed both bills—and so should you.

The first, House Bill 7121, is seemingly designed to protect the supply of lime rock, sand and other materials vital to road building, and other construction as well. This is a legitimate concern. A Florida Department of Transportation study predicts road and construction demands will outstrip rock supplies in five to 10 years.

The sleeper in the House bill is a ban on county or city regulations preventing mining “where mining is a permissible use or on lands zoned or classified as mining lands as of March 1, 2007.” In other words, counties like Lee that want to regulate mining in the interest of water conservation or other purposes would have their home-rule power to do so savagely gutted. Land zoned for mining could not be rezoned to prohibit it, even if no mine exists there now, and regardless of the wishes of the public and their elected local representatives. One key area for rock mining in Lee County is the so-called DR/GR (density reduction/groundwater resource) in south county, designated for water conservation.

As rock resources tighten around the state, mining is going to become an ever hotter issue. This legislation would serve to keep your local government out of the picture, making it more likely, among other things, that Lee County could be strip-mined for the good of other areas.

Wetlands

The other bill, HB 957, purports to eliminate bureaucratic duplication in permitting for development of land with small wetlands on it. A recent amendment would require local governments that wish to have wetland regulations more stringent than those of the state to assume the regulatory costs now being borne by the state. This is aimed at the useful process by which local governments fill in what they perceive to be gaps in wetland protection.

The bottom line is that this legislation, which also aims to eliminate duplication between the state and federal governments, will make wetland development easier.

That’s not what we need. There may some insanities in the regulations. There usually are, especially when multiple layers of government are involved. But developers have done quite nicely despite that, thank you, and will continue to do so.

The problem in Florida is not how hard it is to develop land with wetlands, but how easy. We need more wetland protection. This bill would mean less.

Urge our leaders in Tallahassee to vote against HB 957, and against HB 7121, the rock mining bill.

Website provided by ImageGrafix - Computer and Network Systems - Site Hosting Solutions
© Copyright  2003 ImageGrafix. All Rights Reserved.