August 07, 2007
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2007/08/07/m1a_Grow_0807.html
By Robert P. King
After decades of presiding over explosive population growth, South Florida's water managers say they're starting to say no.
Exhibit A: Rural Hendry County, which is pursuing growth plans that could allow its population to expand more than 2 1/2 times by 2030. The staff of the South Florida Water Management District says state planners should reject the proposal, mainly because the county hasn't shown where it would get enough water to support more than 60,000 additional residents.
The district had similar criticisms earlier this year for the unsuccessful proposal to turn Briny Breezes into a splashy oceanfront resort. And last year it rebuffed Miami-Dade County's request for a huge increase in the water it pulls from the region's most depleted aquifer, casting doubt on the county's proposals to expand development.
"This is what we're doing now," district Executive Director Carol Wehle said. She said her agency is taking full advantage of the powers it got in 2005, when lawmakers said local governments must prove they'll have the water to support their growth plans.
The district's board is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to support the staff's position on Hendry County.
Wehle said the district can't tell cities and counties how much development to allow. But it can demand that they rely on water sources that won't harm the environment, even if that drastically drives up the costs of growth.
In Hendry County's growth proposal for 18,000 acres near LaBelle, the district wants to ban new septic tanks, force the construction of water and sewer lines, and require golf courses and subdivisions to irrigate with recycled waste water.
"If they can accomplish all that," Wehle said, "then it's appropriate growth."
Environmentalists said they welcome the new direction - if it proves genuine.
"I'll believe it when I see it," said Audubon Society activist Rosa Durando.
Joanne Davis, from the growth-management group 1000 Friends of Florida, said the state is long overdue in forcing development to match what nature can support.
"It may be too little too late, but somebody has to put their foot down and say no," she said.
Hendry County Planning Director Vince Cautero said his county will try to soothe the district's objections, even though he thinks the water managers are overstating the additional development that would occur. He said the county is trying to cope with development demands fueled by rising land prices and the widening of State Road 80.
"We've had many organizations and agencies object," he said. But he added, "The market came to us."
Disputes about water and growth are nothing new.
Lawmakers created the state's five water management districts in 1972, a year after drought prompted then-Gov. Reubin Askew to call for limits on growth. Supporters and critics alike predicted that the districts would wield almost dictatorial controls over development.
But it didn't work out that way. The combined population of Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties has shot up more than 280 percent since the early 1970s. By 2001, the district concluded that the region's main water source, the Everglades, already had suffered "significant" harm.
Water managers typically have said they can't tell local governments when and how to grow. But environmentalists have said the agency at least should criticize environmentally ruinous growth proposals instead of meekly sitting on the sidelines.
Under the 2005 law, the district has a stronger hand long before anyone applies for a water permit.
The law says cities' or counties' long-range growth plans must show where they will get their future water supplies, and those plans have to mesh with the district's conclusions about which sources have water available. If those sources will require additional plants or pipelines, the local government must show how it will pay for them.
The law leaves the final decision on the growth plans to the state Department of Community Affairs.
In comments about Briny Breezes' development plans, the district complained June 1 that developers wanted a nearly fourfold increase in drinking-water use. But the developers failed to show how exactly they arrived at that estimate, and they offered only skimpy notions of how they might pay for it, the district wrote.
In Hendry County, the district says the proposals would demand far more water than estimated. And it says the county wants to rely on aquifers that are being depleted, rather than turning to more-expensive-to-treat salty water from the Floridan Aquifer.
Water vs. growth
Hendry County wants to increase the growth allowed in an 18,000-acre area west and north of LaBelle. Objections from the South Florida Water Management District include:
• The growth could swell the county's 40,459-person population to more than 104,000, but the county "significantly underestimates" how much water those people will need.
• The county wants to draw the extra water from aquifers already in danger of being depleted. The district says future water supplies should come from the deep Floridan Aquifer, which is salty and needs expensive filtering.
• The district wants the county to require central water and sewer service in the growth area. Subdivisions and golf courses in the area should irrigate with recycled wastewater