Dance of the Reptiles by Carl Hiaasen Read Free Book Online Page B

wetlands in Florida have been obliterated since 1990. That was the year that the first President Bush unveiled a federal initiative called “no net loss.” The idea was that developers would be required to replace the pristine marshes and swamps that they destroyed.
    “It’s a huge scam,” Steve Brooker told the
Times
. For 15 years he reviewed wetlands permits for the Army Corps in Florida. “A make-believe program,” agreed Vic Anderson, who spent 30 years with the Corps.
    Basically, here’s how it is meant to work. Through a process known as mitigation, developers are allowed to drain and pave a wetland if they agree to re-create another one somewhere else.
    Unfortunately, constructing a shopping mall is much easier (and much more lucrative) than constructing an ecologically healthy swamp. Many of the artificially devised wetlands are nothing but glorified rain puddles.
    Not that the Army Corps would ever notice. To this day, the agency has no system for tracking the success or failure of mitigation projects. Usually, it’s content to take the developer’s word.
    According to the
Times
’s investigation, the feds approve more wetland destruction in Florida than in any other state.
    How easy is it to turn a marsh into asphalt and concrete? Between 1999 and 2003, the Corps approved more than 12,000 wetland destruction permits here.
    Number rejected: One.
    Agency officials say their job is not to “impede” development but, rather, to work with developers during the permitting process to minimize the project’s impact.
    Look around Florida and see what a swell job they’ve done.
    In Pensacola, a top Democratic fund-raiser named FredLevin and his brother were allowed to erect five 21-story condos on prime beach marshlands, despite the objections of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
    The mitigation was a flop. The man-made wetland was so feeble that it was destroyed by the first hurricane to blow through.
    Here’s how the “no net loss” policy really works: Developers call up their congressman or senator, to whose campaigns they’ve generously donated, and whine that the Army Corps is dragging its feet on a wetland permit. The congressman or senator promptly picks up the phone or fires off a letter, and magically, the developer’s permit is expedited.
    This scenario was documented in shameful detail by the
Times
. Both Republicans and Democrats (Sen. Bill Nelson, Rep. Alcee Hastings, even Everglades champion Bob Graham) have intervened to hasten the demise of a wetland.
    A classic example was the time in 1995 when then–U.S. Sen. Connie Mack chewed out Col. Terry Rice, then head of the Army Corps in Florida, for taking too long on a permit application from Florida Gulf Coast University.
    Plans for the new university called for removing 75 acres of wetlands near Fort Myers owned by Ben Hill Griffin III, the citrus heir and a heavyweight political donor. Griffin had offered the tract to the university and wanted to build a huge development around it. Not long after Mack’s angry phone call, Rice approved the wetlands destruction.
    Construction commenced, and soon three feet of water covered the site. The problem hasn’t gone away. Since FGCU opened, it’s been cited three times for illegally pumping water from its campus into nearby marshes.
    That’s what you get for building on a swamp, a long and greedy tradition here. Most of western Broward, includingthe whole community of Weston, was once wetlands that nurtured the Everglades.
    Which is why those seeking to dissolve the UDB in Miami-Dade aren’t terribly worried about the feds interfering with their plans later on. Shoma Homes, Lowe’s Home Improvement Centers, D. R. Horton—all have lobbyists who know exactly whom to call in Washington, D.C.
    No developer has more clout than Lennar Corp, which is itching to cram thousands of homes on 981 acres outside Florida City, along