No more water, no more housing boom by gimleteye

At the Florida legislature in Tallahassee under the main tent: ways to protect Floridians from increases in property taxes based on soaring real estate values during the housing boom.

The front page of the Miami Herald reports that Nevada found ways of addressing similar taxpayer complaints in 2006.

Nevada and Florida share a lot in common. A propensity to speculation. Although Floridians have voted against gambling, both economies are strongly rooted in the attractions of climate and postponing the costs of growth.


Take water, for example.

The growth of Florida and Nevada is based on the premise that water will always be available, endlessly, from some source if not another.

The Las Vegas Valley gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado River. Florida’s cities, for the most part, get their water from aquifers as easily altered by drought conditions and burgeoning demand as the Colorado.

In February, the National Research Council issued a report that the Colorado River is likely to experience longer and more severe droughts that will be made even worse by the effects of global warming. The report cites research from 1983 suggesting that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius across the basin could reduce the river’s flow by almost 30 percent.

In Florida, rainfall is down 50 percent this year. Last year, the State of Florida warned Miami-Dade County that it would attach future water use permits to conservation measures, including water re-use, delicately dancing around the issue of building moratoria.

One of the key measures undertaken by local policy makers has been a multi-year, $3 million effort called the South Miami-Dade Watershed Study. It is likely the most technologically intensive and thorough watershed study ever created in the United States, and it is about to be killed by South Dade farmers and land speculators.

The purpose of the study is to reconcile available watershed budgets with what is necessary to protect Biscayne National Park's fragile water resources, and have enough water allocated to future growth.

These goals are not mutually exclusive, but they are to farmers and speculative land owners who want their turn on the carousel ride: a chance for the gold ring that some farmers grabbed during the latest, greatest housing boom to ever afflict Florida.

They are doing everything in their power to kill the South Dade Watershed Study and its recommendations that could address Florida’s central problem: postponing the costs of growth. Their allies are commissioners who face no consequences, in their own distant districts, for opposing the study and have benefited, vastly through campaign contributions from farming and development interests.

But the housing boom in Miami-Dade County is over. Caput. Our prediction: next year, homeowners’ chief complaint will be that the assessed values of Florida homes are far higher than the actual marketplace.

The high horse of the housing boom is now a hobby horse.

And still, their riders will swing into the County Chamber to kill the watershed study with all the gear of a medieval cavalry and the bravado and bluster of the Kingdom.