El Nuevo Herald Columnist, Daniel Shoer Roth, on the UDB Line. By Geniusofdespair

If you can read in Spanish go to this column in El Nuevo Herald by Daniel Shoer Roth: Adicción al más en época de sobredosis. If you can't read in Spanish, here is a bad google translation of the column by Shoer Roth about moving the Urban Development Boundary, if anyone has a better translation send it along and I will replace this version:

Addiction to more time of overdose
DANIEL SHOER ROTH

This is the fable of a Miami with misguided priorities.

We live in times of endemic drought, the degradation of our lungs called Everglades; of budget cuts resulting in fewer public services, congestion in which we are increasingly crowded, a school system with overcrowded schools ...

None of this is taken into account when national retail chains wealthy businessmen and developers, backed by a legion of lobbyists with strong connections in the county government, decide that it is vital to expand the urban area of the utmost sensitivity to environmental lands to continue constructing deals.

Addiction is more and more and more ...

Despite opposition from the Department of Planning and Zoning Miami and the Department of Community Affairs of Florida, the Committee of the county, stubbornly, is about to give the green light Tuesday to four controversial projects that seek to push the Border Urban Development (UDB) to the west, at the expense of water resources and agricultural land. What is more important for the majority, we have seen a collapse in the quality of life, more houses and buildings, a megatienda or water, fruits and vegetables key to survive?

That question is for you, Natacha Seijas, and other commissioners. Behind the facade of redemptive manatees, hides a champion of urban development.

This time, some politicians and greedy developers are shown to destroy 178 acres of wetlands and plantations with outdated axiom that 1000 people moving to the State of the Sun newspaper. Apparently, a few of our elected officials has reached the ears of thousands of families and communities of retirees are going to Florida by the exorbitant property taxes and insurance against hurricanes, two insignia of the governor Charlie Crist that resulted in a political thicket and a monstrous deception to voters.

An exhaustive analysis of the Department of Community Affairs at the beginning of 2006, which objected to a score of proposals including those that will be presented before the Committee, says that changes in land use are `` inconsistent with the current policy of Miami County Dade [established in the Master Development Plan (CDMP)] requiring coordination between future uses of land, water availability and capital improvements necessary.''

It concludes,''within the UDB is enough land [available] to meet residential demand in the coming 15 years.'' Later relates to the commercials. And all that was written before it was desinflara the real estate market, which has left a barrage of empty units.

The government argues that the county has since adopted an ambitious treatment system recycling water that cost $ 1600 million -- will have to bathe closing their eyes and mouth, and twice boil water for drinking tea in the whole irradiation chemistry that will be the subject of the precious liquid -- even if that has been encouraged by their efficiency, it will be ready within the next seven years. By then, the water account of the residents is going to triple in price.

While this complex procedure is ready, to survive a terrible drought, as administrators Water District of Southern Florida will get worse next year and beyond, for the damage that humanity has caused to the environment. Moreover, whenever the buildings are close to the wetlands -- and even beyond -- and attacked the plantations, increases the cost of land in derredores. This is how in seven years, the Plan of Everglades Restoration, backward alarmingly, it has risen from $ 7800 million to $ 19700 million, according to the Office of Accounting from the federal government.

I smell something sinful in this expansion UDB, that if the Commission approves duty go first to Tallahassee for a final verdict in April next year.

One proposal, for example, is Lowe's Home requesting 21.6 acres away from the border. However, these new lands adjacent to the chain owns a land empty of 16 acres inside the UDB. Investigué, and the two Lowe's stores in Miami-Dade that there are 13.3 and 14.1 acres respectively. So why this new required 37.6?

''In extenderte westward need more police, more fire, more schools and more services that the county can not fund. Traffic worsens because there is no public transportation, and then there are more people drive longer distances to $ 3.30 per gallon,''I elaborated Patricia Wade, an environmental activist in South Dade is a farmer and biochemistry. `` Who is benefiting? We must stop the madness.''