Collier County Commission set to vote on future use of Everglades Jetport, today ... by gimleteye

I don't like doing it: getting in a car and driving across Tamiami Trail to spend a whole day in Collier County to sit through a county commission agenda on changes to the local growth management plan, in order to comment against a plan that would allow off-highway vehicles into the Everglades adjacent to the old Everglades Jetport site. The change-- scarcely noted by the public-- was requested by the Parks and Recreation Department and Miami-Dade Aviation, probably egged on by county commissioners in Miami-Dade who delight in antagonizing citizens who have made it difficult for them to change the Urban Development Boundary in West Dade to satisfy their campaign contributors. (Cf. Pepe Diaz, Natacha Seijas, Joe Martinez, et al.)

But I am going to do it. I volunteered to be conservation chair for the group founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Friends of the Everglades who forty years ago formed around the battle (successful!) to stop the Everglades Jetport. In an email, Joe Browder-- an Everglades activist who was deeply involved in the Jetport issue at the time-- wrote, "The only responsible action now is for the U.S. to condemn the jetport site, and make it part of Big Cypress National Preserve... Dade County is displaying such contempt for the values of Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve as they relate to the old jetport site that it is clear that the county cannot be trusted to manage the land in ways that are consistent with the National Park Service's responsibilities. Given Dade County's earlier proposals for oil drilling and rock mining, their discussions with the Colliers about oil development, and their failure to develop an ORV proposal that provides even minimal protection for Big Cypress National Preserve, it's pretty clear what Dade County is really doing: cooperating with the Colliers to develop an industrial and commercial center at the jetport site, to help provide an economic base for the Collier's plans for extensive, panther-threatening housing development in the Big Cypress."

There is more. Development interests in Miami-Dade who want to push the Urban Development Boundary past Krome Avenue, like Rodney Barreto, Sergio Pino, the directors of US Century Bank and investors in the massive development called Parkland, want to build a constituency for more development, more people, more motorized access into the Everglades. They might even put a Lowe's Home Improvement right at the edge of the UDB, willing to fund another incursion against the Everglades. What a great plan: get a CDMP amendment passed two hours from Miami so practically no one from Miami will be involved and then take the battle to Tallahassee. Another fine example where Amendment 4, Florida Hometown Democracy, would help: if voters were educated and had a chance to decide if it makes sense to put off road vehicles in the middle of the Everglades, how do you think they would vote?