The Great Destroyers include Florida International University ... by gimleteye

FIU, not long ago, was at the very edge of the creeping urbanization of Miami-Dade County. By the time I became involved as an environmental activist in the 1980's, it occurred that the location of FIU was extraordinarily poor from the point of view of protecting the Everglades. Then it was in the middle of nowhere, just like Kendall had been only a few decades earlier. Although Bob Graham-- champion of the Everglades-- was a US senator and despite the fact that he was a big supporter of FIU, I was skeptical.

For almost fifteen years, FIU has hosted the South Florida Ecosystem restoration effort. Dozens of Everglades researchers and scientists and policy makers have headquartered at FIU. Now FIU -- that lent the US Century Bank name to its sports stadium-- joins the ranks of the Great Destroyers: pulling to move the Dade County Youth Fair into public lands once purchased for environmental purposes. The Bird Drive Basin, it is called. The Youth Fair could easily be relocated to the urban core, where services already exist and where the need for economic attractors is greatest. But no: the plan of the Great Destroyers is to push steadily westward into the Everglades. Never mind that promises are broken. Hey, they did it to the Native Americans, why not the environment?

The controversial effort by FIU and Miami Dade lobbyists in Tallahassee has been shuffled deep into the water management budget conforming bill, SB 1986: "Notwithstanding chapters 253 and 259, the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund shall lease to the board of trustees of FIU, as managing agency, for no consideration and for a term of 99 years, approximately 350 acres of land on the northeast corner of the Bird Drive Everglades Basin located south of SW 8th Street in Miami-Dade County."

It is shameful FIU is behind this midnight move in the legislature. Talk about shifting baselines! The Great Destroyers are hard at work in Tallahassee. Sierra Club informs us that there are two elected leaders who could help pull this measure out of the morass that the Destroyers have hid it in:


Senator Jack Latvala: District 16
St. Petersburg
Phone: (850) 487-5075
Email latvala.jack.web@flsenate.gov


Senator Paula Dockery: District 15
Lakeland
Phone: (850) 487-5040
Email: dockery.paula.web@flsenate.gov

Ask Sen. Latvala and Dockery to use their influence to stop the inclusion of the Bird Drive Basin/FIU land swap in Section 5 of SB 1986, the Ag and Natural Resources/Gen Govt Appropriations conforming bill that is supposed to deal only with Water Management Districts. The same bill has also been amended to require WMDs to purchase signs paid for by commercial advertizers in Section 6. These are substantive provisions that have nothing to do with the budget and that do not belong in conforming bills.

(Mayor Gimenez's letter to 2 Senators on this issue.)