Hurricane Warning

Hurricane Irma may have largely missed our immediate area, but the brutally-intense 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season should have Manatee County thinking long and hard about ways that future development might compound the challenges of extreme weather.

For starters, as much of the county attempted to evacuate the most vulnerable areas–25,000 residents were sheltered at county facilities alone–it made a strong case that densely developing inside of coastal high hazard areas, which would put thousands of additional cars onto roads that already lack the capacity to efficiently facilitate large-scale evacuations, is dangerously irresponsible.

We have also seen that failing to properly consider the effect of new development on existing communities can lead to calamity. Residents of the Center Lakes community in southwest Manatee County saw their entire neighborhood submerged in several feet of water following the heavy rains produced by the tail of Hurricane Harvey in late August. Three days later, the water had still failed to subside.

Meanwhile, their neighbors in the newly-constructed Fiddler’s Creek and Riomar developments sat high and dry. In a vacuum, it makes sense to build up elevations for new construction in order to remove the threat of floods. However, when you take vacant land that has historically soaked up water from surrounding areas, build it up, and pave over most of the soil, the runoff will inevitably flow to and collect at lower elevations. Suddenly, people who have made their homes in neighborhoods that were never flood prone find themselves swimming or kayaking to safety.

Footage of historic hurricane winds of up to 180-miles per hour battering Caribbean islands during Hurricanes Irma and Maria should also serve as reminders that mother nature put barrier islands and other coastal speed bumps in place for a reason. Reducing, altering, or removing features meant to blunt the force of such storms before they get to where we live just because it creates a prettier view or would better facilitate water recreation is nothing short of foolish planning. For all these reasons, the timing of this year’s deluge of storms might serve to better focus this community and its leaders’ attention on a proposed project that threatens to exacerbate all three of the development perils I just described.

Aqua by the Bay, a 2,900 unit, waterfront development in a part of southwest Manatee County known by Cortezians as the Kitchen, would elevate the development site with several feet of fill dirt. A massive 12-foot high wall would then be constructed along nearly two miles of the water. Such walls are known to reflect water to neighboring developments and wetlands when it cannot naturally rise along a sloped land such as the one that exists today. The proposed high rises represent the most dense dwellings along our hurricane coastal high hazard areas, built on an historically low-lying area rich with wetlands and mangrove forests that several experts have testified would be destroyed by such an environmentally-irresponsible design. A swath of land that has been an important part of absorbing water in that part of the county would suddenly be filled with roads and houses, forcing much of that water to find its way to lower lying areas.

Aqua by the Bay developer Carlos Beruff is also intent upon dredging a large canal that would cut off the area’s environmentally-critical mangrove forest from the mainland, restricting its ability to migrate with rising sea levels. Many experts have told county commissioners that this would be a death sentence for the mangroves, drastically reducing the natural wetland buffer that currently exists. The development would also put thousands of additional people and cars into a coastal high hazard area with very limited existing evacuation routes with nothing but a few extra turn lanes to accommodate the increased traffic.

People in the surrounding communities have been making all of these points to commissioners throughout the prolonged process of hearings and continuations, pleading with them to simply follow the county’s development rules and deny the application as currently submitted. Despite Beruff’s powerful political connections, the board has so far resisted giving in to his proposals.

On Tuesday, October 3, the board will make its final decision. Let’s hope that recent events give commissioners the fortitude to remember that the fate of citizens inhabiting the county decades from now in many ways rests on decisions they make today. There is no way to stop hurricanes from getting more intense as our climate continues to change, but smart and thoughtful planning that considers the total cost and impact of development, beyond the short-term benefit of a few jobs and fattened property tax rolls, is more important now than ever before. Indeed, it is perhaps the only tool we have in directly mitigating the havoc that future super-storms will wreak.