Science Doesn

Last week, the governing board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District voted to ignore the recommended order of an administrative law judge and allow local developer Pat Neal to destroy high-quality wetlands in order to build four McMansions on Perico Island.

When it comes to understanding how our local environmental resources are squandered, the story of this development is instructive. It shows a flawed process in which those who decide the fate of some of our most precious resources are often the same ones who have demonstrated the least respect and appreciation for it.

SWFMD originally voted to issue the required permit. The challengers, which included TBT publisher Joe McClash, asked that an administrative law judge review the application and issue a recommended order. After three days of presenting evidence, expert witness testimony and scientific explanations as to why the proposed development would be devastating to the local ecology, that administrative law judge’s findings of fact led him to issue a recommended order that the water management district deny the request for the permit.

In the somewhat backward process of such matters, that order than was given back to the same board who was already poised to pass it. At the meeting, Neal’s team was able to present all of their supporting arguments for ignoring the ALJ’s ruling, while McClash and his partners, which included Sierra Club, F.I.S.H. and Manasota88, then had just 20 minutes to convince the governing board to follow the ALJ’s recommended order.

That’s not exactly an even playing field to start with. Nonetheless, considering how clear and weighty the ALJ’s order was, it should have been an easy vote. Neal wants to destroy an acre of high-quality mangroves in order to put four houses on two and a half acres of a 40-acre parcel and then mitigate that destruction in a land bank that’s 17 miles away and not even in this county.

As the group’s attorney Ralf Brookes noted, even if the houses are built, there are a litany of ways that the developer could have reduced the impact in his development plan. Most of the fill is not where the houses will sit, but to provide large yards. Houses in such an environment are often built on stilts to protect the important resources under it.

Neal’s attorneys said that all of these measures were impractical, mostly because of an agreement with an adjacent development that the houses would remain in character with theirs. The ALJ ruled that there did not exist an overwhelming public benefit and that because of the losses to fishing, marine habitat, wetland functionality, recreational boating, etc., the houses shouldn’t be built as proposed. SWFMD could have easily denied the permit application and forced Neal to resubmit a plan that would have less impact.

Instead, in what almost poetically became his last act before resigning his seat on the governing board, Neal’s buddy and sometimes business associate Carlos Beruff of Medallion Homes, simply motioned that the board ignore the recommended order and approve the application as is–just as they had before an ALJ weighed in. In what should be a very telling vote, everyone but the sole member with a background in environmental science–Wendy Griffin, who holds a master’s degree in Biology (with an emphasis on aquatic ecosystems) from Florida Atlantic University–voted in favor of Beruff’s motion.

If you think this whole process sounds ludicrous, I don’t disagree. A water management district should be primarily concerned with protecting a vital public resource that, in our state especially, is going to become an increasingly scarce one in coming decades. This was an easy project to say no to, and if the board couldn’t, that should raise serious alarm in the public square.

Wetlands are the filtration system through which our water passes and the high quality red and black mangroves that exist on the acre in question are among the most valuable in the process. They abut what are classified as Outstanding Florida Waters in Anna Maria Sound, and flow into the area surrounding the Cortez Fishing Village, which is known as the kitchen to our local fishermen, because that is where the fish food chain begins.

Removing an acre of shoreline that buffers a mainland from wave action is also inviting a level of storm impact that Mother Nature continuously cautions us to avoid. There are plenty of other places for Pat Neal to build houses, and as was pointed out in the hearing, plenty of less impactful ways if he insists on building them there. But if it remains so easy to bend the will of those who are charged with sensibly regulating the balance between development and the protection of vital ecological resources, why would he?

This project started under a cloud when the City of Bradenton used an administrative procedure to sneak in approval without public input and break its own rules in issuing approval, and it continues under a cloud as the board charged with protecting our water resources ignored an ALJ’s findings of fact to go ahead and do what that board clearly intended to do all along.

McClash and company say they will appeal to the district court of appeals, where they hope they can set case law precedent that will make such cases easier to fight in the future. From their mouths, to God’s ear.