Manatee County Moving Forward on Controversial New Wetland Policy

BRADENTON – Manatee County is seemingly moving forward with plans to drastically alter the wetland avoidance policy that has been in place for nearly two decades. The new policy would allow developers to make financial compensation for destroying certain wetlands, in order to develop the surrounding land. The money would then go into a fund used by the natural resources department to restore or obtain existing wetlands. Manatee County Commissioner Joe McClash called the policy disastrous.

"Our policy has been simple – avoid wetlands at all costs and as a result if you go back and look over the last 15 years, you might find one instance where a wetland has been destroyed for the sake of development," McClash said. "Even during the biggest building booms Manatee County has seen we've been able to do tons of development while respecting this policy. Now all of a sudden you have a policy where you're basically saying you can destroy wetlands for a fee."

John Osborne from the Manatee County Planning Commission explained that the new policy is intended to allow for the classification of wetlands and establish specific criteria for which ones can be mitigated. Osborne said that there are currently many areas that are classified as wetlands that aren't actual viable wetlands and that by distinguishing between those and highly functioning wetlands, it affords the opportunity to better preserve the more important ones. While he conceded that there was room for public concern over a policy in which subjective classifications can be so critical, Osborne felt that transparency could overcome them.

"I think the key is maintaining a glass house and a public process," Osborne said. "We haven't seen the final language yet, but this is all done in meetings that the public can attend and voice concerns."

McClash finds little comfort in that. In an email to Osborne he called it the most destructive wetland policy he's seen in 20 years and noted that he had concerns over the conflict of interest that would exist if the natural resource director is making decisions on the delineation when their department benefits from the payments made by the developers. McClash had raised the issue at the last BCC meeting and was shocked when he was told that the matter had been voted on while he was out of town, at a BCC work session where no action votes are supposed to be taken.

ManaSota 88, a non-profit group that has been very active in local wetland, drilling and phosphate issues, worries that the new policy creates an environment that inherently reduces public involvement. In a letter to Manatee County's Environmental Review Manager Joel Christian, ManaSota 88 chair Glenn Compton expressed serious concerns that the new policy will encourage land owners to apply for payment in lieu of mitigation and ultimately lead to an overall reduction in wetlands for Manatee County. Compton said that the new process would make it much more difficult for the public to follow, since only category IV wetlands will come before the board of county commissioners for review. According to Compton, the new policy encourages developers to "design wetlands around projects, instead of projects around wetlands."

Compton also said that the new policy is in contradiction to state DCA rules regarding wetland mitigation. Since the rules require wetlands to be protected through a comprehensive planning process, supported by data and analysis, the county would have to have a wetland inventory of the amount of wetland acreage in each classification in order to contemplate the impact of each decision on the county as a whole. Manatee County has no such inventory, most likely because it has historically deferred to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in matters of wetland delineation, rather than request such authority for themselves, leaving them less capable of responsibly doing so now, according to Compton (read Compton's letter to Christian here).  

Advocates of the new policy argue that it will allow for a more efficient and streamlined policy that will actually better protect the most important wetlands, while benefiting the local economy by easing development restrictions. McClash, who has been a voice for smart and controlled growth found that laughable.

"For the last 16 or 17 years we've had a hands-off approach to wetlands and it's obviously worked very well. Why change it?" McClash asked. "You're talking about a discretionary process that's very subjective and will cost the county departments hundreds of hours of work when we've proven you can have more than enough development with a policy of wetland avoidance. This obviously favors the developers. Every study shows that historically, recreated wetlands and even restoration has a high failure rate and that the cost, compared to how successful they are, just doesn't make sense when compared to wetland avoidance."

McClash pointed out how many times the public process and citizen involvement had failed to produce desirable results in issues regarding development.

"In my mind, the decision is always going to be made to destroy wetlands if that's what the developers want."