Update: Toll Roads, water, and the abandonment of planning

Update on Toll Roads 2.3.21:  Dems want to get rid of them

Citing environmental and fiscal challenges, two Democratic Florida lawmakers are introducing legislation to kill an ambitious yet controversial toll-road building plan dubbed by opponents as “roads to nowhere.” 

Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Fort Lauderdale, and Rep. Ben Diamond, D-St. Petersburg, held a news conference Wednesday to discuss their proposals to strike the M-CORES project from state law and redirect the millions tapped for planning to other more critical infrastructure.

Despite budget crisis, Florida is doubling down on costly and destructive plans

Nicole Johnson: "two initiatives will change Florida forever. One will result in 330 miles of new or expanded tolled roadways opening up large swaths of our rural Florida to sprawling growth.

Nicole Johnson is the Director of Environmental Policy for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

More on the intentional dismantling of state oversight:

Save Florida’s shreds of growth control

Palm Beach Post:

The state’s most respected smart-growth groups are aiming most of their firepower at the blandly titled HB 7103, “Community Development and Housing.”

There was one safeguard left. Citizens had the right go to court and challenge a bad decision by their local government: a condo tower that exceeds a height limit, an apartment complex in a neighborhood of single-family homes.

But if HB 7103 becomes law, that final right to protest will be crushed. Citizen challenges will face a tilted burden of proof — and the requirement to pay the opposing side’s legal fees if they lose.

More on Galvano's toll roads:

Veto New Toll Roads - Sean Sellers

SB7068 authorizes the construction of three massive toll roads, stretching from Naples to the Florida-Georgia line. However, as nearly 100 business and civic organizations noted this week, the plan is remarkably flawed and must be vetoed.

 

HB 7103 - another road to nowhere for Ron DeSantis?

From the Palm Beach Post:

Another Opinion: Save Florida’s shreds of growth control

DeSantis signs "Roads to Nowhere"

When Gov. Ron DeSantis put his signature on a bill authorizing three unnecessary, ridiculously expensive “toll roads to nowhere” that would plow across millions of acres of undisturbed land at Florida’s heart, he put his self-claimed reputation as a champion of the state’s fragile, threatened environment in jeopardy.

Now, he faces an even tougher challenge. Within the next few weeks, legislation will land on his desk that will gut Florida’s already-weak oversight of rampant, irresponsible development. Like the toll roads, these bills were mostly concocted in secret through last-minute, legislative machinations.

The state’s most respected smart-growth groups are aiming most of their firepower at the blandly titled HB 7103, “Community Development and Housing.”

This would be the last nail in the coffin for Florida’s once-innovative comprehensive planning laws enacted in the 1980s. These laws require each community to enact blueprints for growth, making sure new developments meet minimum standards for flood protection, infrastructure and the like. The plan becomes local government’s guidebook: every development decision must be consistent with the plan.

Once upon a time, there was a state agency to review development proposals, the Department of Community Affairs. But in 2011, Gov. Rick Scott got rid of the “job killer,” as he called it, and folded its remaining duties into the Department of Economic Opportunity. Scott and the Republican-led Legislature also crippled the concept of concurrency — a requirement that schools, parks and adequate roads be in place before development is completed. And they starved the state’s 11 regional planning councils of money.

There was one safeguard left. Citizens had the right go to court and challenge a bad decision by their local government: a condo tower that exceeds a height limit, an apartment complex in a neighborhood of single-family homes.

But if HB 7103 becomes law, that final right to protest will be crushed. Citizen challenges will face a tilted burden of proof — and the requirement to pay the opposing side’s legal fees if they lose. Basically, all a developer would have to do to win is to send a squadron of high-priced attorneys into battle — and then punish anyone audacious enough to challenge their profiteering with crippling legal fees.

This isn’t the only reason this bill deserves a veto. It also deters local governments from requiring developers to include affordable housing in their projects. Any government that does so, this legislation says, will have to repay the developer for any financial losses.

If he signs it, it’s game over for DeSantis, the warrior intent on protecting Florida’s threatened water resources and natural beauty. He’ll be exposed as something worse than an honest shill for the kind of reckless environmental destruction that most Floridians decry. He’ll be the person who was willing to trick people into thinking he cared — before he stripped them of the ability to defend this state’s endangered environment against irresponsible, predatory development.

Governor, please veto 7103. Do the right thing, and reclaim some of the faith you’ve lost.

Veto New Toll Roads - Sean Sellers

From SRQ daily

[On State] Governor Must Veto Toll Roads - Sean Sellers

Sen. Galvano's toll roads will push sprawl deeper into Florida

This is a moment of truth for Governor Ron DeSantis. With limited public debate, Senate President Bill Galvano has maneuvered his pet project through the Legislature.

SB7068 authorizes the construction of three massive toll roads, stretching from Naples to the Florida-Georgia line. However, as nearly 100 business and civic organizations noted this week, the plan is remarkably flawed and must be vetoed.

First, there is no transportation study to warrant the largest expansion of Florida’s highway system since the 1950s. This is highly unusual, and irresponsible, for a project that will tie up billions of public dollars in construction and ongoing maintenance. To the contrary, a 2016 FDOT task force study recommended against new highways in favor of improving existing corridors.

Second, there is no mechanism for local input into the siting of highways or interchanges; amendments to address this problem were voted down. Developers and road-builders will benefit from the incursion of sprawl deeper into Florida. If past is prelude, cookie-cutter exurbs will displace rural residents as property values climb, farms and ranches sell out and jobs are lost.

Third, the irreversible loss of natural areas may likely push our environment—and economic lifeblood—past the tipping point. The flawed wetlands mitigation banking system is unable to meet current demand. Furthermore, as reporters Craig Pittman and Mathew Waite have shown, even when mitigation occurs, artificial or restored wetlands provide a mere fraction of the critical ecosystem services—including flood protection, aquifer recharge, and pollutant filtration—as the natural wetlands that were destroyed.

SB7068 will worsen water quality even as the state spends heavily to clean up its polluted springs, rivers, and coastlines in rearguard action. Though preservation is less costly and more effective than restoration, the Legislature has chosen to fund Florida Forever land acquisition at only 10 percent of its historic levels, while zeroing out conservation easement funding for working farms and ranches entirely.

Lastly, these new roads will not improve our safety from hurricanes, as Sen. Galvano claims. The deadly evacuation of Houston for Hurricane Rita in 2006 made this crystal clear. Instead, the state should invest in safe and accessible hurricane shelters in every local community and particularly in booming southwest Florida where need outstrips supply.

We know better and therefore we must do better, both for ourselves and future generations.

Sean Sellers is chair for the Suncoast Climate Justice Coalition.

See also 1000 Friends of Florida's statement on HB7103.