The environment — and fear
October 31, 2007 at 9:49 am by Wayne GarciaA packed classroom at the Hillsborough Environmental Protection Commission yesterday afternoon showed just how much energy the push to preserve what’s left of Tampa Bay’s wetlands has gathered.
The government officials, lawyers, activists and farmers were there to review new rules being written by EPC regulators that would provide specific exemptions for farmers to disturb wetlands, generally if they are less than one-half acre. The rules are the result of a desperate attempt by the EPC and activists to prevent the abolition of local wetlands laws when county commissioners earlier this year tried to wipe them off the books, under the guise of cost-savings and eliminating duplication.
EPC staff said the new rules were better than the current vague guidelines for farmers, which leads to uneven enforcement. The activists weren’t buying it.
“If you start whittling away [wetlands protection] piece by piece, quarter acre by quarter acre, why have the EPC?” said Denise Layne, who has followed the issue locally and in Tallahassee for many years. She promised “a war in front of the county commissioners” if the EPC moved the proposed changes forward to a planned Nov. 15 commission vote.
EPC lawyer Andrew Zodrow, however, said the new rule is better, more professional and gives the EPC a seat at the table when regional water management officials approve overarching wetlands permits for farmers, something EPC doesn’t participate in at the present. “It’s a great leap forward in the rule to have a process that defines ‘farmer,’” he added as an example of the lack of specificity in the current regs.
The problem, activists said, is that the new rules may open more doors for development lawyers and allow for more destruction of smaller wetlands, which would be remotely possible under the new guidelines. “The last thing we want to do is encourage farmers to convert their land to developers,” EPC chief Rick Garrity promised the activists — to little relief.
Especially troubling to the environmentalists in the crowd was not being able to get an answer to their question of why the rules were being rushed to the county commission, without a review by an as-yet-unformed Technical Advisory Group or another advisory committee. In the end, Garrity acknowledged that the EPC is under the gun to get these changes finished because of promises made in presenting the hybrid plan, which was what commissioners agreed to try before re-evaluating whether to kill wetlands rules next year. County commissioners gave the EPC until May 2008 to streamline and change its processes (to a more developer-friendly mode, opponents argue) or face another discussion about elimination.
“We’re not off the hook,” Garrity admitted.
To see the proposed agricultural wetlands changes, click here for a .pdf. For a look at activists’ objections to the new rules, there are two .pdfs at this location.
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