Unmanaged growth

Public land purchase is a good way for Florida voters to protect the state's endangered land, but it's no substitute for real estate development controls.

The desire to save Florida from an unending wall of condominium towers is most powerfully expressed when voters open their wallets to buy land from future developers. That happened again on Election Day, as voters in seven counties put up $436-million to transfer endangered lands into public hands.

The votes are part of a continuing pattern of public support for land preservation, as 45 local measures worth $1.7-billion have been approved in just the past seven years. Those votes to increase local taxes come on top of the state's Forever Florida program, a $3-billion land-buying effort begun in 1990 by former Republican Gov. Bob Martinez. Public land purchase is ultimately the best way to protect environmentally significant property, but it is no substitute for adequate controls on real estate development. State Senate President Tom Lee, a homebuilder by trade, says he will push to strengthen growth-management laws.

"My frustration is that my industry can't see past their next project to the long-term damage we are doing to our industry by failing to construct a system that will provide for sustainability of growth," Lee says. "Instead it's, "Let's get all we can get now, and we'll leave the debt of those excesses to future generations to figure out how to pay for it.' "

The state's Growth Management Act, now two decades old, has done little to slow such development. The law was supposed to prevent any new development that wasn't accompanied by the necessary roads and utilities. But Lee need look no farther than his own Tampa Bay region to see how little impact the law has had. As local counties continue to grant building permits, schools are overcrowded, roads are overburdened and landfills are overflowing. The underground drinking water supply has been so overtaxed that water managers have built a $175-million above-ground reservoir and a $140-million desalination plant.

The voters of Florida are asking for a different kind of future, one with more herons and fewer bulldozers.

[Last modified November 29, 2004, 00:39:13]