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Urban sprawl creeps near Everglades

MIAMI - To fish hatchery owner Paul Radice, the tropical farmlands sandwiched between the bustling glitz of Miami and the vast Everglades are ideal for his operation because of a development boundary line drawn two decades ago.

The well water, unpolluted by parking-lot runoff, is a perfect natural temperature for his tanks of exotic koi and African cichlids. Traffic is light and there are few strip malls, fast food joints or other intrusions of urban blight. Roadside stands selling produce such as tomatoes, mangoes and sweet corn dot the only subtropical farm region in the continental United States.

Now, to the dismay of some farmers like Radice and allied environmental groups, housing developers are snapping up Miami-Dade County's dwindling open land in hopes of persuading local politicians to push the development line toward the threatened River of Grass to the west.

While some farmers favor the proposal because it would allow them to sell their land for a high price, Radice says new residents would "change the character of the area, and they'll want the area to change with them."

Plans by major developers such as Lennar Corp. and D.R. Horton call for more than 16,000 homes to be built in high-density neighborhoods on land that is now outside the line, known as the urban development boundary. Unless the line is moved, development on that land will continue to be restricted to one structure for every 5 acres - not what the developers want.

Battles over urban sprawl are increasingly common around the country, especially in areas where cities have erected no-growth boundaries such as that in Miami-Dade County. What makes the South Florida debate unique is the area's history as America's key winter vegetable growing area and its location between the environmentally sensitive Everglades - currently undergoing a 30-year, $8.4-billion federal-state restoration - as well as Biscayne Bay to the southeast and Florida Bay to the south.

"The Everglades has been recognized as a unique environmental system in the world," said Jamie Furgang of Audubon of Florida. "The preservation of the urban development boundary is going to be essential to restoring the quality of the system."

Katie Edwards, executive director of the Dade County Farm Bureau, said her organization views the boundary as a violation of property rights. Many landowners outside the line say its existence prevents them from getting top dollar for their property, forcing them to continue sometimes unprofitable farming.

"They are saying, "I want options. Give me a choice,"' Edwards said. "We believe market forces should determine the position of the urban development boundary."

[Last modified April 25, 2005, 01:04:14]