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For sale: One state, everything must go

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published August 19, 2007

Wipe out 2,000 acres of wetlands in the Florida Panhandle to build an airport?

Sure. We have to do it.

Otherwise, developers might miss a spot of the state. And we can't have that.

Here's what was striking about last week's approval of a $330-million airport northwest of Panama City:

It felt like the year was around 1965, and a bunch of guys in horned-rimmed glasses were bragging about how they were going to Put Florida on the Map.

Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, hailed the airport's approval because, he said, it will "attract new businesses and jobs to grow and diversify the local economy."

(Then Crist went out and appointed a couple more gator rasslers to the Florida Fish, Wildlife and Manatee-Eatin' Commission.)

Realtors predicted the airport would be just the thing for jump-starting the Panhandle's real estate market.

"Once they start turning dirt," one declared, "we'll see things really rapidly escalate."

The St. Joe Co., the Panhandle's biggest developer, wanted this airport and is donating the land for it.

As for Panama City's old, waterfront airport - well, there are big plans for that land, too. They're going to preserve that waterfront for future generations.

Ha, ha! Just kidding. They're selling it to a developer from Pittsburgh. "It's a phenomenal site ... 12,500 feet of waterfront," he told a Pittsburgh paper last week. "You just don't find that kind of acreage in that area available."

No, you don't.

Here's my favorite part of this deal, besides the fact that federal and state taxpayers are paying for it. In return for destroying 2,000 acres of wetlands, St. Joe graciously promises not to destroy another 9,000 acres that lie nearby.

As opposed, one might ask, to what? What were they gonna do otherwise, burn it down? But the company president bragged about this deal protecting some of Mother Nature's "best work."

No matter. It is a done deal. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says so.

As for why the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has such a hatred for Florida and schemes for its destruction, I am not sure. Maybe it dates to the Civil War or something.

In darker hours, I fear that we are just kidding ourselves by worrying about the future of Florida at all. The future was decided a long time ago.

It consists of building something on every vacant piece of land in this state as long as there is a dollar to be made.

No government can stand in the way. In fact, the chief purpose of government in Florida is to help the process along, under the fake name of "planning."

It's true in Hillsborough County, where developers got the County Commission to weaken wetlands protection in a vote on Thursday.

It's true in Pinellas, where the government tries to interpret the words "nature preserve" in an ever more creative fashion.

It's true in Pasco, fast on its way to becoming the County of Shopping Malls.

This is why the Hometown Democracy movement, which seeks direct voter control of growth in Florida, really is such an important battle. The locals, see, voted against that Panhandle airport.

It also explains why the forces of development are so afraid of Hometown Democracy, and will do whatever it takes to stop it. They have not finished paving Florida yet.

[Last modified August 18, 2007, 23:57:11]