TWO MONTHS AFTER the state aborted a controversial plan to build golf courses, hotels and pickleball courts in nine state parks, Palm Beach County commissioners Tuesday pledged to enact permanent protections for more than 31,800 wild and scenic acres that make up the county’s 38 natural areas.
With a 7-0 vote, commissioners approved a resolution allowing the county to grant conservation easements, which would protect the land in perpetuity, to the accredited land trust Conservation Florida.
It’s an idea county environmental officials have been pursuing for more than 20 years as a guarantee to preserve the pristine natural lands acquired through voter-approved bond referendums in 1991 and 1999, donations and tax deeds, said Deb Drum, director of the county’s Environmental Resources Management Department.
Their efforts were accelerated Aug. 20 when news leaked about the secret Florida Department of Environmental Protection plan, which called for the construction of three golf courses in Jonathan Dickinson State Park in southern Martin County.
The state’s so-called “Great Outdoors Initiative” was scrapped seven days later amid fierce bipartisan outcry. But it put environmental managers across Florida on notice about whether lands historically designated for parks and natural areas are ever really safe from development.
“It left us all wondering what other natural areas were vulnerable to similar development proposals,’’ Casey Darling Kniffin, conservation policy director for the Florida Wildlife Federation, told commissioners.
“I don’t think anyone expected that. That’s one of the reasons so many people were taken aback and shocked and surprised,’’ said Lisa Interlandi, policy director for The Everglades Law Center. “It just goes to show we really can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future.’’
Placing conservation easements over natural areas will ensure the lands remain undeveloped and are managed and maintained for conservation purposes in perpetuity, said Drum, a former Martin County ecosystems manager.
“By implementing this measure, the County can safeguard its natural heritage for future generations,’’ she said in a memo.
Since 1984, when a significant portion of the Yamato Scrub in Boca Raton was proposed for development, Palm Beach County has acquired more than 31,000 acres of environmentally sensitive lands, ranging from 3 acres to 12,000 acres, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Okeechobee.
More than half of the natural areas already have some protections. Nearly 24,200 acres are protected by South Florida Water Management District conservation easements. Another 474 acres are preserved by easements with The Nature Conservancy, a conservation land trust that helped the county buy properties in the 1990s.
“But in many cases that layer of protection is not absolute or all encompassing,’’ Drum wrote.
And while the county’s Conservation Lands Protection ordinance, passed in 2003, provides some protection, it does not prohibit the chance of the land one day being used for a “non-conservation purpose,’’ the memo said.
That law only applies to natural areas bought with money from bond referendums. It does not apply to lands donated without specific conservation requirements.
But the resolution approved Tuesday puts in motion a plan that county officials say will eliminate any possibility of the land being developed.
“It removes any ambiguity about what these lands will be in the future. There is no question that these lands will be anything but natural areas moving forward,’’ Drum said.
The proposal won’t cost the county a penny. Conservation Florida, a private non-profit, will raise money to pay for associated costs.
“This is a significant form of protection going forward,’’ said Commissioner Maria Marino, whose north-county district is home to popular natural areas like the Loxahatchee Slough, Pine Glades and Cypress Creek.
“We’d be remiss in not allowing this to happen,’’ she said. “One of our jobs is protection of our public trust, and the public trusted us when they said yes to the bond referendum to buy these properties.’’
Conservation easements for each natural area will be drawn up individually and submitted to the County Commission for final approval.
“This could take a couple of years to roll this out, to get conservation easements established for all of our properties,’’ Drum said.
More than 1.5 million people live in Palm Beach County, Florida’s fourth largest, an increase of nearly 17 percent since 2010. Developers continue to build homes and shopping centers.
“This really is a monumental thing,’’ Interlandi said of the land-protection plan. “The pressures conservation lands are facing are only going to increase as time passes.’’
Among the speakers at Tuesday’s meeting was former county Commissioner Karen Marcus, who was instrumental in setting up the bond issues in the 1990s that raised $150 million to save environmentally sensitive lands that make up many natural areas.
“That was a generational move that we did,’’ Marcus said. “And today is an opportunity to make another generational move. It's not about us. It's about those next generations coming. Your kids, my kids, my grandkids. They have assurances there are protections on this property that we worked really hard to purchase.’’
© 2024 ByJoeCapozzi.com All rights reserved.
Please help support local journalism by clicking the donation button in the masthead on our homepage.
About the author
Joe Capozzi, photographed at left on assignment in Pine Glades Natural Area, is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.