Environmental Groups Celebrate

Environmental groups celebrate Thursday following their win in federal court to prevent permits of the proposed Bellmar development in Collier County and Kingston development in Lee County.

Kingston is a Cameratta Companies’ development on 6,676 acres of land on Corkscrew Road with approximately 10,000 homes. Bellmar Village was proposed by Collier Enterprises, now part of the Tarpon Blue conglomerate, to develop a community on more than 5,000 acres off Golden Gate Boulevard East.

The Panther and Wetland Victory Party, organized by the Sierra Club, celebrates a recent court win preventing these developments, at least for now, Thursday at Oak & Stone in Estero. By the same time next week, on April 4, the parties involved in the recent litigation will have met to discuss next steps per court order.

U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss had ruled on February 15 in favor of Sierra Club, the Center for Biodiversity, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and other environmental partners that the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated federal law when they allowed Florida’s takeover of the Clean Water Act 404 wetlands permitting program. The Court determined that Florida had altered the process, circumventing the Endangered Species Act. 

“The decision immediately shut down two sprawl projects planned in a critical wildlife corridor where an estimated 120-230 endangered panthers remain in their last territory on Earth,” wrote Michael McGrath, a lead organizer of Sierra Club Florida, in a prepared statement. 

The decision also reverts the 404 permitting process back to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as it had been prior to 2020. 

Advocates for Florida developers, including attorney John Fumero, who specializes in environmental permitting, have said the decision has created significant delays for private developers and government projects that were far along in their permitting processes. 

For the regulated community, there is not a practical transitional period, Fumero said. 

“Time is of the essence. It’s having a profound impact,” he said. “The net effect is you start from scratch all over again,” Fumero added.

Florida Department of Environmental Protection leaders had hinted at an appeal, but if that is even possible, it could take six months to a year, said Fumero, who was general counsel for South Florida Water Management District before being in private practice.

Attorneys with Earthjustice, the counsel that helped win the case, said it’s not so complicated. 

“Right now, Kingston and Bellmar developers can move forward with their projects by seeking a wetlands permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Florida no longer has authority over the federal wetlands program because the Court decided EPA’s approval of that program was unlawful,” said attorney Christina Reichert of Earthjustice, the nonprofit law firm representing the environmental groups in the case.

Florida subsequently filed a request for a limited stay and the Court has said it will only grant Florida the ability to continue issuing the wetland permits, which are for dredge and fill of wetlands if those permits do not affect protected species, including the endangered Florida panther, threatened CaraCara and others. 

Other attempts to retain Florida’s power to issue permits have progressed, including on March 20, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 7023, Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act. The Act includes an amendment by U.S. Representative Aaron Bean of Florida that would allow EPA’s approval of Florida’s Section 404 Program. The bill now moves to the U.S. Senate.

"We have to be good stewards of our unique natural resources in the Sunshine State, and my amendment continues to give Florida the flexibility to make the decisions that are best for us. We will reduce project costs and save taxpayer dollars, all while improving responsiveness to applicants and the communities’ projects they serve,” Bean wrote in a prepared statement.

As expected, the Bill is not supported by the recent winners of the court case. 

“This bill tries to pass something that a federal court has already said violates federal law. That is not how our system is supposed to work,” said Reichert.

Meanwhile, DEP is continuing to seek ways to secure Florida’s power. "This single judicial ruling, which gave complete relief to Plaintiffs, immediately placed over 1,000 projects across Florida, including permit applications for environmental restoration, roads and bridges, hospitals, schools, affordable housing, senior living facilities, and grid reliability, among many others, in regulatory limbo with no clear timeline or expectation for a permit decision,” wrote Alexandra Kuchta, DEP communications director, a March 21 press release. 

“The situation was immediately urgent and becomes more so with each passing day,” Kuchta continued. 

Despite concerns that DEP’s oversight was too lax in favor of developers, Fumero disputed those claims. “DEP did not rubber-stamp projects,” he said. 

When DEP first took over permitting it was rocky at first, he added. DEP was understaffed and under trained but spent time and resources to become more responsive, timely and well-equipped to issue wetland permits, said Fumero, who said he works with his clients through these permitting processes. But dealing with the Corps was also difficult because they remained understaffed and underfunded throughout their oversight, Fumero said. 

Though Fumero supports Florida versus federal oversight of the permitting, he said paramount is the practice of how to preserve land. 

“There’s only one way to stop over-development,” said Fumero. “That’s to buy the land,” he said. 

“Postage stamp conservation doesn’t work,” said Fumero.

It takes miles and miles of land to protect the Florida panther, he added. 

That’s not going to happen by preventing a person who owns wetlands from developing their land, Fumero said. 

Protection of the panther and the environment won’t be by preventing private landowners’ permits, he said.

The Bellmar and Kingston developments each would have taken or killed an estimated 20 panthers per year with fewer than 200 endangered Florida panthers estimated to be remaining and almost all of them in this region of Southwest Florida. 

“They’re not going to donate their land. They’re not going to stop developing,” said Fumero.