New highway by means of this Florida state forest is an thought going the incorrect approach
By Craig Pittman, Florida Phoenix
Every time I sing the praises of Florida, I all the time point out its award-winning state park system. Just like the state itself, the parks system has options which might be each spectacular (from the hovering dunes of Topsail Hill to the depths of the Devil’s Millhopper) and quirky (mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs, Lu the Hippo at Homosassa and so on.)
Our state forests get far much less acclaim, maybe as a result of they lack mermaids and hippos. There are practically 40 of them, totaling greater than 1 million acres.
Like our parks, the state forests are residence to quite a lot of imperiled animals and crops, to not point out furnishing a journey route for wide-ranging critters like black bears. People profit too — the forests supply campsites and mountain climbing and biking trails, identical to the parks. Additionally they assist us battle local weather change by absorbing a lot of the carbon dioxide that’s destroying our planet.
But some individuals can’t see the forests for the — effectively, not the timber, precisely, however the acreage beneath. To them, that land seems empty, simply ready for human “enhancements.”
Roadbuilders are the largest offenders. The Florida Division of Transportation is constructing the completely superfluous Suncoast 2 Parkway by means of the Withlachoochee State Forest. The DOT additionally needs to construct its legislatively mandated Northern Turnpike Extension by means of Goethe State Forest.
After I wrote a recent column mentioning opposition to the turnpike, somebody from the Panhandle contacted me to ask why I wasn’t writing a couple of related scenario there. My tipster urged me to research Walton County’s efforts need to ram a highway by means of Point Washington State Forest.
My first response was: They’re STILL making an attempt to try this?
Walton County officers have been complaining about Level Washington State Forest since state officers first established it 30 years in the past. Apparently, they haven’t stopped.
“They’ve needed their land again since 1992,” mentioned Celeste Cobena, whose Seashore to Bay Connection residents’ group has been lobbying to maintain the forest — and its leisure trails — intact.
At one level, Walton County officers needed to construct a whole new town in the midst of it. And so they’ve been making an attempt since 2015 to slide a slab of asphalt by means of it — particularly, a two-lane “connector highway” linking State Street 30A and U.S. Freeway 98.
County officers argue it’s wanted due to the heavy visitors on 30A. Cobena says these visitors jams have resulted from the county’s personal pro-development selections, repeatedly amending its zoning guidelines to let builders construct greater than the roads had been constructed to deal with.
One of many large backers for constructing the Level Washington highway is a developer named Charles Rigdon of Harbor Capital LLC. I’m certain his help has completely nothing to do with the truth that such a highway would connect with U.S. 98 close to an space the place he’s been constructing.
Rigdon scoffed about state forests being value saving. Earlier than I quote his feedback, I need to inform you that Rigdon’s capacity to precise himself is one which even Madonna would envy.
“It’s state forest, not state park,” Rigdon informed the Northwest Florida Daily News in 2021. “It’s a glorified cornfield. They develop the pine timber, then lower them, then regrow them, then lower them.”
However that’s not what a bunch of state and federal companies mentioned about it
They strongly objected to the highway, citing its impression on the wetlands and wildlife of the realm. They identified that the leisure trails native residents love must be relocated. They cited issues with conducting prescribed burns that might blanket the highway in smoke.
A number of identified that such a highway wouldn’t simply hurt the forest but additionally the state parks that connect with it: Topsail Hill, Deer Lake, and Grayton Seashore State Park.
What I discovered notably attention-grabbing, although, was that one official steered the highway that Walton County was proposing goes the incorrect approach.
It might not simply harm the forest. It might truly make the realm’s visitors WORSE.
Farewell, Emerald Metropolis
The story of how Level Washington got here to be a state forest is a Florida basic, one informed and retold amongst amazed preservation advocates the way in which troopers speak about a well-known battle.
As recounted in Clay Henderson’s new ebook, “Forces of Nature: A History of Florida Land Conservation,” the forest — together with close by Topsail Hill — had been a bundle deal of practically 21,000 acres purchased from the St. Joe Co. (extra on them in a bit) by a bunch of wheeler-dealers. The worth: $182 million.
They introduced they had been going to construct “the Hilton Head of the Gulf,’ with houses, motels, golf programs, an amusement park, and an airport on land that included greater than 6 miles of pristine sugar-sand seashores.
They had been going to name it “Emerald City,” identical to Dorothy’s vacation spot in “The Wizard of Oz.” This grandiose scheme was backed by a pair of savings-and-loans in Pennsylvania and Texas. Are you able to see the place this story’s going?
From the beginning, savvy buyers noticed indicators that Emerald Metropolis was as stable as a home of playing cards in a wind tunnel. In 1991, the playing cards got here tumbling down, toppled by greater than a dozen grand jury indictments for fraud.
Some individuals had been sentenced to prison. As for the land, it went to the Resolution Trust Corp., which was in command of liquidating the property of broke financial savings and loans. The RTC scheduled an public sale on the DeFuniak Springs courthouse for an all-or-nothing sale of Emerald Metropolis’s land, which included each Topsail Hill and Level Washington.
One man keenly on this public sale was George Willson of the Nature Conservancy, a company that always labored with the state to purchase land for preservation.
“On Could 19, 1992, a couple of minutes earlier than 11 a.m., George Willson stood by a pay cellphone in a grocery retailer throughout the road from the Walton County Courthouse,” Henderson wrote.
As quickly as an aide to then-Gov. Lawton Chiles informed him that the Cupboard had licensed him to bid on the property. Willson hung up the cellphone, crossed the road, and arrived on the courthouse on the stroke of 11. The clerk of court docket stepped out, introduced the public sale, and requested, “What are your bids?”
“$20 million,” Willson replied.
He was the one bidder, so the land went to his group, which then handed it to the state and obtained reimbursed. It was fairly a coup (not the Jan. 6 sort, both). And such a cut price for the taxpayers, in comparison with what the wheeler-dealers had paid a number of years earlier than.
Later, Willson informed Henderson that the Walton County commissioners can be — effectively, he used one other phrase — ticked off once they realized how a lot developable property the state was now going to protect. Certain sufficient, the county despatched a lobbyist to warn Chiles that the acquisition would “do at least cripple their financial system.”
Whereas Walton whined, everybody else was ecstatic.
There have been dunes so massive that, from offshore, they regarded like sails (therefore the title Topsail). There have been coastal dune lakes, a singular geological characteristic present in only some locations across the globe. There have been wet prairies filled with pitcher crops, sundews, and different carnivorous vegetation.
As for critters, there have been some 25 uncommon species, together with the red-cockaded woodpecker, the reticulated flatwoods salamander, and the gopher tortoise.
In different phrases, it’s no cornfield.
Down with panhandlers!
Level Washington and its many timber used to belong to the St. Joe Co., as soon as the most important landowner in Florida. The corporate wanted the pines to feed its stinky paper mill in Port St. Joe.
From the Nineteen Thirties till his dying in 1981, the St. Joe Co. was run by a twisted little tightwad named Ed Ball, essentially the most highly effective man within the state. Along with St. Joe, Ball ran the state’s greatest financial institution, its greatest railroad, and a lot of the Legislature.
After Ball’s demise, St. Joe’s administration realized the corporate’s future wasn’t in making paper however in growing its huge acreage. The corporate traded in its mill for a battalion of bulldozers and set to work creating upscale subdivisions, commercial buildings, and resort hotels across its thousands of acres.
St. Joe remodeled the land. It created new inhabitants facilities with designer names like WaterSound and Rosemary Seashore, removed from the Panhandle’s plain-jane small cities with their bait outlets and Piggly Wiggly shops.
The corporate even copyrighted the time period “Florida’s Great Northwest” and tried to get everybody to say that as an alternative of calling the area “the Panhandle.” Firm officers didn’t need to be in any respect related to (ew!) panhandlers.
But to make its plans work, St. Joe wanted to panhandle the taxpayers. Firm officers persuaded Florida’s powers-that-be to move part of U.S. 98 away from the beach to accommodate their improvement plans. Additionally they satisfied state officers to construct them a brand-new airport.
St. Joe succeeded in promoting a complete lot of homes, partially due to the seashores, trails, and tenting spots supplied by the close by state parks and state forests. Seems that slightly than ruining the Walton financial system, preserves are an attraction for the outdoor-minded.
However improvement by St. Joe and others is placing a complete lot of vehicles onto once-scenic State Road 30A, one of many prettiest coastal highways you’ll ever encounter.
That highway runs east to west. The two ½ mile highway Walton County has proposed to push by means of the state forest would run north to south.
A 2019 opposition letter from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified that “the predominant demand for visitors circulate is east-west, and there’s little proof that this north-south highway will cut back congestion or crash charges.”
Or, as Cobena informed me: “It’s not going to unravel the visitors issues they assume it’s going to unravel. It’s simply going to funnel extra visitors onto 30A.”
So, what’s the purpose of the Level Washington highway?
“It’s the builders who want the roads,” Cobena mentioned.
All a part of the system
I effectively keep in mind visiting Level Washington State Forest 24 years in the past. A photographer and I tagged together with a man from the Florida Wildlife Federation who gave the impression to be the world’s main fan of longleaf pines. It’s nearly all he talked about. I’ve to confess, those we noticed had been fairly spectacular.
We had been there as a result of Walton officers had demanded the state allow them to construct a brand new 420-acre city amid all these timber, cleverly named New City. Happily, that plan fell aside.
However over time, the state did promote Walton bits across the edge, based on Kent Wimmer of the Defenders of Wildlife. The county took 187 acres complete, utilizing it for a Vacationer Growth Council workplace, a Walton County sheriff substation, a hearth station, a landfill, and a sewer easement.
In the meantime, although, the state and feds had been busy enhancing the forest and its close by parks. For example, an $8 million grant from the Fish and Wildlife Basis is paying for restoring 310 acres of wetlands feeding the coastal dune lakes, an effort led by Jeff Talbert of the Atlanta Botanical Backyard.
“Level Washington is all a part of the identical ecosystem,” he informed me this week.
A highway constructed by means of there, he mentioned, would disturb not simply the forest and its many occupants however all of the state parks related to it, successfully (ahem) reversing all of the laborious work that has been put into reviving the wetlands.
‘Just about nothing’
In 2015, the Walton County Fee authorized a $600,000 contract with an organization to do a planning, design and engineering examine on the “South Walton Connector.”
The contract retains expiring, and the commissioners preserve renewing it as if this time it’s going to supply one thing well-liked. Excuse me, I’ve to run to my bookshelf and lookup that well-known quote concerning the definition of insanity.
Two weeks in the past, Cobena informed me, the county’s transportation committee introduced up the highway once more. This time, one commissioner steered the county ask the governor and Cupboard for permission to run that highway by means of the state’s property and see what they are saying.
I rolled my eyes after I heard that. Gov. Ron “I’ve Got More Flights Leaving Texas Than the Dallas Airport” DeSantis hasn’t but met a highway he and his developer pals didn’t like. Bear in mind, he signed off on the Northern Turnpike Extension — twice!
The lawyer basic and chief monetary officer will dance to no matter tune DeSantis performs. That simply leaves Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, whose workplace oversees the state forests. I contacted her about all these efforts to ram new roads by means of these state forests.
“Our pure lands should be protected — not paved over — to protect the environment, important ecosystems, and our financial system,” she replied. “To focus on these lands for improvement is harmful, shifting our conservation efforts within the incorrect path.”
Hey, there’s that incorrect path factor once more!
I attempted calling a pair commissioners and as an alternative wound up speaking to the county visitors engineer, a wonderfully nice gent named Chance Powell.
He informed me he, personally and professionally, helps constructing the highway. He dismissed the opposition from state and federal companies as routine negotiation techniques (belief me, although, it’s not on daily basis the Division of Environmental Safety truly protects the surroundings).
He informed me that any destroyed wetlands could possibly be simply changed by constructing new ones. I didn’t take the time to level out to him how many times such “mitigation” wetlands fail, over and over.
Once I identified {that a} highway going north-south gained’t assist the visitors on one going east-west, he contended it could by offering drivers with “options” to 30A.
Then I requested if the county had thought of widening two-lane 30A to 4 lanes, which is one thing steered by the feds and state. He informed me that’s by no means even come up as a result of it could value an excessive amount of to purchase the now-developed right-of-way. God forbid making the builders pay for the development.
Then he informed me that the commissioners may by no means have considered constructing that forest highway “apart from the facility line easement that’s lower by means of it.”
I requested him if he’d ever gone out to the forest to take a look at the facility line. He mentioned sure. I requested him what it regarded like.
“It regarded like every other energy line easement that’s been lower out by means of the woods,” he mentioned.
I requested him what else could possibly be seen round that energy line stretching by means of the glories of the Level Washington forest. He replied, “Just about nothing,”
That’s the purpose the place I made a decision he was wanting on the forest the incorrect approach.
Florida Phoenix is a part of States Newsroom, a community of stories bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Key phrases
Florida State Forests, Florida Phoenix, Craig Pittman, Florida AtmosphereSource link