Legislators & Governor Protect Development

“Mitigation banking” is based on the idea that if a developer destroys wetlands, the harm is “mitigated” by creating new wetlands in the same area.

Senate Bill 492, however, permits developers to purchase and use mitigation bank credits generated in a different “service area,” meaning they wouldn’t have to offset the impacts of their project in the same basin where those impacts occur.

So if a developer wants to build a project impacting wetlands in, say, the Cape Coral area — but there are no mitigation bank credits available from the Little Pine Island Mitigation Bank, which serves the area — he could purchase credits instead from, say, the Bear Creek Mitigation Bank, which serves faraway Bay County in northwest Florida.

Ultimately this law will facilitate more harm to wetlands in areas where they’ve already been hardest hit by development. Bottom line, it’s yet another scheme to keep the great Florida development machine rolling forward, regardless of what that means to our fragile wetlands and all that depends on them.

And it’s yet more proof that until we elect public officials who truly value conservation, we’re going to see more of the same.