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Environmental Commission Approves New Wetlands Rules

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By MIKE SALINERO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 19, 2008

TAMPA - Local environmentalists admit they were worried but say they are largely satisfied with Hillsborough County's yearlong effort to revise its wetlands rules.

The new rules are designed to cut red tape while providing stricter protections than those provided by state and federal agencies.
County commissioners approved the new rules unanimously Thursday while sitting as the Environmental Protection Commission. In doing so, the commission largely ignored a push by development groups for last-minute changes to weaken the EPC's role in land-use decisions.

"What the big fear was that this board ... would take their marching orders from developers and use this opportunity to further weaken the wetlands protection rule," Mariella Smith, a Ruskin spokesman for the Sierra Club, said Friday. "But the last set of amendments passed yesterday neither weakened nor strengthened the rules and it streamlined the process."

The vote came just one year after a majority of the same commission voted to eliminate the EPC's wetlands division. That action generated a firestorm of public protest and commissioners backed down. But they insisted the EPC staff rewrite the rules to answer developers' complaints that the agency was slow and hard to work with.

Commissioner Brian Blair, who led the initial charge to eliminate the wetlands division, said the final product is an improvement.

"I don't think the rule is weakened at all, and I think there is more transparency and that's what we're looking for," Blair said. "It's something that gives the development community and the environmental community a balance."

Unlike state and federal agencies, the EPC requires that landowners or developers prove they will lose reasonable use of their land if they aren't allowed to destroy a wetland. The new rule approved Thursday clarifies that process with a 12-point checklist landowners must meet to justify destroying wetlands.

"Developers were complaining, 'You just say it but you don't tell us how you determine it,'" said Rick Tschantz, general counsel for EPC. "So we laid out several factors in which we're going about determining that you need this wetland for reasonable use of your property."

Tschantz said rule changes will also allow one-stop permitting for single-family houses once the state Department of Environmental Protection gives its approval. Now, if the builder of a single-family home needs a permit to destroy a wetland, he must get permits from three agencies, four if the house is on a waterfront.

Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303 or msalinero@tampatrib.com.

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