Ridge Road project has a high hurdle

This year, Pasco County seemed within sight of the federal wetlands permit it needs to begin building the long-planned eastern extension of Ridge Road.

More than six months after the county's last exchange with the Army Corps of Engineers, work continues on the permit, which the county originally requested in 2000.

"Officially, zero has changed," said Mike Nowicki, who has spent nine years reviewing the project for the corps' Jacksonville office. He's planning to retire next summer and hopes to put his longest-lived project to rest by then.

The Ridge Road extension, as envisioned, would stretch in two phases from Ridge and DeCubellis roads in New Port Richey to U.S. 41 at Connerton Boulevard in Land O' Lakes.

The first phase of construction would stop at an interchange with the Suncoast Parkway. That phase is scheduled for construction in 2011-12.

The Ridge Road extension has been controversial and difficult to permit because it will cross the state-owned Serenova Tract of the Starkey Wilderness Preserve. That land was set aside nearly a decade ago to compensate for wetlands lost to the construction of Suncoast Parkway.

The Serenova supports several endangered species, among them the Florida scrub jay and the wood stork. Critics say putting a road through the tract will endanger the animals the preserve was intended to protect.

The county has met the corps' demands that wildlife in the Serenova be able to cross beneath the highway. It also shrank the road's footprint and added grated "skylight" openings to large culverts beneath the road to make them more inviting to the animals that are supposed to use them.

But work remains on determining how best to compensate for the parts of the Serenova the highway will destroy.

The county wants to do that by preserving 4G Ranch, which is just north of State Road 52 and east of U.S. 41. The ranch would become part of a wildlife corridor linking Crossbar Ranch in north central Pasco with the Conner Preserve south of S.R. 52.

County officials have spent the past six months working on the details of that deal, which would place a conservation easement over about 800 acres of 4G Ranch. The land would remain in private hands and could be used for grazing, but row crops and development would be banned, said Michelle Baker, chief assistant county administrator.

County officials hope the deal with 4G Ranch will meet the corps' demands to mitigate damage caused by Ridge Road. The plan will go to Nowicki this month, Baker said.

The 4G Ranch deal would expand the county's growing network of "critical linkages," privately held land linking major publicly owned parcels. The linkages provide wildlife protected ways to move as the county continues to develop.

4G Ranch "is more valuable mitigation for a road project than some isolated wetland," Baker said.