Feds are right in grounding jetport project

January 4, 1998

The White House decision to delay development of the old Homestead Air Force Base has drawn instant criticism from South Dade officials, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and even Sen. Bob Graham.

They say the delay unfairly punishes a needy community that's still struggling after Hurricane Andrew. A new commercial jetport, they say, is necessary to invigorate South Dade.

Blaming Uncle Sam for the setback is convenient. It's also a crock. The county screwed up the air-base project so badly that the feds had little choice but to step in and enforce the law.

The fiasco began when commissioners, including Penelas, chose to lease the storm-battered property to a bunch of politically connected home builders. The group, called HABDI, includes Carlos Herrera, a former president of the Latin Builders Association and a heavy Democratic contributor.

HABDI announced elaborate plans to convert the military airfield into a thriving cargo jetport. Hotels, shops and warehouses would sprout up—not to mention plenty of new subdivisions, which is what the Homestead deal is really all about.

That Herrera and HABDI had zero experience in the airport business didn't seem to bother the commissioners. They awarded the lease without considering any other bids.

Angry South Dade residents tried in vain to kill the deal. They felt like pawns in a political trade-off, and they were right. HABDI had the votes it needed.

Then somebody noticed that the group's plans for the Homestead base were far more ambitious than those originally presented to the Air Force. The number of predicted flights was doubled, and suddenly there was a drawing of a second runway.

That meant the original environmental-impact report was worthless. (On one map, for example, Biscayne Bay was labeled "The Atlantic Ocean.") Friends of the Everglades, the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council demanded that the feds review HABDI's plan.

Because of its location, the Homestead jetport will have an impact on two national parks, Biscayne and Everglades. The effect of constant aircraft noise on wildlife is one issue, but questions have also been raised about potential fuel spills, air pollution and traffic.

Those concerns evidently aren't shared by Penelas, Graham or other politicians who opposed an environmental-impact statement. A new study would postpone construction unnecessarily, they insisted. The old study would do just fine.

Their argument was made at a Nov. 25 meeting between county and federal officials in Graham's Miami office. According to New Times, the county lamely tried to backpedal away from HABDI, saying it had not yet accepted all the company's projections.

In other words: Sure, we let 'em have the air base, but we don't agree with all their big ideas.

How's that for a cop-out? Luckily, the feds didn't buy it. On Dec. 22, the White House agreed that the revamped air base should be studied for potential environmental damage. The work is supposed to take about 18 months.

In a way, HABDI brought on the delay itself by outlandishly predicting that its airport would be a $12 billion boon to South Dade's economy. County consultants chimed in, projecting 230,000 flights a year, comparable to JFK in New York.

The price for all that wild hype is scrutiny, because the stakes are high. Industrializing a rural community shouldn't happen overnight. Nor should anyone lightly dismiss ecological threats to the Everglades, Biscayne Bay and Florida Bay—vital resources that also happen to be multibillion-dollar tourist attractions.

So the county is stuck; stuck with HABDI, stuck with the hype, and now stuck with a long delay. It's nobody's fault but the commissioners' for agreeing to such a disgraceful deal.

No wonder they're looking for somebody else to blame.

Bush listens to smart talk on environment

February 5, 1998

Jeb Bush, conservationist?

Stop laughing. The Republicans are wising up, and the Democrats had better pay attention.

A column recently appeared in this newspaper that might have made you rub your eyes, to make sure you weren't hallucinating. The headline: "Let's protect Florida forever."

The byline: Jeb Bush.

Yes, the same Bush who had no environmental platform whatsoever—no clue, in fact—when he ran for governor on the GOP ticket in 1994.

This year Bush is running again, and he's full of ideas about how to preserve wilderness and wetlands. Did he suddenly get religion, or is this an act?

It doesn't really matter, as long as promises are kept.

Bill Clinton didn't start talking like Thoreau until he ran for president, and there's no reason—based on his record in Arkansas—to believe the rhetoric came from his heart. Nonetheless, his administration has done some good things, mainly because he installed some good people.

Early in the new gubernatorial race, Bush is listening to smart talk. Republicans have a reputation as the anti-green party, and in Florida that translates into thousands of lost votes. Bush's supporters appear to have convinced him of the importance of a credible environmental platform.

The centerpiece is an extended edition of Preservation 2000, the successful land-acquisition program initiated under Florida's last Republican governor, Bob Martinez. Although Martinez made some terrible appointments to environmental watchdog agencies, he will be well remembered for pushing "P2000."

It works like this: The state issues tax-free bonds to raise money for the purchase of ecologically sensitive or imperiled lands. The benefits have been felt from the Panhandle to the Keys, wherever green space and wildlife habitat have been spared from destruction.

Preservation 2000 expires at the turn of the century, and Bush pledges to renew the concept for another decade, with $300 million a year allocated for buying and managing land.

And when a parcel is too expensive to purchase, he says, the state should secure the development rights or a conservation easement. That would preserve the land while compensating the owner for maintaining it—an approach that makes sense, as long as everyone plays by the rules.

These are interesting ideas from an unlikely source. But the greening of Jeb Bush, developer, is being guided by Martinez and his onetime running mate, J. Allison DeFoor, an attorney and ex-sheriff of Monroe County.

DeFoor is a rare breed, a Republican with solid environmental credentials. He and Martinez recently formed a GOP think tank called the Theodore Roosevelt Society. The name is meant to remind voters that the nation's most impassioned and progressive president, conservation-wise, was a Republican.

Bush is a city boy at heart, and will never be mistaken for the second coming of T.R. He's happier on the tennis court than on a mangrove island, but that's all right.

He wouldn't be the first governor, Democrat or Republican, to act out of political expediency rather than deeply held conviction. And while we can hope that Bush is losing sleep over the future of the Everglades, he's probably just losing sleep over the votes.

That's all right, too. You can't expect an overnight spiritual conversion. It'd be swell to have a governor who truly believes, but most of us will settle for one who does the right thing, for whatever reason.