While many aspects of the nationwide economic depression have been negative for environmental protection, such as pressure to curtail environmental land buying programs, there have been some positive results.
We are starting to see the clanking and whirring gears of the monster growth-sprawl machine grinding to a halt. Perhaps this will spare some of our native landscape from being devoured.
The best example of this silver lining in tough economic times is yesterday’s announcement by the Florida Turnpike Enterprise that the agency is dropping (at least for now) plans to proceed with the 27 mile Suncoast Parkway extension in Citrus County.
This “road to nowhere” would skirt the Crystal River area on the east, and slice through two Preservation 2000 properties – Lecanto Sandhills and Annutteliga Hammock. The sole apparent purpose of the project is to jump start development in Florida’s big-bend, perhaps the most undeveloped stretch of our coastline, running from Crystal River to Tallahassee.
Citrus Audubon’s Jim Bierly has long fought the project, and Audubon of Florida has periodically weighed in lobbying DOT and Turnpike officials, as well as the Governor’s office, to put the brakes on this “road to nowhere”. It is called a “road to nowhere” because it would link up sparsely travelled U.S. 19 north of Crystal River to the existing Suncoast Parkway (fought by Audubon in the early 1990s) which now terminates at U.S. 98. From there, the road runs all the way to Tampa.
Last week, at the Wekiva River Basin Commission, DOT and Turnpike officials were grilled in public by Audubon Director of Advocacy Charles Lee and other commission members about why the Suncoast “road to nowhere” was still being pursued at a time that DOT and the Turnpike were unable to offer assistance to the completion of the environmentally desirable Wekiva Parkway project.
The Suncoast Parkway extension was a priority of the Jeb Bush administration – Governor Charlie Crist announced soon after his election that he wanted to concentrate road dollars on projects “where the people are”, something Suncoast Parkway decidedly is not.
