They can build roads, but not good wetlands

Florida DOT has long tried to replace wetlands it destroys when it builds roads, with little success.

Last week, Gov. Jeb Bush unveiled a plan to spend $3-billion to speed up roadbuilding to keep up with the state's booming population.

The money, the first part of a plan that will cost $10-billion in state and federal money over the next decade, is being spent in the name of growth management.

But it also will destroy thousands of acres of wetlands.

The Department of Transportation will spend millions to try to make up for the destruction. But the DOT has spent millions on similar projects in recent years that did little to offset damage.

The DOT destroys more wetlands than any other state agency. When the DOT has tried to make up for the damage by creating wetlands, the agency has run into expensive problems. When it has paid other agencies to do the work, the money has been spent on projects with only a tenuous connection to balancing out wetland losses.

The agency wants to be a good environmental steward, DOT Secretary Denver Stutler said.

"The public is expecting, when we have an impact, to" make up for it, he said.

But destroying wetlands for roads is the price Florida pays for continued growth, he said.

"To me, transportation is the backbone of our economy," Stutler told DOT employees in Sarasota recently. "And it takes a strong economy to afford the environmentalism we ascribe to here in Florida."

DOT officials do not keep track of all the wetlands they destroy each year. Records reviewed by the St. Petersburg Times indicate the agency has wiped out more than 1,000 acres in the past eight years.

DOT officials also don't know how much of the taxpayers' money they have spent trying to make up for the damage. Records show it's more than $62-million over the past eight years, but no one knows how much more.

Sometimes the DOT's efforts go to extremes. Consider, for example, what happened when the agency built a bridge over the Withlacoochee River in Citrus County in 1990.

The new State Road 44 bridge destroyed less than an acre of wetlands. The DOT's efforts to build a new wetland to replace it ran into repeated problems. After nine years of trying, the DOT widened the road, destroying the wetland it worked so hard to create.

A DOT employee asked if the agency needed to build new wetlands to replace the man-made wetlands that replaced the natural wetland.

Mark Brown, a Southwest Florida Water Management District wetlands expert, responded with an e-mail: "STOP THE MADNESS!!!"

If any agency in Florida could work miracles with the state's landscape, it would be the DOT.

"You can't think of a state agency that's more powerful than DOT," said Lesley Blackner, a West Palm Beach lawyer who tried to stop the Suncoast Parkway, which destroyed 200 acres of wetlands in Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties.

With a $7-billion budget, the DOT is one of Florida's largest state agencies. Its nearly 7,500 employees oversee more than 12,000 miles of highways. It can condemn property and force the owners to move. When a new road is built, Stutler said, "It's going to open up corridors for potential growth."

The damage the DOT does with new roads can set the stage for further environmental destruction. The developers of Cypress Creek Town Center mall in Pasco County have argued they should be allowed to destroy more than 50 acres of cypress swamps because nearby State Road 56 damaged the wetlands so much they are not worth saving.

A new two-lane road can become a four-lane highway, destroying more wetlands. The DOT, for example, plans to widen Interstate 75 from six lanes to eight through Hillsborough and Pasco counties, destroying more than 80 acres of wetlands.

The agency even destroys wetlands to make room for ponds to filter pollution from road runoff, something wetlands do naturally.

Widening Interstate 4 from four lanes to six will destroy 114 acres of wetlands. Forty of those acres will be wiped out for stormwater ponds, said DOT environmental scientist Richard Fowler.

"It's kind of a shame," he said.

Every destroyed wetland is supposed to be replaced under a longstanding federal policy called "no net loss."

But the policy is failing in Florida, where about 84,000 acres of wetlands were lost to buildings and pavement since 1990, according to a Times analysis of satellite imagery published in May.

State and federal laws say wetlands are worth preserving because they stem flooding, filter out pollution, recharge underground water supplies and provide habitat for wildlife.

Creating wetlands is extremely difficult. Soil, water flow or vegetation must be exactly right.

"It's not easy to re-create what God put here," said Sue Moore, who oversees maintenance of dozens of the DOT-built wetlands in the Tampa Bay region.

DOT officials acknowledge that their attempts to create new wetlands have been mixed at best.

"A lot of them weren't successful," said Josh Boan, DOT's environmental research administrator in Tallahassee.

Yet the DOT keeps trying.

One 7-acre wetland the DOT built off State Road 44 in Crystal River in 1990 was planted with trees that an expert later found were doomed by root problems. Water management officials warned the DOT in 1992 that the site was too dry, but the DOT planted thousands more trees. Still, no wetland.

Finally, in 1998, the DOT abandoned the effort and the site is now overgrown.

"Maybe there's a reluctance to give up," Stutler said. "If that's the case, that's my responsibility to say . . . let's stop our losses.' "

Take the case of a man-made wetland in Polk County that got too wet.

In 1994, the DOT planned to destroy about 2.5 acres of wetlands by widening U.S. 17 across the Polk-Hardee county line, just east of Hillsborough County. To make up for it, the DOT proposed turning 5 acres of pasture by the Peace River into wetlands. A consultant said the new wetland would be better than the destroyed one.

By July 1995, the DOT had planted cypress, sweetgum, red maple and other wetland trees, grasses and shrubs. In the next three months, though, the river overflowed, wiping out most of them.

In late 1997, another storm put the man-made wetland under 6 feet of water, wiping out hundreds of new trees the DOT had planted. Consultants checked the site in April 1998 and reported "no living vegetation" and fish "jumping in the water."

When the DOT's consultants last checked in August, they found it underwater again. Dead trees were sticking out of the water, they reported, "and many more were detected below the water surface."

So after spending 10 years and $242,000, the DOT still has failed to replace the wetland it destroyed. Rob Dwyer, the DOT administrator who oversees the Peace River area, calls the site "problematic."

"I would think we would have to throw in the towel at some point," said Dwyer.

One of the DOT's most problem-plagued projects is SR 56, a 4-mile, $30-million suburban highway that opened in Pasco County in 2002. It destroyed 32 acres of wetlands along Cypress Creek, the headwaters of Tampa's water supply.

But the company building the road went off course and destroyed an extra 5 acres of natural wetlands not covered by the DOT's permits. Federal officials fined the DOT $10,000.

The state was supposed to create more than 57 acres of wetlands. But trees and shrubs died, and so did replacements.

A walk through the wetlands today takes you past hundreds of withered sticks with little tags. The state will soon spend an additional $25,000 on 3,000 more trees, Moore said.

The problem with at least one of the wetlands: The land won't hold water. Moore blames a nearby subdivision and apartment complex built soon after the road opened, which she said diminished the flow of water to the wetland.

Asked if it will ever look like a natural wetland nearby, Moore said maybe, then added: "Will it happen in my lifetime? I don't know."

The government agencies that regulate wetlands often seem less concerned about the success of a mitigation project than the DOT.

In the Keys, the DOT spent $66,000 planting thousands of mangroves on a half-acre in Whale Harbor. They kept dying. The agency replanted the mangroves four times. It even dug out the soil and put in fresh muck. Nothing worked. At one point, the DOT failed to plant more mangroves or report on progress. The state Department of Environmental Protection didn't notice.

In 1995 the DOT's Ann Broadwell asked the DEP what to do. The response: Forget it.

The regulators asked, "if FDEP isn't asking for it to be fixed, why is FDOT pursuing it?"

Yet the DOT persisted another four years, planting more mangroves. In 1999, after 11 years of trying, the DOT finally declared Whale Harbor a failure.

Because of such repeated failures, the Legislature said the DOT could stop building wetlands.

Instead, starting in 1997, it could pay the state's water management districts and let them figure out how to make up for the destruction.

But those same water management districts also review the DOT's requests for state permits to destroy wetlands. So those agencies actually have a monetary incentive to approve the DOT's permits.

"There is some concern about the fox being in the henhouse," said Ann Redmond, who for a dozen years was the state's top wetlands mitigation expert and now works for a Tallahassee engineering firm.

DOT officials say they get no special treatment. "They're quick to remind us that we're no different from other applicants, though these are public interest projects," said John Kubler of the DOT's Tampa office.

Most of the $62-million the DOT has paid the water districts bought existing wetlands or cleared away exotic vegetation, DOT records show.

That means the 543 acres the DOT destroyed since then were not offset with new wetlands. Instead, there was a net loss of hundreds of acres.

Some of the DOT's money isn't even being spent to acquire wetlands. Since 1997 the DOT has paid the Southwest Florida Water Management District, commonly known as Swiftmud, more than $9-million. But Swiftmud officials say 70 percent of the projects involve managing or improving land owned by other public agencies.

That does not directly replace the wetlands the DOT destroyed. But it does make the taxpayers' money go further, explained Brown of Swiftmud.

Stutler, an engineer who recently took over the DOT after stints at the DEP and as Bush's chief of staff, said it may be time to re-examine how the DOT makes up for destroying wetlands.

"It's in everybody's interest that we try to improve and do it better," he said.

Times staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.

Sometimes, a good plan just doesn't work

The most controversial road project in Florida will wipe out more than 100 acres of wetlands in the Everglades and the Keys.

The state Department of Transportation has struggled for 10 years to make up for the damage.

It built a dozen islands that failed to sprout trees and planted mangroves so stunted a biologist compared them to bonsai.

Total cost to the taxpayers: more than $1-million.

"So often the best-laid plans just don't work," said John Palenchar of the DOT's Miami office.

But Keys activist John Hammerstrom contends those failures are typical of the entire $270-million project, which he calls "a boondoggle."

The two-lane road, called the "18-Mile Stretch," runs from the southern Everglades to Key Largo.

In 1988 the DOT proposed widening the road to four lanes, destroying 164 acres of wetlands. It said widening the road would ease hurricane evacuation, improve safety and accommodate growth.

But Keys residents and federal regulators feared it also could pave the way for a population boom.

Terry Rice, then in charge of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Florida, said he kept asking state officials, "What are you doing to make sure this is not going to inspire more growth in the Keys that's going to outrun your hurricane evacuation plans?"

When Rice told state officials he was going to deny their federal wetlands permit, the DOT withdrew its application and revamped its plans.

By then the DOT already had begun building 385 acres of wetlands to make up for the damage. In 1995 it filled in more than 6 miles of an old canal, making it more like the Everglades, and tried to create 12 tree islands like the ones dotting the River of Grass. The DOT also filled in an area that had been illegally dredged and planted thousands of mangroves there.

Two years ago the DOT scaled back the project. Instead of four lanes, it called for a wider paved shoulder and a three-foot concrete barrier between the two lanes. But it still would destroy 103 acres of wetlands. DOT promised to build another 41 acres of wetlands, but some would be at a Navy base in Key West, 100 miles away.

The project ran into renewed opposition, including from a state agency. State park biologist David Boyd wrote that "politics, not hurricane evacuation times, is driving this project."

He was soon out of a job.

The corps approved the permit last year, though corps officials wrote the project "does not increase hurricane evacuation."

Hammerstrom and others suggested ways to improve traffic safety while avoiding destroying so many wetlands, but corps officials wrote that the agency "typically defers to the FDOT . . . in highway safety issues."

The corps was particularly impressed with the DOT's mitigation, which it said would "outweigh the minimal detrimental impacts."

But many of the mangroves the DOT planted a decade ago are still only 2 feet high.

"All I'm seeing is 2- to 3-foot high bonsai mangroves," said Vic Anderson, a biologist who retired last year from running the corps' Keys office. Mature mangroves should be 30 feet high.

These mangroves may never get any bigger. Because they were planted in the fill instead of muck, "you get a dwarf-type mangrove," Palenchar said. "They don't die, but they don't really flourish."

Hammerstrom contends that does nothing to make up for the wetlands the DOT is now destroying.

Palenchar said the tree islands the DOT built aren't high enough to keep the trees out of the water: "They were too soggy and most of them died."

State water management officials notified the DOT last year that it needs to plant new trees on the islands. But Palenchar said that's unnecessary.

"We feel at the end of the day we have a wetland-type environment," Palenchar said. "We just don't have a tree island."