OrlandoSentinel.com

EDITORIAL

Don't fall for it

Our position: It's outrageous that the St. Johns district is trying to hide a wildlife report.

October 28, 2007

It doesn't matter if you're Gov. Charlie Crist or the state's chief financial officer, attorney general or agriculture commissioner. The St. Johns River Water Management District is going to sandbag you like it does anyone else.

It's going to do that by trying to keep from you its own report that demonstrates the tremendous value to wildlife of more than 1,200 acres in Indian River County that it purchased with state money in 1999.

Now, don't get upset. The district's simply treating you the same as it treats its own board members. It kept the report from them as they weighed the district's recommendation that it trade away the land to a major landowner.

And it kept from several of the board members the outrageous reason it wanted to give the land up in the first place -- to dodge a lawsuit the landowner waved at the district for some flooding its reservoir did to the landowner's property. Now, it's just looking to keep some of the facts from you.

You'll be reviewing the district's decision to give up the land, you see, and, well, you might not see things the district's way if you get to see things too clearly.

Clearly, there's no reason here to give away land purchased with state preservation dollars. Government can't do that unless, according to the state constitution, extraordinary circumstances exist. If avoiding a lawsuit can qualify as an extraordinary circumstance, sit back and watch as the rest of the land purchased in Florida with state money disappears as lawyers take districts like St. Johns to court.

What's extraordinary about the so-called Sand Lakes tract -- about one-and-a-half times the size of New York City's Central Park -- is its conservation value.

That's not what the district's director of operations and land resources says. But that's what the report the district's hiding from you says. Sand Lakes is singled out among the smaller tracts the district has purchased over the years for its importance in supporting rare species. Imperiled critters from crested caracara hawks, scrub jays and grasshopper sparrows to indigo snakes, whooping cranes and burrowing owls have called it home.

The district director says, "No. I would not say" that the Sand Lakes land is among the rarest and most endangered habitats in Florida. But the report's principal author, a supervising regulatory scientist for the district, says it is. Its upland scrub and dry prairie and other lands make it "among the rarest and most endangered habitats in Florida." It's "one of the only tracts like it in that part of the world."

A district attorney is fighting to keep the report from becoming part of the record you'll be reviewing on Sand Lakes. There are "legal aspects to that," says the district director. "It isn't a matter of wanting to shield information."

Believe that, and you might just believe anything the district deigns to show you.

Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel

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