Orlando Sentinel EDITORIAL

Still a bad deal

Our position: A land swap near the St. Johns should be rejected once and for all.

September 9, 2007

They failed to hoodwink enough commissioners to get them to sign off on an awful land deal that would have traded away 1,265-conservation acres to landowners in hopes that they'd drop a lawsuit.

But this week administrators with the St. Johns River Water Management District will try again. If they can bamboozle just one of three new commissioners appointed to the district board better than they did former commissioner Ometrius Deon Long, the tract along Interstate 95 in Indian River County could go the way of development.

Mr. Long said district staff told him in July that trading away the land would put the district "in a better position to protect the environment." They hadn't told him, however, that the district's motivation for losing the land was avoiding a lawsuit from neighboring landowners who covet it: the Corrigan family.
Mr. Long learned of the lawsuit in time to deprive the staff of his vote. Without it -- the sixth vote they needed to approve the trade -- the deal died.

Tuesday is resurrection day. The district again is trotting out the land trade and, according to at least one of the new commissioners, it again isn't addressing the lawsuit that's driving it. Arlen Jumper of Fort McCoy said last week that he'd read the material on the land deal given him by the district, but that there was "nothing about a lawsuit."

Here's the deal on the land, and the lawsuit. The district acquired it in 1999 under the Preservation 2000 program, along with another 2,000 acres just west of it, which it used for a reservoir. The 1,265 acres were, as the Preservation 2000 moniker indicates, supposed to be preserved.

But the Corrigans threatened a lawsuit against the district for damage they say the reservoir did to part of their 5,900 acres, just south of the district's 1,265 acres. The settlement that would get the district off the hook? Hand the Corrigans the 1,265 acres, plus $657,000 in cash. The district would get all of 460 acres of ranchland from the Corrigans.

But the Corrigans' legal claim concerning the flooding to their property isn't a slam-dunk. A district official said that the "legitimacy of their claims isn't easy to ascertain." And a legal analysis performed for the district says merely that the proposed settlement appears "reasonably prudent."

Yet even if the district were found to be on the hook for damage it did to the Corrigans' tract, that shouldn't allow it to satisfy them by giving them land it bought with state money that's supposed to be preserved forever. The land also happens to be part of a key wildlife corridor.

Trade away this protected land, horrible as that would be, and what's to then keep the district or other water-management districts from trading away other irreplaceable tracts?

Mr. Jumper could help stop that dangerous precedent. So could new commissioners Hersey Huffman of Enterprise and Michael Ertel of Oviedo. Mr. Huffman says, encouragingly, "By and large, preservation means preservation." Mr. Ertel has said that the 1,265 acres "should remain a protected area -- not part of a land swap."

All three can make a responsible splash at their first board meeting on Tuesday, doing not just what staff would have them do, but what's right.

Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel

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