Archive for the 'Growth' Category

Conservation by development?

Published on December 14, 2006 in Community, Economy, Environment, Growth, Mysteries and Sustainability. 0 Comments

Florida’s population and development are projected to double in the next fifty years. 1000 Friends of Florida’s new Florida 2060 report raises the question of what Florida will look like when the population goes from today’s sprawling 18 million or so residents, to 36 million in 2060?

In our central Florida region growth will be explosive and vitually all natural landscapes will be fragmented or consumed by urbanization. It’s likely that there won’t be public monies available to buy enough conservation lands to sustain native ecosystems, and preserve our quality of life.
Mary Dawson, founder of the new Sustaining Community Lands, Inc. in Martin County, came up to Vero Beach today to share a story about an alternative model for conserving land as we develop. Building on the work of the Sonoran Insitute of Tucson, and the Liberty Prairie Conservancy of Lake County, Illinois, she told our Conservation and Rural Lands Group about the Community Land Conservancy (CLC) Model. Also called Community Stewardship Organizations (CSOs), these nonprofits are established when a developer is trying to set aside significant environmental land as part of the development process.

Lands within the development are set aside for conservation or open space, and the developer requires a transfer fee to be paid for the benefit of the CSO each time a home is sold in the development. The funds from transfer fees and other sources available to nonprofits (grants, memberships, donations, etc.) are used to hire professional scientists and land managers to maintain and/or restore the conservation land, and to conduct public outreach programs to promote conservation in the community. Such projects work best if the developments are situated within a larger landscape containing natural resources worthy of protection.
Conservation is directly paid for by development in this approach, and stewardship is local and nongovernmental. We welcome Mary’s vision, and hope that it offers one more tool in the toolkit we’ll need to build our future.

The water cycle and sustainability

Published on December 11, 2006 in Environment, Growth, Mysteries, Science, Sustainability and Water. 0 Comments

Water is a naturally circulating resource that is constantly recharged, unlike oil. The amount of water on our planet will not diminish on shorter than geological time scales (Oki, 2005). Therefore, even though stocks of water in natural and artificial reservoirs are helpful to meet our water resource needs, it is the flow of water that should be the main focus in water resource assessments (Shiklomanov, 1997; Korzun, 1978; Oki and Kanae, 2006).

For example, the amount of water stored in all the rivers in the world is only 2000 km3 , which is much less than the annual water withdrawal of 3,800 km3/year. A more accurate measure of water availability is the 45,500 km3/year of annual discharge flowing through the rivers to the sea (Oki and Kanae, 2006).

Water flux is the most relevant measure of water resources. Therefore, the speed of water circulation is crucial. How long water molecules stay in a given reservoir, that is, their mean residence time, can be estimated by dividing the volume of the reservoir by the mean flux into and out of it. For rivers unaffected by humans, the mean residence time of the water is about two and a half weeks (Oki, 2005). In contrast, the recharge rate of some groundwater aquifers is very slow, and the mean residence time is considered to be hundreds or even thousands of years. When water is extracted from such an aquifer, it will take a very long time, measured on a human time scale, to return to the original volume stored; in practice, the water is exhausted once it has been used. For this reason, the groundwater in such aquifers is called fossil water.

The global population will continue to grow for at least a few decades, and water demand will thus increase. Reliance upon slowly recharging groundwater aquifers is not sustainable as a global strategy. Circulating renewable freshwater resources are essential to meeting the growing human demand for water.

Korzun, V. I. 1978. World Water Balance and Water Resources of the Earth, Vol. 25 of Studies and Reports in Hydrology. UNESCO, Paris.

Oki, T. 2005. In Encyclopedia of Hydrological Sciences, M.G. Anderson, J. McDonnell, Eds., Wiley, New York,Vol. 1, pp. 13-22.

Oki, Taikan and Kanae, Shinjiro. 2006. Global hydrological cycles and world water resources. Science 313:1068-1072.

Shiklomanov, I. A., Editor. 1997. Assessment of Water Resources and Water Availability in the World. World Meteorological Organization/Stockholm Environment Institute, Geneva.

Gopher tortoise rescue

Published on December 9, 2006 in Community, Environment, Growth, Mysteries and Sustainability. 0 Comments

Gopher tortoise rescue coalition

Twenty-five gopher tortoises had a good day at the Humane Society of Vero Beach. Look closely at the photo, and you can see each of us holding a tortoise who was about to be released into the new gopher tortoise preserve.

Saved from the developer’s ‘dozers, these worthy creatures have brought together our entire community. They move slowly, but they bring a great gift.

“Conservation Lands” of the Upper St. Johns River, Florida

Published on December 3, 2006 in Environment, Governance, Growth, Mysteries and Sustainability. 0 Comments

Under Florida Statutes, the St. Johns River Water Management District may sell or exchange lands to which the district has acquired title according to conditions set forth in 373.089 F.S.

For lands designated as conservation lands, all it takes for the district to dispose of them is a two-thirds vote by their Governing Board. For other lands, a simple majority vote by the Governing Board is all that is required to dispose of lands no longer determined to be needed by the District. As the current Fellsmere Joint Ventures – St. Johns River Water Management District land swap demonstrates, the District is perfectly willing to dispose of conservation designated land in our county. Furthermore, the District appears to have no legal responsibility to consider our county’s comprehensive plan, or to coordinate or communicate with our county government.

So much for the presumption by citizens of Indian River County that nearly a third of our county is protected by virtue of it being designated as conservation land owned by SJRWMD. Such designation, and the protection it brings, is momentary, fleeting, and entirely at the discretion, or some might say whim, of the District’s Governing Board.

It would appear that the only true conservation lands we have in our county are those owned wholly or jointly by Indian River County and the State (either SJRWMD, DEP, or other agency), or by the US Government (Pelican Island NWR, Archie Carr NWR, and several islands). I don’t have the total acreage of these conservation holdings at hand, but I imagine they would fall into the range of 5% – 10% of our county’s area, not the 30% or so we are accustomed to imagining as protected “in perpetuity” for conservation.

It is worth remembering that our county has also shown a ready willingness to abandon its own “perpetual conservation easements,” whenever staff determines that it meets some current need (e.g., Barber Street road widening plan within the footprint of the Sebastian Area-Wide Scrub Jay HCP).

Maybe the lesson is that our “conservation” lands will be protected only as long as people are willing to fight for them.

Rolling Over for Developers

Published on November 25, 2006 in Community, Governance, Growth and Mysteries. 1 Comment

Our local Scripps newspaper, the Press Journal, has repeatedly asserted in editorials that our County’s elected and appointed representatives, along with County government staff, “roll over” for developers. Today, they level the following:

“If there’s a culprit beyond the vicissitudes of the almighty “free market,” it’s our compliant public officials who have skewed that market. Green-lighting sprawling new housing tracts all over the county, they rolled over for developers, opened the door to speculators, inflated residential inventories and set the stage for the hundreds of empty houses we see today.”

It’s true the Treasure Coast is now experiencing the worst kind of growing pains. But this editorial posturing is such obvious crap it hardly needs comment. Still, I can’t resist two simple ones. First, who rolled over? Be specific and back up the charges, if they are really meant to be taken seriously. Are there certain elected or appointed individuals, or staffers who are “rolling over” for developers? And if so, are they doing tricks for all developers, are just certain ones? Names, please. If not, something else is going on, and the editors have missed the point. Again. Too bad, because what’s really happening is very, very important, and still a mystery to the Scrippsmen.

And second, what if all these folks who were supposed to have “rolled over” instead mandated a moratorium on development across the county? Would the editors then herald this action as a triumph for controlled growth? Or would the public officials get slammed for messing with the “free market.” Hmmm.