Bruce Ritchie
Most mornings I walk my dog down to the neighborhood lakeside park. In the evening I go there to jog while others go bicycling, walking and fishing.
In 2000, my yard and the hundreds of homes surrounding it were pastureland owned by The St. Joe Co., the timber and paper conglomerate.
In 1998, St. Joe decided to get out of the paper business and sell much of its 1 million or so acres across the Florida Panhandle.
Some of it was purchased by the state for conservation. The rest was sold off or developed with thousands of homes, commercial space and even an airport in Panama City.
Those state conservation purchases — and the neighborhood park that I visit nearly every day — probably wouldn’t have occurred if St. Joe had stayed in the paper industry and kept growing trees.
I was reminded of that this week when Sen. Alan Hays once again asked, “How much is enough?” when it comes to conservation land in Florida.
After about seven years of hearing this question asked by legislators and other land-buying opponents, I’m pretty sure there’s no real answer — unless you think you know it before you ask.
Hays asked as part of a testy reply when Sen. Thad Altman, a Republican from Melbourne, asked whether Hays’ 2015-16 state budget recommendation really provided only $22 million for land-buying under Amendment 1.
Approved by 75 percent of voters statewide in November, the spending initiative provides $741 million for water and land conservation programs in the coming year.
“I think it’s important,” Hays said, “that you and every other Floridian out there understand today the state and federal government owns for conservation purposes 9,400,000 acres of land for conservation in the state.”
Hays is correct: That’s the amount of federal, state and local land in conservation ownership, according to the Florida Natural Areas Inventory. That’s about 27 percent of the state.
“My question is, how much is enough?” Hays said. “You know, nobody yet has answered that question.”
When I’ve asked that question of land-buying supporters, sometimes they point me to the Florida Forever list with 2 million acres of proposed state purchases.
That list is misleading, though, because much of it won’t be bought if owners aren’t willing.
The list doesn’t include local parks and ball fields or areas that water management districts might buy to protect wetlands, water supplies and water quality.
Sometimes environmentalists say we should simply buy as much as possible.
Hays said he’s heard that answer, too, and he isn’t buying it.
Others say it doesn’t matter what Hays thinks, the voters have spoken on Amendment 1.
So I’ll attempt to answer his question by asking another: How many homes and how much development in Florida will be enough?
That question isn’t answerable either. If people keep coming to Florida, people will keep building homes and places to work and buy stuff.
That will further squeeze our forests, wildlife and drinking water supplies. That means more conservation land will be needed, both for people and for recreation.
Future conservation efforts in Florida will likely involve more payments to agricultural landowners, other programs’ “working forests” as well more bike trails and water supply areas.
The answer to how much is enough isn’t “we have too much already” or “as much as possible.”
The answer is the story of Florida’s future that’s still unfolding — just as it continues to do so in my expanding neighborhood.
Bruce Ritchie (@bruceritchie) covers environment and growth management issues in Tallahassee for Floridapolitics.com, and is editor of Floridaenvironments.com.
