Florida’s environment will suffer ‘irreparable damage” under a new law Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed on Wednesday that opponents say will financially discourage regular folks from challenging proposals to change local rules that limit the size and scope of new developments, even if the changes would contribute to global warming.
That’s according to a vocal coalition of environmental groups who opposed Senate Bill 540 from the start, saying the Republican-backed legislation will quash any desire by ordinary citizens to challenge land-use changes by creating crushing financial disincentives for average residents who challenge the request and lose.
It “will pave the way for urban sprawl and do irreparable damage to Florida’s environment and quality of life,” said 1,000 Friends of Florida, a sustainable growth nonprofit, in an angry statement released Wednesday.
The law “will threaten ordinary Floridians with financial ruin for exercising their right to legally challenge amendments that conflict with their communities’ comprehensive plans — their blueprints for environmentally and fiscally sustainable growth.”
Supporters say the new law will resolve conflicting lower-court rulings on the issue and ensure that those who challenge a municipalities’ land-use rules are serious about it.
“You want to give the citizen who’s challenging that, or whatever entity challenging that, some skin in the game,” Sen. Nick DiCeglie, an Indian Rocks Beach Republican and sponsor of the bill, told reporter Gary Rohrer of Florida Politics. “Having the skin in the game for these prevailing attorney fees is essentially the spirit of this bill.”
Opponents say some of the common challenges to comp plans, such as the draining of wetlands to build homes, would contribute tons of carbon that has been sequestered, or trapped, for centuries in the peat beneath the water that would disappear.
The most immediate concern for opponents is that most citizens either don't have or don't want to risk the financial resources that developers often have at their disposal.
That will all-but deny the average citizen one of the few effective ways to have a chance in the often David-versus-Goliath-style battle between an affected citizens group and developers.
And that is the point, said Gil Smart, executive director of VoteWater, a clean water advocacy group based in Stuart.
“Challenges like this happen every year in communities across Florida because most of these comp plan amendments are designed to facilitate more, or more dense, development," Smart said. "Those cases are almost always extremely controversial in the local communities. People pack the meetings, it'll go on for months."
The new law “will make it so citizens who try to go to court to stop such things and lose are really going to get whacked.”
Friends of the Everglades said the new law resulted from “the worst environmental bill passed by the Florida Legislature during the 2023 session” and that it “is a death knell for smart growth in Florida.”
Friends of the Everglades, the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation, 1000 Friends of Florida, the Hold the Line Coalition, and the Everglades Coalition — representing more than 60 additional opposition groups — also pleaded with DeSantis to veto the bill.
“This denial of public participation by way of excessive financial barriers will have far-reaching implications for water and the Everglades and is a disappointing step backward for Florida,” Friends of the Everglades said.
Cities and towns have long-enacted comprehensive growth plans to restrict runaway growth and protect its borders from becoming a concrete metropolis in the future, especially in Florida where people move in far more often than they move out.
The new law could allow long-protected wetlands to be drained for subdivisions. Wetlands in places like Florida are often ancient, and the feet-thick peat below the water has trapped tons and tons of carbon and other greenhouse gases from generations of grasses, shrubs, and trees that have grown, died, and settled underwater to decay and become part of the peat itself.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recently updated its public-facing data on its webpages on wetlands to say: "Wetlands' microbes, plants, and wildlife are part of global cycles for water, nitrogen, and sulfur. Scientists now know that atmospheric maintenance may be an additional wetlands function. Wetlands store carbon within their plant communities and soil instead of releasing it to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Thus wetlands help to moderate global climate conditions."
There is no way to trap the carbon dioxide, methane, or any other global warming gases released when the water is drained and heavy equipment rearranges the plot for whatever is going to be built on it.
The law will take effect July 1, 2023.
Other legislation opposed by environmental groups includes a line item in the state budget that environmental groups say would amount to a state ban on local governments’ fertilizer-use bans. Opponents say the rules local governments have in place about when and how much lawn fertilizer can be used should be left alone.
SB 170 is also on the governor’s desk. It would make it easier for businesses to sue local governments over ordinances that the businesses claim impact their bottom line, like many environmental ordinances.
If it becomes law, the bill would require the local municipality to suspend the ordinance in question during any lawsuit and, even if the business loses, for an additional 45 days.
In some cases that will afford even a losing developer enough time to complete the infrastructure, releasing greenhouse gases unchecked along the way, for the proposed development in case of a successful appeal or approval of a different type of development later on.
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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