Part 40 (1/2)
What you see now is an obscene moonscape of pits and boulders. The sales models are boarded up, the quaint unfinished plaza is a pastel ghost town. The bulldozers have been towed away, and some of the trucks and trams are up on blocks. Castor bean and other garbage weeds flourish where hardwoods once grew.
Construction ceased on Port Bougainville more than a year ago when its financing collapsed. The work that began here was mostly done by dynamite, blowing craters in the hammock to create phony lakes upon which to sell ”waterfront units.”
Touring the 406 acres now, one might guess that the controversial mega-condo has gone belly-up. The polite term is that the project is ”in receivers.h.i.+p.”
The bank foreclosed on the developer and the developer sued the bank and now there are lawyers crawling all over the place, which means we're talking about a serious, long-term mess.
Ironic, considering the development's history-approved after months of scandalous publicity, bureaucratic hand-wringing and celebrated compromise. While environmentalists battled stridently in court, everyone else signed off on Port Bougainville-the state Department of Community Affairs, the South Florida Regional Planning Council and, of course, Monroe County's zoo of a planning department.
The project is fine, they said. A boon for the economy, they said. Environmentally sound, they said.
A darn big improvement, they all said.
Now they say: Hey, we did our best. n.o.body dreamed the deal would disintegrate.
But don't think for a minute the project is dead-this is Florida, remember? This type of development is like the Frankenstein monster, a lurching clod kept on life support forever. Every so often, a new genius shows up with a new scheme for resurrection.
Ten years ago, Port Bougainville was known as Solarelle-another developer, another failure. Years from now, after the current fiasco is sorted out, the project probably will have a new owner and a new name and a new theme. Today the Mediterranean, tomorrow Venice.
And, as always, an elaborate public show will be made of trying to save as many trees and birds and b.u.t.terflies as possible, which is not easy when you're using dynamite.
On Sunday, a single snowy egret searched for minnows from the sh.o.r.e of a jagged, blasted-out creek. A ground dove pecked for berries on a disused limestone roadbed. Yellow b.u.t.terflies darted above the remaining b.u.t.tonwoods but veered clear of the gashed land.
n.o.body wanted Port Bougainville to turn out this way, but it did. n.o.body in government had the guts to say stop.
It's cla.s.sic for South Florida. Where else would they even agree to stick one of the largest-ever condo projects between a national wildlife sanctuary and the continent's only living coral reef?
Each officious drone who said yes to this extravaganza ought to be forced to spend a day on North Key Largo, walking the property with his own children.
Explaining the scars, the rubble, the whole atrocious legacy.
Pristine oasis may go to waste in trash crisis November 8, 1985 As the last wild traces of South Florida disappear under the dredge and bulldozer, it's a good time to weigh the fate of the Pond Apple Slough.
That such a place has survived the blind rapacity of Broward County's development is both a marvel and mystery. Stubbornly it thrives, a steamy oasis wedged between two of the busiest and ugliest thoroughfares ever built, State Road 84 and U.S. 441.
Perhaps one thing that has saved the 100-acre gem is its invisibility not only from the roads, but from the South New River Ca.n.a.l, which forms its southern boundary.
Hemmed in, shut off, nearly forgotten, the freshwater swamp and its adjacent cypress forest is one of the most pristine Florida habitats left on the peninsula. Beyond the drooping pond apples are royal palms, coco plums, leather ferns and sprawling ficuses, ancient giants draped with moss, wild orchids and airplants.
Penetrable only by canoe and foot, the Pond Apple Slough is a refuge for bobcats, racc.o.o.ns, squirrels and gray foxes; snakes, alligators and endangered crocodiles; hawks, ospreys, kestrels and other birds of prey. The animals have adapted remarkably well to the swamp's clamorous borders, and even to the roar of 727s pa.s.sing low on approach to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport.
But soon there will be new neighbors: Interstate 595, arcing high overhead, and a ma.s.sive garbage incinerator, with two enormous landfills. The highway is an aesthetic nuisance but nonintrusive; the incinerator is something else.
The battle has been predictably emotional, with homeowners and environmentalists on one side, county officials on the other. Beginning Tuesday at the Davie-Cooper City Library, state officials will hold nine days of hearings about the new garbage plant, and one of the main issues is its effect on the rare slough.
The swamp itself is on state property, technically protected. But one of the landfills is planned for 200 acres of county property, now sawgra.s.s, which borders the tall cypress. Environmentalists fear poisonous runoff from the ash and refuse will decimate the swamp.
George Fitzpatrick, chairman of Broward's Environmental Quality Control Board, says the landfill ”will have a very negative effect...You shouldn't build incinerators with landfills in a swamp.”
Adds naturalist Woody Wilkes: ”It will destroy this whole area. There's no way to get around it.”
Faced with a mountainous garbage crisis, Broward is determined to build new incinerators; it's already issued $521 million worth of bonds to finance two of them.
Tom Henderson, director of resource recovery, says the county has spent a fortune studying the pond apple habitat and is committed to saving the slough and restoring long-lost waterways near the dumps.
”The area's going to be much better than what's there,” says Henderson.
He also says the dump site nearest the Pond Apple Slough won't be needed until the turn of the century, if ever, and that all ash would be deposited on a thick layer of plastic to prevent leeching into the precious groundwater.
Opponents say that's not enough. They view the incinerator as a fountain of rancid air, and they want modern emission controls on its smoke-stack. They also want its ash and rubble trucked out west; in other words, no landfills near the swamp.
The cla.s.sic problem with dumps is that n.o.body wants one in their own backyard. Trouble is, this just isn't any old backyard; it's one of the few remaining glimpses of Florida as it was a century ago, a gentle canoe trip into the past.
Surely the state can settle this controversy by demanding strict, enforceable measures to save the Pond Apple Slough and the air it breathes. A dump is one kind of political legacy; a wilderness is another.
It would be a tragedy to lose it to a 40-foot hill of burnt slop.
Sewage charges latest outrage at ocean reef December 16, 1985 The idea of dumping raw sewage into the waters of the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park is so vile that it makes the blood boil.
This month, the wondrous park's 25th anniversary, the Ocean Reef Club in North Key Largo was indicted on 346 counts of allegedly emptying its toilets straight into the ocean over the continent's only living coral reef.
If the charges are true, this is by far the worst in the club's long history of flagrant abuses. Of all the developments in the Florida Keys, Ocean Reef Inc. has been the most prolific violator of environmental laws. Its motto might as well be: Let's do it until we get caught.
The place is legendary: Ca.n.a.ls appear overnight to create instant ”waterfront” lots; protected mangroves vanish in the darkness. The investigatory files on Ocean Reef stuff several drawers at the state Department of Environmental Regulation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Yet sanctions against the resort have, until now, been laughably weak. The largest fine was $50,000 stretched out to five payments in five years-hardly the sort of penalty that teaches a lesson.
Much is made of the fact that Ocean Reef is a haven for the rich and famous. Wealthy or not, the people who live there had nothing to do with the sewage scandal. In fact, their complaints helped trigger the investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency.
”We're shocked by what happened, and we're angry,” says Barrett Wendell, president of an Ocean Reef property owner's group. ”The reef is too valuable an a.s.set to be treated this way.”
”We're the victims-not the people perpetrating this,” adds Charles Howell, another resident.
Ironically, Ocean Reef homeowners had been negotiating with the developers to buy out the utilities, including the long-troubled sewage system. Last summer a tentative agreement was reached, but suddenly Ocean Reef Inc. changed its mind and decided to keep the sewer plants.
For many homeowners, this month's pollution indictment was a bitter and shameful moment. ”We felt like we were indicted, too,” Howell says. Some members fired off a letter to financier Carl Lindner, the princ.i.p.al owner, condemning the company for such a ”despicable” act.
Says resident Clayton Kolstad: ”We think it stinks.”
And stink is the word for it. According to the indictment, raw fecal matter was purposely spewed into a slender waterway known as Channel Cay. From there tidal currents swept the putrid effluent into the Atlantic and out over the endangered offsh.o.r.e reef.
The dumping allegedly took place between Nov. 1, 1982, and Nov. 10, 1983, but several residents claim it actually went on much longer. Ocean Reef Inc. has declined to discuss the charges.
Up to now, the club-whose members.h.i.+p is full of political heavyweights-has treated the state and Army Corps like pesky gnats.