‘When's it going to stop?' Bill could open Florida Keys to new development

Miami Herald

2 days ago

The Florida Keys is poised to see a flurry of new development — despite warnings that island chain is already overpopulated with worsening traffic and rising flooding risks — thanks to a new bill set to become law at the end of the month.
Senate Bill 180, which primarily focuses on hurricane recovery and emergency response, would also allow up to 900 new developments over the next 10 years in the Florida Keys through a small change in the mandatory evacuation window for Monroe County, pushing it just a half hour back from 24 hours to 24.5 hours.
The small tweak could have big consequences for the Keys, the only place in Florida with state controls on growth.
Long-time activist Ed Davidson, chair of the environmental group, the Florida Keys Citizens Coalition, spoke out at county and state meetings against the additional development in what he sees as an already overbuilt community.
'We've long since passed our environmental carrying capacity,' he said. 'And yet every time we reach the limit we all agreed to, we simply issue more development units.'
The bill sailed through the Legislature, passing nearly unanimously earlier this year, and could become law by default on July 1 or sooner, with the stroke of the governor's pen. Monroe officials also downplayed the impacts.
'They have to be distributed out over at least 10 years, I wouldn't call it a boom,' said county growth management director Emily Schemper.
Limits imposed in the 1970s
In the 1970s, the state put a limit on future development in the Keys, based primarily on the single road that residents have to evacuate from the numerous hurricanes that wallop the island chain. Those permits for development, also known as a Rate of Growth Ordinance or ROGO, were set to officially run out in 2023, capping development in the Keys.
READ MORE ABOUT SB 180: Florida bill could block communities from rebuilding stronger after hurricanes
But that year, a state study found there were almost 9,000 vacant lots still awaiting potential development, and residents and local politicians began clamoring for the right to keep building in the Keys.
'That was supposed to be the build-out of the Florida Keys. That's it. We're full. And yet when we get there, they simply ask for the same number all over again,' Davidson said.
Last year, the Monroe County Commission agreed that they would be OK with upping the evacuation window to get all permanent residents — not tourists — out of the county in the event of a hurricane from 24 hours to up to 26 hours.
An earlier version of SB 180 called for expanding the evacuation window to 26 hours and allowing up to 3,600 new developments over the next 40 years, but the final version settled on up to 900 over a decade by expanding the window to 24.5 hours.
Still, even a slightly longer evacuation window worries some, as more hurricanes begin to rapidly intensify, or strengthen very quickly over a short period of time. Every Category 5 hurricane that's ever hit the U.S. was a tropical storm or less three days prior, according to NOAA.
If signed, the 24.5-hour evacuation window in the Keys would be only for permanent residents. Tourists are supposed to leave a day earlier.
'Except there might not be an extra day. With rapid intensification, we may not have 48 hours,' Davidson said.
Cory Schwisow, Monroe's head of emergency management, said the proposed update would not affect how Monroe County plans and executes evacuations.
'The emergency management director looks at each storm differently based on the size, speed, and confidence level of the track, working closely with the National Weather Service,' he wrote in a statement. 'Each storm is looked at in a unique manner and residents and visitors will be given as much time as possible to evacuate safely.'
Keep the development going
If passed, the bill could restart development in some Keys cities and keep the permits flowing in others.
While some municipalities — like Marathon — are fresh out of new development permits, the county is still working through its supply. It should be completely tapped out by 2026, said Schemper, Monroe's growth management director.
The 900 more allowed by this bill would have to be spread out over a decade, and she estimates it would take at least a year before the state and county worked out a way to begin handing them out to would-be developers.
'It could allow the county to continue giving out permits, but probably slower than we do now because there's less than we have been giving out,' she said.
The bill leaves some open questions that would still have to be addressed before the permits could be handed out. For instance, the bill specifies that these new developments would be single-family. But it also says that owner-occupied, affordable and workforce housing would be prioritized for building permits. Affordable and workforce housing are often multi-family, to save on building costs.
The biggest concerns seem to be with traffic, which already can be sluggish on the Overseas Highway. A county-commissioned study found that with an estimated 1,000 more developed lots, Monroe would run into issues with traffic in the upper Keys, have slightly fewer school buses than needed and potentially need to beef up its fire department.
Currently, the study found, Monroe has too many drivers to keep traffic moving smoothly in Upper Matecumbe and Windley. With 1,000 more developments, Lower Matecumbe would also face traffic stress.
Water, wastewater, electricity and trash needs could still mostly be met with all those extra residents, the study found.
However, not everyone agrees with the findings. Steve Friedman, an Islamorada commissioner, called the concept of adding this much new development 'ludicrous.'
'None of the residents that live here, unless you own property, really want this. Nobody wants more development,' he said. 'When's it going to stop? It was supposed to stop in 2023. We have to draw the line in the sand somewhere.'
The county study also did not mention sea level rise, which is already swamping some spots in the Keys regularly and driving up costs for drainage fixes. Monroe County has seven road elevation projects underway — a $300 million bill footed largely by federal and state grants.
There's still $4.7 billion of road raising left to go in the next few decades for the Keys alone.
Threat of lawsuits looms
Other than straining environmental and governmental resources, the biggest impetus behind allowing new development in the Keys appears to be the threat of lawsuits from property owners who don't get the chance to build.
The fear is that developers left at the end of the ROGO musical chairs game with an empty lot and no permit to build on it will sue for the full value of their potential property — a multi-million dollar sum.
Monroe's official stance appears to be that as long as there are development permits to hand out, they can avoid lawsuits. So this bill could help stave off a potential flood of suits.
'It's not just kicking the can, it's also allowing time for additional strategies to combat that,' said Schemper, who suggested that Monroe could use the coming decade to round up more money to buy out vacant lots and halt development.
Monroe just finished the paperwork on the last of its property buyouts from Hurricane Irma, a process that was so popular there was a waiting list at one point. Those homes are now empty lots, not counted in the official tally of undeveloped properties.
But environmentalists like Davidson doubt that landowners actually have much of a legal case. And if a judge rules they do have standing, Davidson would like to see governments simply pony up the cash rather than allow new development.
'Unless you owned the property before critical concern was designated, you have been on public notice that we're going to run out of permits in the Florida Keys, and you might well never get a building permit,' he said.
'It is vastly cheaper to say no and pay everybody $1 million for an empty lot than to say yes and pay for all that expansion, not to mention ruining the Florida Keys.'