Wetlands in peril? Requests to fill swamps jump in 5 months since state took over permitting

Wetlands near you may be in trouble.

More than 1,000 permits to change wetlands have been submitted to a state agency since it took over Clean Water Act powers from the federal government in December.

Collier County leads the state with 161 permits to dredge and fill wetlands that are pending with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection through April 23. Lee County is second with 84 permits in the same period.

An analysis of state records shows that dredge-and-fill applications are coming in at a faster rate than they were when the U.S Environmental Protection Agency had that authority, causing some to worry that more wetlands in Florida will be lost sooner.

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The permit data is a good measure of how wetlands are faring since the switch.

Dredge and fill permits are required when destroying wetlands, which are protected under various state and federal laws. 

The spirit of the law says there should be no net loss of wetlands, and developers apply for these permits when building on these ecologically sensitive lands. 

The only legal way to build on wetlands is to obtain a dredge and fill permit. 

Critics of the new process say the state should have never taken over the Clean Water Act authorities from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and that DEP shouldn't be the agency that allows wetlands infill. 

"I’m seeing the same numbers," Amber Crooks, with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, said about permit application rate. "I look at (DEP's website) everyday. We’ve run some of the numbers and it sounds like we’re looking at the same thing. These numbers are very large. DEP has a very condensed timeframe for review and some of the projects in the hopper are some of the worst that we have seen."

Wetlands provide critical habitat to endangered species and also help filter water as it moves across and through the landscape. 

They're protected under the Clean Water Act, which says there should be no net loss of wetlands in this country. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it issued 2,021 permits during a recent year, from Oct. 1, 2019 through Sept., 30, 2020. The state has already received more than half of that in December of last year, and many critics are concerned that the shift in authority will lead to even more wetland losses. 

And the same rush is happening in other areas of the state. DEP's database shows more that than 1,500 applications are pending.

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But many in the building industry are glad to see that DEP is streamlining the permitting process so development can proceed faster and with fewer unknowns. 

"I think there is a heck of a lot of overlap in the state wetland permitting program and the federal permitting program," said Jeff Littlejohn, a lobbyist who works on behalf of the engineering industry. "I think having the same state wetland permits will really result in some efficiencies." 

Littlejohn said the process is just as comprehensive as it was under the Army Corps. 

"We’re not even six months into this yet and there’s some squawking out there," he said of critics. "There's a heck of a lot of demand for new development. You need an efficient permitting program so the projects can go forward." 

Wetland loss is nothing new in Southwest Florida as thousands of acres of habitat have been lost over the past few decades, according to environmental assessments.

The majority of lands needing permits were in the eastern, rural sections of Collier and Lee. 

Sarasota County was responsible for 37 of the permits, Brevard developers put in 41 applications and Martin County landowners added another 13, according to DEP records. 

Alexandra Kuchta, with DEP's press office, wrote in an email that the state has only approved 16 of the more than 1,500 pending dredge and fill permits, but that the state agency found that 67 applications didn't require a dredge and fill permit.

After the Environmental Protection Agency turned over the permitting authority in  December of last year, several environmental groups filed a lawsuit over the transfer of power, and those cases are still pending in court. 

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The environmental groups say streamlining the permitting process will result is more loss of wetlands over a shorter timeframe now that the state is in charge of the program. 

"What kind of bothers me is Florida wanted to assumed the permitting, and here we have on one hand the state wanting to assume federal wetlands permitting and at the same time courting rapid or unsustainable growth that is destroying our waters," said Calusa Waterkeeper John Cassani. "It’s the ultimate hypocrisy. You can’t have rapid growth and sustain healthy waters. It just doesn’t seem to work that way." 

Cassani said losing wetlands also means losing wildlife habitat for threatened and endangered species, like the Florida panther. 

"In many cases the federal government has declared the habitat as critical in the context of an endangered species, so the concern is the state doesn’t have the resources or expertise to assume that federal authority," he said. 

With the brunt of Collier and Lee's applications being in the rural eastern portions of the county, some environmental groups fear what's left of the historic Everglades will be decimated. 

Meredith Budd, with the Florida Wildlife Federation, said some of the permits on file with DEP are the same ones that have been pending with the Army Corps. 

 But she also said mitigation for the lost wetlands in rural Collier has been lacking. 

"The wetland mitigation for Golden Gate Estates has been very subpar," Budd said. "It has historically and continually seen net loss of wetlands." 

Collier has some of the wildest and remote lands east of the Mississippi River, and landowners and developers have pitched plans for many communities. 

"It’s off the charts what we’re seeing in Collier County," said Matthew Schwartz, with the South Florida Wildlands Association. "It’s obvious when you travel around Collier County right now that growth is happening everywhere, and you have these truly gigantic projects in the eastern part of the county that are coming in." 

Collier does have some protections as much of the county is within the boundaries of the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park.

"Things like large tracts of development in panther habitat in eastern Collier and eastern Lee County and mining and the Burnett Oil pads and access roads, so it’s quite a number of challenging projects that DEP is now going to be the main entity reviewing," the Conservancy's Crooks said. 

Burnett Oil Co. filed four applications with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on Jan. 22 to begin constructing oil pads in Big Cypress.

Connect with this reporter: @ChadEugene on Twitter.