LPA urges higher standards

With little open space left in Bonita Springs, East Bonita has become the solution to everyone’s miseries.

In the past six months it has been dubbed the perfect place for affordable housing, a spot for social services, even a potential location for a homeless shelter. But as it stands, the nearly 5,000 acres that were designated Density Reduction/Groundwater Resource to ensure residents clean water are not much more than a secluded place for people to dump unwanted trash, some DR/GR residents say.

Developers’ eyes have fixated on Bonita’s final frontier — the one spot oddly scarce on the city’s map. The potential has started to push more development requests before council hearings and advisory boards, as property owners ask what can be done with the only swaths left uncovered by concrete and stucco.

The Local Planning Agency outlined on Thursday a dozen suggested environmental standards for future development in the DR/GR, an area that has a restricted density of one home per 10 acres.

There are 1,755 units on the 4,739 acres of DR/GR, said Assistant City Manager Barbara Barnes-Buchanan, making the average density within the boundaries 27 units per 10 acres within city limits.

Past development can’t be retrofitted, but property owners who wish to redevelop or put up a new home might have to meet new requirements before getting a project go-ahead. The process should help restore the land in what LPA Chairman Larry Warner called a “deteriorating environment.”

“It’s time to do something about it,” Warner said. “If we keep waiting, the resources will be gone.”

A city-funded study released in 2005 concluded water quality is the key to balancing development and density in the DR/GR, according to the experts who conducted the study, geologist Greg Rawl and engineer Ron Edenfield. For the past year their findings have been under review, the last of which trickled in on Thursday.

Everyone can agree the DR/GR needs saving, but the solution has spawned different paths to success. The most discussion roused between LPA members concerned landscaping requirements and setting nutrient levels, two things developers will have to consider when proposing a project in the DR/GR.

Other proposed standards include hooking up current properties to the Bonita Springs Utilities sewage system, adding a city representative to the Estero Bay Nutrient Management Partnership and updating the Wellfield Protection Ordinance no less than every five years.

The proposed landscaping provision — a strict code that doesn’t allow the use of non-native vegetation or certain fertilizers for landscaping — would be hard to enforce it not applied to the entire DR/GR, said City Attorney Audrey Vance.

If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes, Warner said.

Landscaping standards for new properties need to be more strict than the status quo, even if that means putting old property owners on a schedule to get to compliance.

“If it’s not on the books every developer is going to go in and put a lawn in there and a single palm tree,” Warner argued. “We’re going to get people that cheat on it, just like we get people who cheat on watering. But we’re going to get some people to follow the rules.”

The four reviews — authored by an engineer, a geologist and two Florida Gulf Coast University professors — agreed with many of the study’s findings, but all urged caution of increasing density in the DR/GR.

“You need to ask not why shouldn’t you increase density, but why should you?” wrote Edwin M. Everham III, an associate professor of environmental studies at FGCU. “I don’t believe there is a societal obligation to maximize profit for private landowners.”

Andrew Tilton of Johnson Engineering poked at the study’s practicality, saying the process of setting nutrients limits for phosphorous and nitrogen would be “a very difficult task” without precedent to follow.

“Millions of dollars have been spent at the state and federal level without any value set at this time,” Tilton wrote in his review.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is expected to set state standards on nutrient levels in 2008. Edenfield urged LPA members to adopt a stricter standard to jump start restoration and preservation.

“(Nutrient standards) are coming,” Edenfield said. “So we can put our head in the sand and allow somebody else to set those standards for us, or we can ... start making some progress in that direction.”

“Simply because we establish that plan today certainly does not mean we’ll be out there tomorrow,” he added.

Lee County Resident Tori Polonitza, who has lived on land directly east of Bonita Springs for 11 years, said she supports Best Management Practices, but too many restrictions won’t allow for any development and the area needs some cleaning up.

“It’s not monitored, it’s not improving,” Polonitza said. “It’s become the dumping ground of Bonita Springs.”

Her land is outside of the city’s boundaries but is in area under review for annexation. A neighbor, whose home is also in the DR/GR but within the city’s boundary, said she’s also had dumping problems in her yard. Since there is little development out there, many of the plots are overrun with trash, and code enforcement rarely drives through.

“We’ve seen people just back up to the ditch and dump stuff,” said Debbie Price, who has lived in Bonita Springs for 28 years. “There’s no catching them.”

Increased standards will help improve the environment but shouldn’t make the land unattractive for any development or it will remain a trash can, Polonitza said.

Some environmentalists argued that standards shouldn’t be set until the city combines efforts with studies previously conducted by Lee County, specifically examining 19 studies on panther habitat, said John Murray, executive director of the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed.

“We (need to) establish some form of common ground by starting to integrate all these different knowledge bases,” he said.

The LPA’s recommendations will return to the advisory board once more before being sent to council, so there is still time to change the standards.

Complete agreement on how best to handle the DR/GR is unlikely no matter how much time or how many scientists are involved, Edenfield said. The goal is to make the best decision at the time, he said.

“You could roll the clock back and ask the guys who channeled the Kissimmee River, ‘Was this the right choice?’” Edenfield said.

The Kissimmee River was straightened into a 56-mile canal in the late ‘60s as a solution to area flooding, resulting in severe environmental damage. Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin restoration in 1992, according to the Audubon of Florida Web site.

Though now it’s known that the decision was clearly the wrong choice, it was probably made with the best intentions in mind, Edenfield said. The city needs to start somewhere and tweak along the way, he said.

“You try to make the right choice and move forward,” he said.