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Lawsuit seeks to void federal permit for Saturnia FallsEnvironmental groups are ratcheting up their legal fight over wetlands and wood storks the groups say are threatened by development in northern Collier County. A lawsuit, received Monday at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, asks a judge to void a 2006 federal permit for Saturnia Falls, an upscale neighborhood proposed for some 640 acres north of Immokalee Road and west of Interstate 75, and to order a more detailed review of the project’s environmental impact. The National Wildlife Federation, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Collier County Audubon Society, and the National Audubon Society on behalf of Audubon of Florida are filing the lawsuit against officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department. Monday’s lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal challenges to Saturnia Falls and two golf course communities that would destroy more than 1,100 acres of wetlands in what is left of the Cocohatchee Slough that once carried miles-wide sheets of water from southern Lee County and northern Collier County to the Gulf of Mexico, according to the lawsuit. Developers say their projects will help restore wetlands choked off by non-native vegetation and will create new wildlife habitat. Environmental groups say the projects will harm water quality downstream and will cut core foraging habitat for wood storks that make nearby Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary the nation’s largest rookery for the endangered species. “At this time in our community’s growth, that (wetlands, water quality and wood stork habitat) is more important than golf courses and gates,” Florida Wildlife Federation field representative Nancy Payton said. Representatives with Saturnia Falls developer G.L. Homes could not be reached for comment Monday. The corps permit for Saturnia Falls, formerly known as Terafina, allows the destruction of almost 300 acres of wetlands. The corps permit requires G.L. Homes to remove non-native vegetation that is choking off wetlands at the site, buy and preserve 54 acres of wetlands and uplands yet to be identified, preserve 107 acres in Hendry County and buy credits in a mitigation bank. The lawsuit alleges violations of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Administrative Procedures Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Fish and Wildlife Service field supervisor Paul Souza, based in Vero Beach, could not be reached for comment Monday. Regulatory team leader Skip Bergmann, based in the corps’ Fort Myers office, said he could not comment on the lawsuit because the corps had not seen it yet. The lawsuit alleges that federal reviewers have failed to take a look at the cumulative effect of development in the Cocohatchee Slough and too easily write off the value of wetlands infested with melaleuca, a non-native tree, to wood stork foraging. In its advice to the corps, the Fish and Wildlife Service relies on an old version of Saturnia Falls with a drainage ditch that was dropped from the project after the corps rejected a permit for a nearby golf course community that proposed the ditch, the lawsuit states. The lawsuit alleges that the corps permit for Saturnia Falls also relies on a flawed analysis, called the Harper methodology, of the amount of pollution that will flow from the development into the canal that carries water from Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary upstream to the Wiggins Pass estuary downstream. “Both of those are just too important to degrade,” Conservancy President Andrew McElwaine said Monday. The lawsuit involving Saturnia Falls echoes claims made by the same groups in a June 2006 lawsuit that took aim at Parklands, a golf course community planned north of Saturnia Falls. The corps and the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed in December to revisit that permit. The review is still ongoing. “I hope everybody learned their lesson from that and follows the law,” Collier County Audubon Society and Audubon of Florida policy advocate Brad Cornell said Monday. In the face of pressure from environmental groups, the Corps of Engineers rejected a permit in 2005 for Mirasol, another golf course community in the same area. Federal permitters are reviewing a revised version of that project. An administrative hearing, set to start next week in Naples, challenges Mirasol’s state permit from the South Florida Water Management District. The Conservancy wrapped up an administrative hearing over the water management district’s permit for Saturnia Falls last month. A ruling is pending. |
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