Listen, if you haven’t read Craig Pittman’s piece in the Florida Phoenix about the showdown between cave divers and the City of Alachua (aka AlachuaWAY) stop everything and do so now.
Seriously, read it now. I’ll wait…
What’s eating the cave divers? Just a plan (rather, five separate plans) to build subdivisions atop Mill Creek Sink – which drains a lot of water into the subterranean caverns that divers love to explore.
“It’s sure to bring with it lots of polluting lawn fertilizer, gasoline, pesticides, and herbicides like Roundup, which will then seep into the caverns and wind up contaminating the aquifer,” Pittman writes. “By the way, building things on top of underground caverns increases the likelihood of sinkholes suddenly opening up and swallowing everything.”
Which, according to the AlachuWAY way of thinking, is a small price to pay for turning useless pastures into subdivisions and strip malls.
Runaway development has always been AlachuWAY’s way.
When I was covering the Legislature, in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, AlachuWAY’s way of growing now and worrying about it later was an oft-cited reason for passing Florida’s landmark Growth Management Act. (Alas, years later that act was abolished by state pols who thought the AlachaWAY way ought to be the Florida way.
How bullish was the county’s second largest city on laissez-faire growth?
This was a city that embarked on a rabid annexation binge to try to be bigger (at least in acerage) than GNV. And then it proceeded to approve sprawl development….
….even as poor, black neighborhoods within spitting distance of city hall still had unpaved streets and septic tanks.
And this isn’t the first time AlachuWAY has tried to pave over Mill Creek Sink. It almost approved a Walmart there before Alachua County sued to block it.
Like I said, it’s an old story.
But I dunno. Maybe the pro-growth chickens are finally coming home to roost for the AlachuWAY way.
Of late some extraordinary things have been happening in this City On The Make. And that’s not even counting the 2,000 signatures gathered to try to stop Tara Forest. Or the decision by cave diver Jacob Fletcher to run for AlachuWAY city commission.
How is the AlachuWAY way unraveling? Let me count the ways.
First, commissioners were shocked (shocked) by the abrupt resignation of three out of the four city planners. (For the record, I was shocked (shocked) to learn that AlachuWAY even had city planners.)
Then one of the former planners released an open letter accusing the current city manager and his predecessor of rushing development approvals.
“Most of the issues within the Planning Department are a result of outside influence on leadership. Specifically, the influence that former City Manager Adam Boukari has had on current City Manager Mike DaRoza,” former planner Justin Tabor wrote.
Even as DaRoza was denying Tabor’s accusations and defending his integrity, the city’s attorney, Marian Rush, told commissioners that rushed quasi-judicial hearings on developments could leave the city open to lawsuits.
“We may have a minimum of eight different hearings that may all get appealed that could all go into litigation,” Rush said. Citing one hurried Tara Forest hearing, she said: “I almost fell over. We could not possibly be ready to have a contested quasi-judicial hearing, a full-blown trial, on” the date scheduled,
Maybe, just maybe, the AlachuWAY’s way days are numbered.
One impact of growth for growth’s sake is that, eventually, more and more new city residents begin to object to AlachuWAY’s growth for growth’s sake ethos. Last year, nearly 500 residents signed a petition opposing one new subdivision plan.
And then there is the ongoing legal risks involved in hurrying up development approvals over the reservations of planners and a warning from the city attorney.
Maybe, just maybe, the cave divers know something that AlachuWAY commissioners haven’t gotten through their heads yet.
As Pittman suggested in his piece:
“I think all the cave divers concerned about Mill Creek Sink should show up in force at the next city commission meeting. They should bring with them a bunch of clear canteens. Each canteen would contain water that’s full of Roundup and Tru-Green products.
“As each cave diver steps up to the lectern, they should offer the canteen of contaminated water to the commissioners and say, ‘This is what you’re voting for.’
I would hope the commissioners would pay attention to these folks. After all, they’re the ones who have made a deep dive into this issue.”
Hope springs eternal. Maybe there’s even hope for AlachuWAY.
FreeGNV 