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Rural
America Under Siege - by Madeleine Fortin from
OC3 newsletter Excerpts;
Letter to the Paragon Foundation, NM; from East Everglades Legal Defense
Foundation, FL; 3-2-02 The
community I live in is called the "8.5 Square Mile Area" by
government agencies. I call my community Pariah, Florida. It lies along
the eastern edge of Everglades Nat'l Park. Several thousand people live
here. For the most part they're Cuban. They came here because they
believed that they would be treated with fairness and honesty by our
democratic government. Little did they know what was going to happen to
them. The
community is made up of small, family-owned farms and ranches. Most
farms are five to ten acres. Over half the land in the area is used for
some form of commercial agricultural production. We produce tropical
fruit, winter vegetables, herbs, cut flowers and honey. People have
plant nurseries. They raise pigs, goats, horses and chickens. The
area has been granted flood protection by Congress on three separate
occasions, but because of radical environmentalists hiding in state and
federal government agencies my community has been flooded unmercifully
since 1994 in an effort to force people to become "willing
sellers." In the process of flooding us the government agencies
involved in "restoring" the Everglades have managed to flood
the entire Miami-Dade County area twice in a one year period. So far
there has been at least $1 billion in flood related losses and 14 flood
related deaths throughout the urban and agricultural areas of the
county. The agricultural community in the southern part of the County is
literally on it's knees. Fifty year old avocado and mango groves are
dead. To the government they're just more "willing sellers." Flooding
has destroyed my community's way of life. Over half of the 55 miles of
unpaved roads in the community are no longer passable to regular
vehicles. Year after year, people have lost crops, orchards and
livestock. The flooding is not a natural event - it has been engineered
by government agencies that are "restoring the Everglades." As
one man who was forced by the flooding to become a "willing
seller" said at a public meeting, "You use water as a
weapon!" Another man told me just before he sold his home to the
government, "They've killed the American Dream." In
1989, Congress passed the Everglades Nat’l Park Protection and
Expansion Act. This Act told the park it could buy up all the vacant
land in Northeast Shark River Slough. It also told the Corps of
Engineers to do two things: provide the park with a more natural
hydrologic regime, and to protect the communities that would be impacted
by this. The exact legislative language reads, "The Secretary of
the Army is authorized and directed to construct a flood protection
system to protect the developed land within such area." (PL
101-229, Sec 104) The Corps developed the Modified Water Delivery
Project to do what Congress ordered. This project was Congressionally
approved and fully funded in 1992. How could they screw this up? In
1994, all forward movement on our little flood protection canal stopped.
It seemed the park wanted a "buffer zone." In the years since
then the Corps has developed a "compromise alternative" which
puts a canal up the most populated street in the community. This leaves
half of the community unprotected and costs over three times as much as
the original project. The Corps doesn't even have Congressional
authority to condemn land outside the foot print of the original project
and funding for the project is uncertain. In the process of choosing
this "compromise" solution the Corps, along with it's allies,
the Nat’l Park Service, US Fish & Wildlife Service and the Corps
local sponsor, the South Florida Water Management District, has
committed fraud, violated NEPA, abused the Endangered Species Act,
committed numerous violations of it's own administrative procedures and
wasted over $15 million in tax money - all in an effort to take our
homes and farms away from us! It's
bad enough for the government to do this to us, but in the process of
holding up completion of the Modified Water Delivery Project, the
involved agencies are unable to release water into the park in the
volumes necessary for ecosystem functioning. Rather than let the excess
water out to tide, the water is being stockpiled in the state owned
Everglades north of the park. This has turned the area into an inland
sea. More than half the tree islands are dead and endangered species are
being impacted. Because of the hydrology of the area, water stockpiled
above the surface in one place will soak into the ground and raise the
ground water throughout the County. When there is a heavy rainstorm the
water has nowhere to go and the entire County floods. The agricultural
area just south of my community has been devastated by the flooding. It
seems that all over the US rural communities are under siege. Excess
regulation in the name of "preserving the environment"
prevents reasonable use of our land while unfair trade treaties flood
our markets with cheap foreign produce. Small rural communities are
often poor, sparsely populated and politically powerless. How can we
protect ourselves from the actions of our own government? Perhaps if
other communities like mine band together we can make our voices heard
in Washington [DC]. Thank
you for your interest in my community's problems. I hope we can work
together. [signed]
Madeleine Fortin, President; Excerpts;
Letter to the Paragon Foundation, NM; from East Everglades Legal Defense
Foundation, FL; 3-2-02 In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. [Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml] |