Trial Set for Florida Keys 7 mile Stretch rebuild Challenge
Keys Treasures
CATHERINE WILSON
Associated Press
KEY LARGO, Fla. - "The Stretch" of Florida Keys access highway is no
place to stop - unless there's an accident - and there are plenty of
them on the environmentally sensitive 18-mile section of U.S. 1 linking
Key Largo and Florida City.
In a collision between safety and the environment, Keys and national
groups are suing the state to delay or change plans to install a center
divider, new bridges and a wide shoulder for hurricane evacuations on
the two-lane road cutting through Everglades National Park and
bordering the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
"It's funny how the economy and the ecology get so intertwined down
here," retired Chicago banker Larry Woods said at the head of "The
Stretch" on his first trip to Key West. "It's a tough fight."
Trial is set to start Monday in federal court in Miami on an attempt by
the Sierra Club, Friends of the Everglades and the Florida Keys
Citizens Coalition to re-examine plans for the $268 million
construction project. Utility work is under way, and heavy equipment is
set to move in April 5 and stay for five years.
"It's already becoming a nightmare," said Terry Allen, general manager
at Gilbert's motel, restaurant and marina on the north side of a
drawbridge that will disappear with reconstruction. "Tempers have
really been nasty because of the backups."
With federal permits in hand, the state has issued the first major
contracts to work on a no man's land that is a means to an end - mostly
for motorists in a hurry to start relaxing in the Keys and drivers
rushing back to the real world. Downtown Miami sits about 30 miles
north, and suburbanites crowd the road on weekends.
The plan for the primary road to the Keys is far from simple. Replace a
drawbridge with a taller span. Turn a canal into a wide sheet of water
and flood filled scrubland as part of an $8 billion Everglades
restoration project. Replace a lake-splitting road with a bridge nearly
a mile long to recreate more natural water flow. Build wet and dry
wildlife crossings.
The pavement itself would be widened from the existing 32 feet to 54
feet, but not as much as the 82-foot plan for a four-lane road that has
been on and off the drawing board in a project debated for years.
"Obviously they've had more than a decade to get this right, and it's a
shame in the final analysis that they couldn't explore any other
alternatives at all that weren't explored back in 1991," said attorney
David Reiner, president of Friends of the Everglades.
"It's not like it was in a drawer for 10 years. It's been continuously
updated, revised, studied," said Alice Bravo, district environmental
management engineer with the state Transportation Department. "When you
consider different alternatives, we can't help that someone disagrees
with the one we ultimately select."
The two sides are drastically split on the need for the project, and
many Keys dwellers suspect a better road will fuel growth along a
105-mile string of islands edged by stressed coral reefs and sea grass
beds. Keys residents already face significant water, sewer and waste
disposal issues.
Protected crocodiles, manatees and fish haunt the waters at the road's
edges, along with recreational boats, Jet Skis, sailboats and
flat-bottom fishing boats.
The state has worked on 385 acres to mitigate a project that will chew
up 83.5 acres of wetlands. Some of the mitigation acreage is 100 miles
away at a Navy base near Key West.
Take a drive on the Overseas Highway in Key Largo, and the deep divide
in public opinion is obvious.
Tom Hill is a co-owner of Key Largo Fisheries Inc., an old-fashioned
fish house where the employees wear shin-length rubber aprons and boots
as they sell shrimp, stone crabs and fish off the boats that tie up out
back.
Just now, he's thinking about the Drive Safely signs along "The
Stretch." The stark black words on round white roadside signs mark
traffic fatalities. The markers are a frequent sign of how dangerous
the road is for the 18,000 tourists, truckers, bus drivers, campers,
motorcyclists, divers and laborers passing through each day.
"I got five faces to put on those signs," Hill said, remembering three
employees, a friend's daughter and another youth who died. Twenty-nine
people were killed in 18 crashes, mostly head-on collisions, from 1997
to 2001. On any given day, there's a heady mix of road rage at slow
drivers ahead, impatience, recklessness and drunkenness.
"I've seen people pass on the dirt. I've traveled that road for 20
years," Hill said. "My feeling is that Friends of the Everglades and
the Sierra Club should have been sued for the wrongful death of all the
people killed on The Stretch."
Across U.S. 1 at Florida Bay Outfitters, owners Frank and Monica Woll
don't expect a safer road. They foresee more drivers taking crazier
chances by passing on the right on a paved shoulder intended only for
use before hurricanes.
"It's going to be a bigger racetrack," said Frank Woll. "It's not the
business I'm worried about. It's more the environment and the lifestyle
of the Keys."
To employee David Williams, road improvements translate to more Keys
visitors.
"They're all going to flood down here," he said. "I'm against the Keys
losing their character and becoming another Kennedy Space Center or
Disney World. ... Maybe that's progress."
Bravo, the state engineer, said, "I think it's a great project long
overdue, and I don't see why anyone would be against making a road
safer."
Viviana De Pinedo works, eats and sleeps on the edge of the road as
vice president of the Big Kahuna Fishing Village and Village Cafe.
Businesses like hers on both sides of the drawbridge facing elimination
will be reached by an access road after reconstruction.
"Come on. Give a break to Mother Nature. This place is becoming New
York. What do they call it? A concrete jungle," she said. "I want to
eat fish that tastes like fish, not pollution."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/11186987.htm
Keys Treasures
BY CURTIS MORGAN
Environmentalists' challenge in federal court of plans to overhaul the
18-mile stretch leading to the Florida Keys was canceled Monday.
A clerk for Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King apologized,
saying an unspecified ''medical emergency'' forced the delay. Joyce
Williams, King's courtroom deputy, would not elaborate but said the
trail could be rescheduled as early as this week.
The $270 million, three-year project, scheduled to begin within weeks,
is intended to widen shoulders, replace an aging bridge and add a
concrete divider to what is now a two-lane road with two four-lane
passing sections.
State transportation officials say the work will cut down on head-on
collisions and speed hurricane evacuations on the road, notorious for
horrific and frequently fatal head-on collisions. The narrow two-lane
Card Sound toll road is the only alternate to U.S. 1 traffic.
The Sierra Club, Friends of the Everglades and the Florida Keys
Citizens Coalition want the project, which they say will destroy 100
acres of wetlands and likely spur a new wave of Keys development,
delayed for further environmental study.
Keys Treasures
MIAMI - (AP) -- A federal judge denied Friday an attempt by
environmental groups to block a road-widening project in the Florida
Keys.
U.S. District Judge Paul Huck notified attorneys of the denial in a
telephone conference call, with a written order to be issued later,
according to his clerk's office. Heavy equipment is already in place
and utility work has begun for the project, which is expected to take
five years.
The $268 million project will widen shoulders, replace a bridge and add
a concrete divider along an 18-mile stretch of U.S. 1 between Florida
City and Key Largo known for accidents and long traffic backups. The
highway segment goes through part of environmentally sensitive areas,
including part of the Everglades National Park.
The lawsuit attempting to halt the project was brought by the Sierra
Club, Friends of the Everglades and the Florida Keys Citizens
Coalition. They contended the project did not meed federal and state
environmental standards and that other alternatives were not adequately
explored.