Fighting the government

[southsider2k5]

Florida landowner fights to keep `hole in doughnut'

If a mediation session scheduled for Tuesday fails, the issue will go to court; state officials, however, say they prefer to settle outside of court

 

By Michael McGuire

Special to the Tribune

Published April 12, 2005

 

 

NAPLES, Fla. -- On a patch of rugged wilderness, with alligators, bears and an occasional panther for neighbors, a partially disabled former Navy frogman is nearing the end of a battle to save his homestead from an $8 billion plan to restore the development-battered Everglades.

 

As the Florida Department of Environmental Protection threatens to acquire the 160-acre property under eminent domain--a process by which a government can seize private property for public use--Jesse Hardy has refused the state's final offer of $4.5 million, and so far has not been satisfied with property offered for a land swap.

 

Florida officials contend that Hardy's land would be threatened by flooding under the plan. But the bearded Hardy said that a private study had determined that his land would be flood free, at 13 feet above sea level, when waters rise because of the state and federal Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan for Central and Southern Florida.

 

Described as the world's largest ecosystem restoration effort, that program covers an 18,000-square-mile area with the goal of restoring the annual southward flow of rainwater through sawgrass and cypress forests from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

 

"This is not the Everglades; that's a reference to that river of grass that grows 30 miles thataway," Hardy said, pointing to the ground and then to the southeast. "No, no, no, there's nothing here to restore. I'm 13 feet above sea level. There will never be a sheetflow of water here. There never was any heavy-duty standing water here.

 

`All I've ever had'

 

"This is all I've ever had," he said. "This is all I wanted. I worked like hell to buy it. I bought it in 1976 for $60,000 because nobody else wanted it. It was solid damn rock and cabbage palms and slash pines. You can't farm on it or nothing. All I could do really good was to set up a fish farm. But there's no replacing this piece of land."

 

A mediation session aimed as resolving the stalemate has been scheduled for Tuesday. If the effort is unsuccessful, the case will go to court. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and other state authorities have said they would prefer working toward a solution outside of court. Some officials contend that the project would be threatened if Hardy was allowed to remain on his land.

 

Property rights advocates praise Hardy as a pioneering Grizzly Adams representing landowners determined to prevent governments--and their environmentalist supporters--from wresting away land from owners who deem it priceless, and to which they have strong emotional attachments.

 

They have helped him create a Web site (www.jessehardy.com) and a local singer has produced a CD called "The Ballad of Jesse Hardy."

 

Others feel that Hardy, 69, is seeking to maintain control over an earth-mining operation, which he identifies as a project to create four lakes to use as a fish farm and recreational area for residents of surrounding Collier County.

 

Last August, after he had refused to sell for two years, the Florida Department of Environment Protection filed a lawsuit to force Hardy off his land. His property is considered "the hole in the doughnut" for the first phase of the plan that would tear up some 300 miles of unused roads and fill in several miles of canals to restore the water flow across large portions of a 55,282-acre tract of land between Interstate Highway 75 and U.S. Highway 41.

 

In the 1960s, the area was drained and the roads laid down to create a massive subdivision that was never built by its developers, who went bankrupt.

 

Florida officials said that 98 percent of the land needed already has been purchased, with Hardy and the Miccosukee Indians the remaining holdouts. The state's initial offer for Hardy's land was $711,725.

 

Though Hardy contends his land would remain above water once the restoration project is under way, Florida officials disagree, and assert that there would be flooding.

 

"Between Interstate 75 and U.S. 41 there will be no flood protection," said Ernie Barnett, director of ecosystem projects for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "What is there now will be dismantled under the plan."

 

While Hardy acknowledged that he is receiving an income from selling earth material dug from his property, he complained that nearly all of the money goes to a battery of lawyers assisting him in local, state and federal suits related to his land. But the future of his mining works is uncertain, as Collier County officials have failed to renew a mining permit that has expired.

 

Not interested in money

 

"This is our place," he said, speaking inside a small but sturdy shack that he built himself and in which he lives with a friend, Tara Hilton, and her son, Tommy, 9, whom Hardy has treated as a son since the boy's birth.

 

"We love it and don't want to leave it," Hardy said. "I'm not interested in their money. But with the lawyer fees and [the services of other experts], they brought us down. We don't have a damn thing now. We're just struggling, and I get paid a little bit for whatever bit of dirt we're still selling. That's what we're living on."

 

While asserting that his property lies on land above the proposed water flow, Hardy has offered to waive all liability for flooding, and has offered to encircle his property with an earth berm if the state will let him stay.

 

Many wonder why Hardy does not take the state's $4.5 million offer and establish himself in relative comfort elsewhere. But Karen Budd-Fallen, an attorney from Cheyenne, Wyo., on Hardy's legal team, said the Florida native's stand was akin to those taken by ranchers and farmers in the West and Midwest.

 

"Land ownership is such a basic instinct once you've owned land, particularly if you have owned it for a long period of time," she said. "It's akin to a mother protecting her children."

 

Budd-Fallen said that most of those who own such property fought in wars and returned to family farms or ranches.

 

"They look at it and think, `I'm not doing anything wrong out here. I'm not harming wildlife. I'm not destroying the water resources. I simply want to be left alone on my land to raise my children in my little community . . . These guys don't understand why their country, in their eyes, is turning its back on them."

 

While two of Hardy's uncles fought in World War II, he did not see battle during his tenure in the 1950s and 1960s with the Navy, part of which was served with the Underwater Demolition Team, forerunners of the Navy SEALs commonly known as Frogmen.

 

He said he was seriously injured in a training accident while jumping from a helicopter flying too low and too fast over water off Morehead City, N.C.

 

"When I went out [of the helicopter], it was just like you fired an arrow out of that damned thing. I hit the water and it totally destroyed me. It wadded up my chest, broke my back in a couple of places, blowed an ear out. It really did a number on me. I'm still having trouble."

 

Therein lies another reason why the state's offer to exchange his property for another site does not interest him, he said.

 

"The land they have tried to trade me was worthless," he said, "and I'm too damn old now. I just can't go into homesteading again. I've got this here now. I want to finish out my life here and I would like to turn this over to my little boy and his mother so they will have something to make a living on."

 

"When you hear about the $4.5 million that he was offered for his property, it sounds like a lot of money," said Bill Lhota, president of the Naples area Property Rights Action Committee. "But it's not just the property, it's his livelihood."

[southsider2k5]

An update on this story... The guy took $4 million and ran.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/06/everglade...t.ap/index.html