May 2, 1999
Sierra Club members and residents have every right to decry the environmental impact of the Suncoast Parkway, a toll road that will slice through Pasco and connect into north Hernando County and the Veteran's Expressway in north Hillsborough. It is impossible to build a 42-mile highway without damaging the environment, especially in a region as sensitive as westernmost Central Florida, home to the black bear and other species.
But the Sierra Club, which has filed suit in federal court in an ill-timed attempt to halt construction, and fellow opponents are playing too loosely with the facts.
But the Sierra Club's lawyer on the case, Lesley Blackner of Palm Beach, suggests a great conspiracy between Florida transportation officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the key agency in the permitting process, without offering any credible evidence. "It's one of the great scams of the decade," she says, "just so all those DOT boys will have a secure revenue source."
Even with such bizarre comments, Blackner and Sierra Club members have done the public a service by pointing out that the land designated for preservation has not yet been conveyed to the proper authority, the Southwest Florida Water Management District. It was supposed to have changed hands before construction started last summer.