Paving Paradise: Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss (Florida History and Culture)

What is happening to Floridas “protected” wetlands? “This is an exhaustive timely and devastating account of the destruction of Floridas wetlands and the disgraceful collusion of government at all levels. Its an important book that should be read by every voter every taxpayer every parent every Floridian who cares about saving whats left of this precious place.”–Carl Hiaasen “Pittman and Waite pulled the lid off federal and state wetlands regulation in Florida and peered deep into the cauldron of mitigation no net loss banking and the rest of the regulatory stew. For anyone interested in wetlands generally and in Florida environmental issues in particular this is an eye-opening must-read book.”–J. B. Ruhl Since 1990 every president has pledged to protect wetlands and Florida possesses more than any state except Alaska. And yet since that time Florida has lost more than 84 000 acres of wetlands that help replenish the water supply and protect against flooding. How and why the states wetlands are continuing to disappear is the subject of Paving Paradise. Journalists Craig Pittman and Matthew Waite spent nearly four years investigating the political expedience corruption and negligence on the part of federal and state agencies that led to a failure to enforce regulations on developers. They traveled throughout the state interviewed hundreds of people dug through thousands of documents and analyzed satellite imagery to identify former wetlands that were now houses stores and parking lots. The result was an award-winning series “Vanishing Wetlands ” of more than twenty stories in the St. Petersburg Times exposing the unseen environmental consequences of rampant sprawl. Expanding their work into book form in the tradition of Michael Grunwalds The Swamp Pittman and Waite explain how wetland protection has become a taxpayer-funded program that creates the illusion of environmental protection while doing little to stem the tide of destruction.