As you may recall, we recently posted about Florida’s water management districts (including the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) – which owns most of the CREW) conducting assessments of their lands to determine if there are any that could be sold off/surplused to other entities to generate revenue for the state.
Now, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is doing a similar assessment of other public lands bought with taxpayer money. Many of these lands are within state parks and wildlife management areas (WMAs). Proceeds from lands surplused and sold through this process will be used to fund the Florida Forever program (up to $50 million) to purchase other, more critically needed conservation lands. CREW is not on the DEP list, but there may be other sites of interest to our members and visitors.
DEP is holding three public meetings this week – today (8/21) in Tallahassee and two webinars on 8/22 and 8/23) – to get public comment on the process and the parcels being considered for sale/surplus. Many of the parcels are small (<5 acres) and a full listing can be found here. If you’d like to make comments or just want to find our more about the process and plans, you can visit the DEP website.
Related articles
