A controversial vote that paved the way for a heavy equipment operator's new headquarters on wetlands outside Miami-Dade County’s urban development boundary has drawn a veto by the county’s mayor.
In a statement Monday, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the plan failed to adequately protect a large swath of wetlands on the 246-acre site bordering the Everglades.
“ While improvements were discussed, the final proposal did not meet the environmental standards our community needs and expects,” she said in a brief video posted on X.
READ MORE: New industrial HQ would pave over protected wetlands near flood-prone Miami-Dade suburb
County commissioners approved an application from Kelly Tractor last month to rewrite part of the county’s growth plan to create a "transportation and infrastructure support area" that would have paved over about 160 acres of wetlands west of flood-prone Sweetwater.
Proposed plans included a leasing center and buildings covering 2.2 million square feet, along with parking for cranes, backhoes and other heavy equipment; repair and fueling bays; truck wash facilities; a rail connection and helicopter pad. The proposal also left open the possibility for rock mining.
Because the application was submitted as a text amendment to the county's comprehensive growth plan, and not a map change, the proposal required fewer reviews.
County planners who opposed the project warned the plan would destroy 62 acres of wetlands on the site that Kelly had previously restored and were placed off-limits for future development. Planners also said Kelly had failed to explain why it couldn’t use land it already owns near its current headquarters in Doral or other available land inside the development boundary, or even why such a large expansion was needed.
The wetlands are located in the North Trail Basin, just north of a basin that protects the county water supply and once provided headwaters for Shark River. The region squeezed between the Everglades and Miami-Dade's western suburbs are considered among the best remaining wetlands in the county needed to help control increasing floodwaters. They're also part of the shrinking watery prairies where endangered snail kites hunt for snails and wood storks forage.
Environmentalists who opposed the plan lined up to speak at last month’s meeting.
“With just a text amendment, we have no control over what they do on that property, so we started to sound the alarm,” Laura Reynolds, an environmental lobbyist and science director for the Hold the Line Coalition, said Monday after the mayor announced the veto. “We can’t allow somehow to just carve out and change the rules with just a text amendment.”
After reviewing the final proposal, Levine Cava concluded using a text amendment circumvented planning rules designed to prevent sprawl, her office said in a statement.
In her veto, Levine Cava wrote the final deal also failed to include a promise from Kelly Tractor to restore wetlands in the same basin to make up for the 62 acres it planned to pave over, or another 100 acres of wetlands in the project’s footprint.
“The County must act to protect significant wetland systems,” Levine Cava wrote in her veto, adding, “The applicants have failed to address the impacts to precisely the type of wetlands the County's [Urban Development Boundary] policies are intended to guard against.”
