The Miami Herald
WEST KENDALL

Posted on Fri, Sun. Dec 2, 2007

Activists ready for battle over UDB plans

Environmental activists are gearing up for a fight now that the Miami-Dade Commission sent the state four applications that promote urban sprawl.

BY YUDY PINEIRO
ypineiro@MiamiHerald.com

When developers appeared before the West Kendall Community Council in September with a couple of urban growth requests, community activists pleaded with the elected officials to consider the impact on existing resources.

But the council agreed to pass on to the County Commission the two applications that propose extending the Urban Development Boundary, a line that limits urban sprawl along the county's western edge.

The County Commission also looked beyond similar pleadings Tuesday, choosing to pass along the applications to the state for further review -- same as it did two years ago. The commission considered 17 changes to the county's development master plan, four of which are proposals to build outside the UDB.

So environmental activists will continue the fight.

''We are hopeful the state will remain as strong as they did in the last cycle and say there's no water available for these developments,'' said Dawn Shirreffs, the South Florida organizer for Clean Water Action, which runs the Hold the Line campaign.

Commissioners supported a controversial proposal to build a Lowe's in West Miami-Dade and David Brown's application for a 600,000-square-foot office and commercial center at the northwest corner of Southwest 167th Avenue and Kendall Drive. Both are outside the UDB.

Both projects will be forwarded to the state's Department of Community Affairs, which will make recommendations and send it back to commissioners for a final April vote.

They also forwarded to the state without approval an application to develop an 95-acre residential complex with some business and office space at Southwest 167th Avenue, between 104th and 112th streets.

Both applications were considered during the county's 2005 master plan amendment process, but failed. County staff remained firm, recommending denial of the proposals and citing many of the same issues as activists such as a limited water supply.

Applicants were reinvigorated when the state recently granted Miami-Dade County a 20-year water permit.

But Shirreffs called it a water reuse permit, saying that's barely suitable to serve the needs of the community that lies within the boundary.

''Reuse needs to serve the existing population's needs and not accommodate new growth, particularly growth outside the line,'' she said.

Shirreffs said the group will be planning massive door-to-door and other grass-roots efforts to engage the public in the discussion and urge the state to hold the line.