A rushed effort to strip Miami-Dade County’s environmental watchdog agency of its permitting authority while re-establishing it as an independent department is raising alarms with environmentalists.
The county commission is scheduled to vote on the move Thursday, when it decides whether to approve next year’s $12.9 billion budget.
Under a proposal added after a preliminary budget hearing two weeks ago, the county’s Division of Environmental Resources Management, or DERM, would again become its own department. It would no longer fall under the Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources, a five-division super department created more than a decade ago to streamline red tape and speed up building.
But the bigger department, which includes building, zoning and planning, would retain control over permitting impacts wetlands, mangroves and other environmental concerns.
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That move could cripple the county’s ability to protect waters and wilderness from Biscayne Bay to the Everglades, seven environmental groups said in a letter requesting an urgent meeting with Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
“Restoring departmental status to DERM is an important step toward rebuilding capacity and efficiency, but that progress will be undone if its core regulatory responsibilities are stripped away,” Tropical Audubon, Miami Waterkeeper, Friends of the Everglades and other groups write in their letter.
Since 2000, the department has shrunk by half, from a staff of more than 550 to 280, even as the county population has grown nearly 25%.
Miami-Dade officials did not respond to questions or a request for an interview.
The county’s environmental department dates back to the 1970s, when it was created by merging the county’s old pollution control office with duties from the county health department and housing agency. The aim was to centralize decisions that impact a host of environmental issues, from dirty water that can trigger unsafe swimming to development that paves over wetlands and forests that protect the county’s water supply and wildlife, and help buffer hurricanes.
Over the years, DERM grew to become a powerful force. It managed a trust fund to buying sensitive lands, helped the U.S. Army Corps carry out Everglades restoration and beach renourishment and worked to keep pollution out of Biscayne Bay.
But a decade ago, after complaints that it took too long to issue permits and bogged down development, then mayor Carlos Gimenez — now a Republican congressman representing parts of Miami and the Florida Keys — led an effort to create the new larger regulation and economic resources department. At the time, he described DERM as a source of “administrative heartburn,” to the Miami Herald.
“You have to jump through 17 hoops for somebody to replace their seawall,” Gimenez told the Herald. “I’m here to protect the environment, but we have to make sure that it makes sense.”
Over the next decade, DERM’s staff shrank from 482 in 2012 to 280 positions listed in the current budget proposal. The downsizing coincided with the state eliminating growth management laws and the Florida agency overseeing development, meaning DERM’s growing caseload no longer had the benefit of some critical state rules.
Even as it continued to oversee complicated enforcement — in 2014, the department forced Florida Power & Light to clean up cooling canals at its Turkey Point nuclear plant after citing it for violating water laws — the division took on new tasks as climate change complicated its work.
Environmental risk and resilience will remain part of its portfolio. But its staff includes just 10 positions, with duties that cover preparing the county’s nearly 3 million residents for worsening impacts from increased flooding, more heat waves and higher temperatures.
Environmentalists say they weren’t surprised by the county’s attempt at a makeover given the persistent complaints from developers. But the move to strip regulatory authority came as a surprise and dramatic pivot.
Without the ability to enforce its department regulations, DERM would essentially be sidelined, writing reports to persuade others to do the enforcing. Environmentalists also worry that without the authority, DERM will be easier to get rid of altogether.
“This is exactly why efforts to weaken DERM’s permitting authority have surfaced time and again,” they wrote, “attempting to make way for improper development at the expense of critical resources and natural infrastructure like pine rocklands, wetlands, mangroves, seagrass, and more.”
