Alafia River Property

Here in Hillsborough County Florida, the rules that govern building or developing a parcel of land that contains wetlands are in the process of being re-written.  On July 17th, the EPC is hosting a workshop to review the proposed amendments to the Wetland rules.

On area that concerns me is the change to the mitigation process.  It seems that the change will require the mitigation to be engineered in compliance to the current zoning.  I think that in most applications, the wetlands are being looked at because a building or development is going to be built and usually that means zoning changes.  It’s a catch 22.  In order to have the zoning changed, you will have to do a werland delineation and then submit your mitigation plan among other engineering.  But, you can’t do this based upon your requested zoning change.  It almost sounds like you will be painting yourself into a corner.  How is this going to allow you to change the zoning?