ATV park in Everglades prompts delight, concern

Unless you ride one, which is a blast, all-terrain vehicles can seem annoying.

Knobby tires turn pasture into mud pit. Some engines howl like angry tomcats. And since driving off the beaten pavement is all the fun, riders are often at odds with farmers, homeowners, park managers, environmentalists and, sometimes, police.

ATV owners across South Florida have clamored for years for open land to ride without a hassle. Now, Miami-Dade Parks Department planners, in a joint proposal with Collier County, believe they've found just the spot.

It's miles from homes, dotted with rock pits and concrete pads, crisscrossed with existing trails and next to a 10,500-foot runway.

It's also in the middle of the Everglades, on a site where Miami-Dade County decades ago envisioned a massive jetport before public and political outrage scuttled the project.

Supporters insist the proposed 1,608-acre park -- just north of Tamiami Trail at the Collier-Miami-Dade line -- will do the Everglades more good than harm by drawing ATVs from more pristine places.

``Something has to be done with all these bikes running anywhere,'' said Miami-Dade Commissioner Jose ``Pepe'' Diaz, who has championed the ATV cause for years. ``We're trying to gather them and put them in one location and try to protect the more sensitive areas.''

Environmentalists and regulators are dubious. Damage from swamp buggies and ATVs in the adjacent Big Cypress National Preserve have long been the subject of disputes and lawsuits.

``It's difficult to find a spot in South Florida that doesn't have issues,'' said Carol Ann Wehle, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District. ``This is going to be a very sensitive permit.''

That was evident last month when the proposal barely cleared a preliminary hurdle. Collier's Environmental Advisory Council supported approval -- but by a 3-2 vote and over a staff recommendation to reject it.

The staff endorsed camping, RV parking, fishing, archery, hiking and biking but opposed ATVs, saying they would affect wetlands and increase traffic and greenhouse gas emissions from owners trailering ATVs to a site halfway between Miami and Naples. It's also land prowled by the endangered Florida panther.

The proposed park is located in Collier but is part of 24,000 acres owned by Miami-Dade's Aviation Department, which planned a six-runway jetport there in the late 1960s. The project largely launched the modern Save the Glades movement and helped create the adjacent Big Cypress preserve.

The runway, the only one built, now mainly operates as a training facility for large jets, which sometimes practice touch-and-go landings.

The property is almost all wetland and under water part of the year. Miami-Dade estimates ATV use would rise 20-fold from 150 to about 3,000 annually.

But Kevin Asher, a Miami-Dade parks planner, argued the project would improve natural conditions because the number of old trails would be cut by half. In addition, remaining trails would be stabilized with rock, stopping soil damage and allowing water to flow through an area often swamped with high water.

To reduce disturbances to the panther, which typically hunts at night, riding would be limited to daylight hours.

The site was selected after a feasibility study paid for by the state Division of Forestry. The Aviation Department has signed off and Miami-Dade commissioners approved a resolution, sponsored by Diaz, endorsing the ATV park in May.

But it still faces significant hurdles -- the Collier County Commission, the state Department of Community Affairs, water managers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The jetport site, about an hour from either coast, doesn't exactly thrill ATV riders. But given the dwindling options, they say they'll take what they can get.

``I approve anything that gets open land, no matter how small,'' said Cary Hernandez, a Kendall rider who runs the www.atvmiaextreme.com website and has campaigned for an ATV park for years. Hernandez, who rides with her children, calls it a matter of safety for a sport that draws many families.

``We have to keep these kids off the street,'' she said. ``Right now, we don't have anywhere we can ride legally.''

As the number of ATVs is rising -- there are 54,000 registered within 100 miles of the park -- the places to ride shrink. Collier riders remain livid over losing access to the Picayune Strand, site of an Everglades restoration project, and the failure of water managers to follow through with a pledge to find 640 acres elsewhere.

Collier has so far rejected the district's one offer of a site in Immokalee once used to store dredged-up lake muck that is contaminated with arsenic.

``They're trying to give us a Superfund site,'' joked Rick Varela, a Collier rider who runs an ATV website.

Miami-Dade did open a motocross track at Milton E. Thompson Park in the northwest corner of the county, but it caters mainly to racing bikes, not open-country enthusiasts. Permits to ride in Big Cypress are limited, with hunters and camp owners snapping up most.

Varela said he couldn't see how anyone would find the jetport a problem given how it's been used over the last several decades.

``It befuddles me how you can land a 727 on 10,000 feet of pavement and it had no environmental impact, but if you go disturb three inches of dirt you're altering water flow,'' he said.

Environmentalists counter that the proposed ATV park would only multiply an existing problem -- the gouges from ATV and swamp buggy tires that crisscross the wetlands of the Big Cypress. Several groups have sued to confine swamp buggies and ATVs to a number of hardened trails in the preserve, but the damage continues, said Matthew Schwartz, Everglades chairman for the Broward County chapter of the Sierra Club.

Schwartz doubts ATV riders at the jetport will stick to marked paths any better than riders in the Big Cypress.

``We've been fighting to get them to do that for 14 years,'' he said.

--

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/v-fullstory/story/1277057.html