Originally published by Roger Williams in Florida Weekly on January 2, 2025
Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman, a graduate of Cape Coral High School whose district includes Hudson Creek, and Calusa Waterkeeper Codty Pierce, both could not be reached for comment.
Some view the potential project less than optimistically.
John Cassani, Calusa Waterkeeper emeritus who spent years resisting pollutant challenges to the 67-mile Caloosahatchee Basin that includes western Lee County, views the arrival of a community there as cumulative in effect, no matter how well it’s managed.
“My high-altitude view is that, from a water resource perspective, it means more wastewater treatment, and much of that will come from a groundwater source someplace,” Cassani said. “And it means significantly more stormwater runoff.”
The developer will be required to meet solid standards for runoff, a good thing, he suggested, “but they’re too narrowly focused just on that development, not on cumulative impacts.”
Added to everything else happening in that basin, water quality will decline, Cassani predicted.
Nearby Matlacha Pass, for example, was “verified impaired in 2015. The state still hasn’t developed a restoration plan for Matlacha Pass. We’re seeing major ecological impacts, seagrass decline and a macro-algae situation where macro-algae is out-competing seagrass,” Cassani said.
Consequently?
“It’s one more nail in the coffin of a downward trending situation in water quality,” Cassani added.