Florida's Envirometal protection dept./

[1968 nova ss]

Looking through the earlier post on lower gas prices;got me thinking of an issue I went through that I would like to share.I built a house and before I moved in the house,the county enviromental protection placed a hold on my certificate of occupancy;claiming the house was built within a wetland area.Well after searching and I finally found a good biologist;well he claims they are completely wrong and no wetlands exist.Now, I did original have prior approval from the county agency;but the state agency disagreed and hoped on board.I went to the county commissioner etc.with no help.Why no help;well ;I found out the county agency ;commissioner etc knew about the EPD wrong ways.Well the county EPD had no case and had to eventually let me move in ;after the house sat for 6 months after completion.Now back to the state agency;the state EPD played hard ball for over two years.Until i finally got to a State Senator;who just happen to be a musclecar guy.The Senator did his best and interveined as I met the senator and brought to him the problems in the subdivision and my parcel in particular.We settled out of court ;mainly; because it was half the cost of going to court;and you never know how the judge is going to decide.the county and state agency have people on the payroll that do nothing but lobbying the politician.the only help I had was a state Senator who know how ruthless they can be.the comissioner ,newspaper etc.would not touch it .I still had to pay the state agency some money and restore an area back to what the state agency thinks was there;but it less than half of what they originally wanted.
just an example of these tree huggers going way to far ;like the oil drilling in the artic etc.Just my two cents .anybody else had run in with these people.chris teed