Late last year, just before Miami-Dade County Commissioners made the controversial decision to move the urban boundary that protects wetlands and farms to make way for a warehouse complex in South Dade, former chairman Jose ‘Pepe’ Diaz lectured opponents at the crowded commission chambers.
“It is not environmentally sensitive land,” he said. “What is important is that the people are not misled. Because if it was environmentally sensitive land, none of us could go into it.”
But even planning officials say the area is, in fact, among the most sensitive, long seen as a key link to restoring the Everglades and fending off sea rise.
