EDITOR'S NOTE: Ellen Sugarman is a nationally known investigative reporter. She has given KWTN permission to serialize her new book about environmental terrorism in the Florida Keys: It is a work of fiction. the events and characters portrayed are imaginary. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is coincidental.
In Chapter One, officials from County Code Enforcement, the Sheriff's Office and the Florida Marine Patrol— off duty and in civilian clothes, but armed— pay an unofficial visit to property owners on Little Knockemdown Key. A few days later, the owners were cited, ordering them to tear down unpermitted structures— even though many of those structures had been there prior to the law requiring permitting. In Chapter Two, Sugarman used Fantasy Fest as a backdrop to introduce us to her cast of characters. In Chapter Three, an investigative reporter hears about an alleged conspiracy by multiple government agencies to take over private property in the Keys and, in Chapter 4, she starts to look into it. Chapter 5: Officials "raid" Little Torch Key. To read previous chapters of The Willing Seller, see our website— www.kwtn.com.
Kate sat at the long Dade County pine dining table that dominated the kitchen, her favorite room in the house. It was 7:15, a beautiful morning. Opposite her the French doors were thrown open, creating the effect that she was sitting in the garden among the flowering trees. It was sunny and still, except for the occasional whirr of wings and accompanying rustle of leaves when a little wild parrot flitted from one branch to another, a bright flash of red and green.
Kate always rose at six. She loved this time of day, so quiet, so private. Before things began tugging and tearing at her, she could enjoy a couple of private hours for uninterrupted work and thought. Right now she was enjoying her usual breakfast— a large con leche and half a foot of excessively buttered crisply toasted Cuban bread from the grocery on the corner. She had Vivaldi on the CD player. And, or at least she felt that way, the whole world to herself.
She was completely surrounded by paper. Being a document freak, that meant she was very much in her element. about to begin a paper chase with no clear idea where it would take her, that was the fun part. At this point she was still exhilarated by the mystery of the search.
She had the papers organized into piles. The three closest to her were County Code Enforcement agendas. At the other end of the table were three similar piles, Code Enforcement Meeting minutes. The other end contained two bulky piles of documents pertaining to the State of Florida's Preservation 2000. Across from here, its corners weighted down with salt shakers, a pepper mill, and an ashtray, was a large chart of the Florida Keys, the island chain extending all the way from the Dry Tortugas, close to Cuba, north to the mainland.
She was methodically reading through Code Enforcement agendas as she ate. In the interests of neatness, she eschewed her usual habit of dunking the Cuban bread in the coffee like most people did. Every now and then she'd stop, put down her toast and circle something on the agenda with a black or a red felt tip pen. She'd also write something on one of the legal pads spread out on her right. Admittedly, it was a tedious process. But necessary.
Each pad was labeled. Hammocks of the lower Keys. Key Deer Preserve. Tropical Flyways. North Key Largo Hammocks. These were the designations for the four-state land acquisition projects in Monroe County, otherwise known as the Keys. These were the areas Kate was interested in. Each of them encompassed specific Keys and developments. The Keys preservation projects also happened to be, Kate had discovered, numbers one, two, three and six on the CARL list— a list of priority land preservation projects the state of Florida was seeking to acquire. In other words, they were top priority targets for the state's conservation dollars, which were considerable.
Kate had begun her research a couple of days earlier with the CARL fund and Preservation 2000 and by now she had a pretty good handle on them. The so-called CARL list, for Florida's Conservation and Recreational Lands Program, was the Bible for conservationists operating in the state. CARL was a land acquisition program. It operated under Preservation 2000, which had a ten-year three billion dollar budget. That made the state of Florida the largest conservation entity anywhere, even larger than the federal government.
Each year, environmentally sensitive areas were identified and slated for acquisition. Then they jockeyed for position on the CARL list— the lower the number of the project, the higher the priority— as communities of environmentalists lobbied for funds to save their land.
Kate wasn't exactly surprised that people who wanted to save the environment would have targeted South Florida. The state had a bad rep after decades of flagrant abuses like the profitable practice of building communities on fill in swamplands and the unconscionable devastation of plumed birds in the Everglades by hunting. So the environmental movement's concern made a certain amount of sense. Still, the amount of conservation effort focusing in on Monroe County was a little staggering. At this point, nearly all the undeveloped land in the Keys was earmarked for acquisition. She wondered how many Keys' residents were aware of this. She for one hadn't been.
What she was doing now was pretty pedestrian, sheer donkey work. She took a separate page for each agenda item that occurred within the confines of a particular project, entered it carefully on the appropriate legal pad. Making sure to note the name of the property owner, the number of the citation, the date it was issued and the charges, then describe them in some detail. Using a plat book she'd borrowed from a realtor friend, she added a formal description of the property and the page number for reference. When she finished annotating a citation, she located the property on the big map in front of her and marked it off with a felt pen. She had each of the four projects outlined in a different color, but that was no longer necessary because, by now, she knew their boundaries by heart.
This was the tedious part of the investigation. But Kate knew from experience that, eventually, a pattern would emerge from the minutiae that were piling up in her brain and in her notes. It would emerge spontaneously with an exciting, Gotcha! Like solving a puzzle. This was what kept her going. Knowing that all she had to do was slog through the docs and stay focused and one fine day she'd have her answer. And be ready to go.
With the proper attitude and enough curiosity, Kate could endure weeks, even months, chasing a paper trail. She knew just how to approach it to make it work. You had to be thorough, not skip anything, as tempting as that might be. And know how to pace yourself— keep your mind fresh and never work to the point of dullness, stop working before burn-out occurred. If you ran into a dead end, you had to think about it awhile and try another approach. Above the collection and organization of the data, you were involved in a constant analytical effort, sometimes on a subconscious level. The analysis— the questions you asked and the answers you came up with— was the true point of the exercise and this called for a certain amount of imagination and creativity. This was what would break the code and lead you to the story. It worked every time.
An hours and a half later, Kate pushed her chair back and stood, stretching her back and shoulders, rolling her head around to relax her neck. Then she walked out into the yard, still stretching and twisting. Bruiser suddenly appeared at her side, yapping and jumping around in circles, ready to play. That was what was so great about dogs— they always had an eye on you, ready to anticipate your next move, no matter how disinterested they appeared. She bent down and patted Bruiser, which prompted him to run off into the shrubbery and reappear with a yellow tennis ball. Kate knew the drill. She took it away from him while he pretended to fight her for it, then threw it for him to chase. When she tired of the game, Kate gave the command `Enough' and Bruiser dropped to the ground to worry the ball.
Kate stood a few more minutes and stared off into the middle distance, shaking herself mentally and doing her best to revitalize her brain. At this point, Kate still didn't know what to think, so she was suspending disbelief and just keeping at it. She went back into the house, sat down at the table, continued her work. Two weeks, maybe a little more, she estimated, and she'd have something. Then she'd be ready to take her investigation to another plateau.
About that time, Dr. Paul Allan Williams was having what he considered one of the lowest moments of his 36-years. Although, in the past ten months, there'd been plenty of low moments. He was standing at the entrance of his $1-1/2-million Sugarloaf Estates home with a mug of coffee in his hand, watching a large moving van lumber down the driveway.
Dr. Williams was a tall, rangy man with thinning brown hair, a perpetual suntan, and the sensitive hands of a surgeon— although he was, in point of fact, a radiologist. He was wearing blue pants, a white shirt, Gucci loafers. His jaw was covered with light stubble and, behind his glasses, his eyes were red-rimmed, like he hadn't slept in days. Paul was a single parent, the father of twin, nine-year-old boys he'd raised alone since their mother died in an accident four years ago when they were living in Palm Beach. Right now the twins were with Paul's sister Linda in Orlando, because Paul didn't want them to have to endure the trauma of the move.
The thing was, Dr. Williams hadn't chosen to move out of the spectacular beach front mansion he'd purchased a little over a year ago. He'd been driven from it by forces out of his control. Having taken a position with Florida Keys Community Hospital and moved his family down here, he'd intended them to grow up in this wonderful place, this peaceable Heaven-On-Earth. He thought they'd make a fresh start here. That the palliative ocean views, the awesome sunrises and sunsets, the soothing slapping of the waves and mews of the gulls— the opportunity to routinely commune with Nature, as the ads read— were just what they all needed to heal. The place had that effect on him from the moment the realtor drove him up to it. And it had been that way for the boys, too. At least at first.
To be continued next week.
Ellen Sugarman's writing has appeared in publications such as Newsday, Time, Vogue, Ms., Penthouse, New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun Times, and the Miami Herald's Tropic Magazine.
As a freelance television producer, she has worked with ABC, Fox News, A&E and the BBC.
Several years ago, she produced a segment on environmental terrorism in the Florida Keys for ABC's 20/20. Although scheduled to run several times, the show was ultimately killed, reportedly because of pressure from the Nature Conservancy.
The program did air in the Keys, however, after activist Peter Anderson was able to obtain a videotape of the show and paid for time to run it on local cable television.
Among a number of shocking revelations, the program documents that State Attorney Kirk Zuelch, while a member of the local Nature Conservancy board, offered to drop charges against property owners accused of environmental crimes if they would sell or give their land to the Nature Conservancy. Zuelch quickly resigned from the Nature Conservancy board after he was interviewed by 20/20.
Anderson encouraged viewers to tape the show when it ran on local TV. If you want to see this show, KWTN has a couple of loaner copies. Info: 292-2108.