Cypress Creek Town Center developers get another chance to protect water

Diagrams on paper are worthless if the guy driving the bulldozer isn't paying attention, or worse, doesn't care. That is the essence of a ruling from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which reinstated a construction permit for the developers of the Cypress Creek Town Center last week after an 18-month suspension. The corps halted work at the site, and later levied a nearly $300,000 fine, after builders discharged muddy water into the federally protected Cypress Creek and cleared an acre of forested wetland that was supposed to be preserved.

The corps blamed human error rather than a design flaw of the site's drainage plans and required only a minor tweaking of the permit. It is incumbent then on the developers, the Richard E. Jacobs Group of Cleveland and Sierra Properties of Tampa, to ensure safeguards against a repeat of the environmental damage.

The developers of the outdoor mall at State Road 56 and Interstate 75 previously touted their planned protections, including capturing more runoff and holding it longer than required by law and prohibiting surface water runoff directly into Cypress Creek.

Certainly that stated intent is contradicted by construction crews allowing three separate turbid discharges into the Cypress Creek, a tributary to the Hillsborough River that provides much of the drinking water for the city of Tampa.

The developers received a stiff fine, but escaped with no expensive redesign of the project. They also received a black eye in the court of public opinion considering the controversial project had been opposed by environmental groups from the outset because construction on the mall's 500-acre site would damage 57 acres of wetlands.

During the governmental review process, developers downsized the project, redesigned the stormwater drainage system, promised to curb potential damage to wetlands along the creek and targeted more than 115 acres within the Hillsborough River basin to acquire as wetlands mitigation.

Those design plans helped the proposed mall win local, state and federal approval, and though environmentalists protested potential harm to Tampa's drinking water supply, neither the city of Tampa nor the regional water supplier objected to the development.

It is time for the mall developers to reassert their promised environmental stewardship. They can start by ensuring their construction managers don't put protecting natural resources second to preserving their own bottom line.

Being a good corporate neighbor means more than paying fines for unfulfilled pledges.