Orlando airport seeks to break promise to protect a lake ‘forever’ as critics fear a development ploy

Orlando’s airport is trying to nullify protections for a large expanse of environmentally sensitive land its managers long ago promised to safeguard “forever.”

The 1,100-acre tract that includes Mud Lake and wetlands is tightly surrounded by high profile and surging development. Airport officials claim its ecoystem value has been degraded, that it poses a risk to aircraft and that federal rules require revenue from areas not used for aviation.

It is yet another current attempt by local government to renege on a legal preservation pledge in the face of the high intensity growth of east Orange and Osceola counties.

Audubon Florida’s policy director, Beth Alvi, said in a letter of protest that the airport contends it is “obliged to monetize” available real estate. But she is concerned airport officials are using federal rules as cover for their “operating philosophy” to develop or sell Mud Lake property.

When Orlando International Airport built the fourth of its four runways three decades ago, it obliterated the flora and fauna of 300 acres of prime Bull Slough wetlands.

To get permission to do that, the airport agreed to repair and protect thousands of wetland and forested acres elsewhere and indefinitely.

The arrangement was celebrated as propelling an awakening era of enlightened, large-scale protection of endangered environments. The publicly owned and economically rising airport, also one of the region’s biggest destroyers of wetlands, took a leadership role in showing how it could be done.

Today, however, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority is seeking to back out of its commitment to a big chunk of those long-protected acres that includes a lake – Mud Lake – at the airport’s south end.

The airport authority’s promise to preserve the natural qualities of the 1,100 acres is embodied in a legal agreement called a conservation easement. The fate of that agreement is in the hands of the South Florida Water Management District, a state agency, which has declined to comment.

The airport began its quest early this year, asking the water district to nullify the conservation easement for a range of generalized reasons.

The water district responded that it was open to collaborating with the authority to amend the conservation easement to meet airport and federal needs.

That was early on and since then the airport has failed to “state with any specificity” what its intentions are for Mud Lake, says Audubon’s Alvi, in a letter to the water district. She added that airport justifications are “confusing and internally contradictory.”

Officials at the 40-year-old airport assert that the Mud Lake property provides habitat to birds that are a threat to aircraft and is a forbidding obstacle to responders should a plane crash there.

Overall, the airport is clutched in a mosaic of ponds and waterways. The large Lake Nona is a third of a mile from a runway and Mud Lake is a mile from another runway.

“Running safety scenarios,” said Kevin Thibault, airport chief executive officer in a February letter to state officials, “the lack of ability and infrastructure to access Mud Lake in the event of an emergency would be catastrophic.”

The airport authority also claims that Mud Lake and its wetlands have been spoiled by the region’s development.

“Mud Lake will continue to become more isolated in the landscape reducing the wildlife connectivity and ecological function,” Thibault said.

Florida developers commonly argue for destruction of an environmental property by claiming that encroaching construction or agriculture already has wrecked its natural qualities.

Noting the “regional context” of Mud Lake has changed, Thibault said the “City of Orlando is under increasing pressure for more developable land (and tax base), especially in close proximity to major employers and existing infrastructure such as the airport.”

Thibault also contends that the Federal Aviation Administration requires that lands not needed for jetliners and passengers be put to “the highest and best use possible to maximize non-aviation revenues to offset costs to operate the airport, thereby making the airport as self-sustaining as possible.”

The Orlando Sentinel has asked the airport for its communications with the FAA about the Mud Lake property. There has been no response.

In its communications with airport officials, the Sentinel also pointed out that it joined with airport personnel in 2015 in an outing that, in contrast to the airport’s current claim, involved convenient and direct access to Mud Lake to control its bird population.

They launched boats into Mud Lake and with practiced efficiency netted a large haul of fish that were taken away and released into other lakes. The task was to reduce prey fish that would attract the birds that airport authorities now say are an unacceptable threat.

The Mud Lake conservation easement covers a substantial area: 234 acres of Mud Lake, 611 wetland acres and 307 acres of dry uplands.

Even before the airport authority acquired the Mud Lake property for conservation, it had been proposed for extensive development by its former owner, the Lake Nona Corp.

The authority had to wrest ownership of the property through a condemnation trial in 1991. Lake Nona Corp. officials testified the company planned to build offices, shops and homes there.

What Thibault highlighted for the South Florida Water Management District, and what is otherwise apparent from an aerial view, is that the Mud Lake property now is entirely surrounded by perhaps the region’s most intense development pressure from powerhouse participants.

Immediately to the west of the property is an Amazon distribution center that opened in 2018 and now has an Orange County Property Appraiser value of $90 million.

Just to the north is the airport’s new Terminal C, which is slated for enormous expansion, and its adjoining station for Brightline and other trains.

Next door to the east is the burgeoning Lake Nona community of the Tavistock Development Co.

At the south border is the renowned and growing Medical City complex of hospitals.

The Mud Lake property also anchors the west end of the coming and controversial Osceola Parkway extension, a cornerstone project of the powerful Central Florida Expressway Authority.

The parkway extension is a toll expressway for a flood of growth east of metro Orlando in Central Florida’s last rural frontier – driven by Tavistock and its partner, the region’s largest landowner, Deseret Ranches.

Just 5 miles from Mud Lake is another conservation property, the revered Split Oak Forest, also now targeted for a repeal of long-standing preservation.

The expressway authority intends to carve off a 160-acre corner of Split Oak – a rectangle that ranks as the finest forest of its kind in Florida – for construction of the parkway extension.

The proposal has ignited some of the most divisive public rancor over an environmental issue the region has experienced in a long time. What’s happening with the Mud Lake property, about two-thirds the size of Split Oak, has been under the radar.

Mud Lake, although scenic when viewed from a boat, has its unflattering name and its wetlands are off limits to anyone without airport credentials.

The only friend stepping up for Mud Lake, Audubon, has been an original watchdog for environmental lands at the airport and the rural frontier east of metro Orlando.

Alvi pointed out that Mud Lake has not been marginalized by metro Orlando sprawl into a superfluous, degraded swamp.

Mud Lake and its wetlands spill south into Reedy Creek, a major tributary of the Kissimmee River basin, which is the primary water supply for the greater Everglades.

Taxpayers have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in projects to so far only partially cleanse and restore waters in the imperiled greater Everglades system.

“Mud Lake is the largest contiguous wetland area remaining in the Boggy Creek Basin,” Alvi noted.

In making the case for nullifying the conservation easement, the airport has stated in its dialogue with the water district that there are “currently” no plans for Mud Lake development.

Should the airport change its mind, as with the conservation easement, there would be little stopping the airport from ultimately obtaining permission for development at the lake.

Wetland rules of Orlando are weak and state laws are structured to provide – though possibly at a high cost for the airport – a path to obtaining permits for wetlands destruction.

The airport authority’s annual budget is approaching $1 billion.