Carl Hiaasen - Kick Ass - Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Losing land to development was only one factor considered by the Sierra Club when evaluating the impact of metropolitan expansion. The group also looked at pollution, water consumption, traffic congestion and population.

The critical yardstick is density, the ratio of people to land mass, and few places are as densely packed as South Florida. Nowhere is the ugliness more evident than southwestern Broward, where a drive along I-75 reveals little but rooftops, as far as the eye can see.

If the torrid pace of paving continues, Pembroke Pines, Coral Springs and other hot spots will eventually make Hialeah look like the Garden of Eden.

According to census data and University of Florida economic research, by 1997 Miami-Dade's population added up to 2,070,473 people living in an area of 2,109 square miles—or about 982 persons per square mile.

By contrast, Broward had 1,439,663 residents living within a much smaller area, 1,220 square miles. That works out to a nerve-jangling 1,180 persons per square mile, the human equivalent of living in a beehive.

The true elbow-to-elbow density of both counties is actually higher, when you eliminate their vast, unpopulated Everglades acreage.

Only one place in the state is more statistically overchoked: Pinellas County, the St. Petersburg/Clearwarer area, where more than 2,700 people are shoehorned into every square mile. If they were rats, they'd probably be gnawing each others' limbs off.

Inevitably, growth has slowed dramatically in Pinellas, as it has in Miami-Dade—not only because these places are running out of room, but because people are running away. In large numbers, they're fleeing the woes and headaches of rapid urbanization—crime, traffic, taxes, sardine-can classrooms.

Where are the disenchanted going? Broward, according to population experts. Then Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie along the east coast; Lee, Collier, Charlotte and Sarasota on the west coast.

That's the great, bitter irony. About 800 people a day move to Florida in pursuit of a dream that's being obliterated by their own footprints. It's a dream they're destined to chase from one end of the state to the other, trying to escape all the other dreamers.

Thousands have fled Miami-Dade for Broward, and now Broward is more densely congested than Dade. In a few years, the same thing will likely happen to Palm Beach County, and hordes will flee there in search of someplace more sane and livable.

An advanced civilization might produce leaders who would learn from the foolhardiness of others and take steps not to inflict the same ills on their own communities.

This doesn't happen in South Florida, where politicians customarily cave in to developers at the expense of wise long-range planning. The result is what you see, an unbroken panorama of greed.

Palm Beach County is destined to become another Miami-Dade, just as surely as Collier is destined to become another Pinellas. Nobody has learned a damn thing, which is symptomatic of another type of density crisis.

The density of certain skulls.

From the road you can't even see it.

The buffer is North Key Largo hammock, dense and darkly tangled, quiet on a summer morning. The mosquitoes are exuberant, and there are also snakes, so it is best to keep walking.

Suddenly, the pristine tamarind and mahogany end, and the sun strikes the eye harshly. Ahead the land is bare, bleached and broken, as if a giant's claw had raked away a hundred acres of forest.

It looks like a bomb exploded here, and it did. It was called Port Bougainville.

Three years ago the fancy advertising promised "the romance of the Mediterranean and the freedom of the Florida Keys." There would be a yacht club, beaches, lakes, a shopping plaza, a hotel, more than 2,500 condominiums, all with "the charm of a painting by Cezanne."

Try Salvador Dali on a bad day.

What you see now is an obscene moonscape of pits and boulders. The sales models are boarded up, the quaint unfinished plaza is a pastel ghost town. The bulldozers have been towed away, and some of the trucks and trams are up on blocks. Castor bean and other garbage weeds flourish where hardwoods once grew.

Construction ceased on Port Bougainville more than a year ago when its financing collapsed. The work that began here was mostly done by dynamite, blowing craters in the hammock to create phony lakes upon which to sell "waterfront units."

Touring the 406 acres now, one might guess that the controversial mega-condo has gone belly-up. The polite term is that the project is "in receivership."

The bank foreclosed on the developer and the developer sued the bank and now there are lawyers crawling all over the place, which means we're talking about a serious, long-term mess.

Ironic, considering the development's history—approved after months of scandalous publicity, bureaucratic hand-wringing and celebrated compromise. While environmentalists battled stridently in court, everyone else signed off on Port Bougainville—the state Department of Community Affairs, the South Florida Regional Planning Council and, of course, Monroe County's zoo of a planning department.

The project is fine, they said. A boon for the economy, they said. Environmentally sound, they said.

A darn big improvement, they all said.

Now they say: Hey, we did our best. Nobody dreamed the deal would disintegrate.

But don't think for a minute the project is dead—this is Florida, remember? This type of development is like the Frankenstein monster, a lurching clod kept on life support forever. Every so often, a new genius shows up with a new scheme for resurrection.

Ten years ago, Port Bougainville was known as Solarelle—another developer, another failure. Years from now, after the current fiasco is sorted out, the project probably will have a new owner and a new name and a new theme. Today the Mediterranean, tomorrow Venice.

And, as always, an elaborate public show will be made of trying to save as many trees and birds and butterflies as possible, which is not easy when you're using dynamite.

On Sunday, a single snowy egret searched for minnows from the shore of a jagged, blasted-out creek. A ground dove pecked for berries on a disused limestone roadbed. Yellow butterflies darted above the remaining buttonwoods but veered clear of the gashed land.

Nobody wanted Port Bougainville to turn out this way, but it did. Nobody in government had the guts to say stop.

It's classic for South Florida. Where else would they even agree to stick one of the largest-ever condo projects between a national wildlife sanctuary and the continent's only living coral reef?

Each officious drone who said yes to this extravaganza ought to be forced to spend a day on North Key Largo, walking the property with his own children.

Explaining the scars, the rubble, the whole atrocious legacy.

As the last wild traces of South Florida disappear under the dredge and bulldozer, it's a good time to weigh the fate of the Pond Apple Slough.

That such a place has survived the blind rapacity of Broward County's development is both a marvel and mystery. Stubbornly it thrives, a steamy oasis wedged between two of the busiest and ugliest thoroughfares ever built, State Road 84 and U.S. 441.

Perhaps one thing that has saved the 100-acre gem is its invisibility not only from the roads, but from the South New River Canal, which forms its southern boundary.

Hemmed in, shut off, nearly forgotten, the freshwater swamp and its adjacent cypress forest is one of the most pristine Florida habitats left on the peninsula. Beyond the drooping pond apples are royal palms, coco plums, leather ferns and sprawling ficuses, ancient giants draped with moss, wild orchids and airplants.