Forced to make up for destroying 17 acres of wetlands for a new airport runway, Broward County is building a new, 34-acre nature preserve of mangroves, mud flats and upland hammocks in a public park.
When it opens to the public in about two weeks, people will hike, jog and ride bikes through a mangrove estuary in West Lake Park in Hollywood that previously was overgrown with exotic Australian pine trees.
Two miles to the north, Broward is expanding Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, building a second “main’’ runway — a $781 million sloped airstrip that will rise six stories high over
U.S. 1 and the Florida East Coast railroad tracks — to accommodate large commercial jets. Officials say the airport is among the most delay-plagued in the nation and that the new runway, opening in September 2014, will address that.
Its approval was one of Broward County’s hottest controversies — a public war over growth, noise and air traffic that continues today, even though construction begins soon. The environmental damage was just one of many things opponents were in an uproar about.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers received a “couple hundred’’ opinions on the wetlands destruction earlier this year, according to Melody White at the Corps. That agency is weighing the input before giving Broward a permit to build the runway.
The environmental gain goes to West Lake Park, though, a giant preserve where Broward County restores or even constructs wetlands to make up for destroying them elsewhere. Work at the park has been done in the past to make up for damage done to environmentally precious lands in Port Everglades, which also is nearby.
The wetland-building project, tearing out thick pines and creating an ecosystem that can sustain the life of birds and fish, cost the airport $10 million. That money also paid for creation of riprap — a wall of boulders in a crib made of wood — to protect the park’s mangrove shoreline on the eastern side of the park, along the Intracoastal Waterway. On Thursday, a small boat whizzed past the park, even though it’s a no-wake zone, and the waves crashed along the new riprap.
Two-thirds of Broward County is undeveloped — lying in the vast Everglades. But in the urbanized third where 1.7 million people live, access to environmentally sensitive lands is limited. This is one place to do that, said Pat Young, a county parks administrative manager.
Broward Parks Director Dan West called the park a “jewel,’’ the largest remaining mangrove ecosystem from Miami to West Palm Beach. A compacted dirt trail through the rebuilt zone will be open to the public. It’s been closed since construction began in April 2010.
“Instead of seeing a lot of Australian pines they’ll now see areas with water … wading birds, animals … and of course the native plants, birds and butterflies,’’ Young said.
The 1,500-acre West Lake Park was once platted out for homes, and the late Joseph Young sold more than 600 lots to Northerners, Pat Young said.
“You’ve heard of selling swampland in Florida?’’ she asked. “Well, this was it.’’
Two catastrophic hurricanes in the 1920s helped end the Florida land boom, and the 1929 stock market crash finished off Young’s plans for what’s now West Lake Park.
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