Rezoning Florida scout camp land for development has deep ramifications

Hernando County, Florida is weighing a request to rezone about half of the 1,300-acre Sand Hill Scout Reservation in Brooksville from recreation to planned development, opening the door to commercial and multifamily use along State Road 50. Eagle Scouts and residents protested the move, and cave divers say the property sits atop the deepest known cave in the Floridan aquifer, the source of roughly 90% of the region's drinking water.

The land was donated to the Boy Scouts in 1978 by rancher Larry DiePolder, whose will specified that if the Scouts ever gave it up, it should go to the county as a public park to keep it preserved. Divers, including Tessa Skiles, argue development risks contaminating the aquifer through the same kind of surface runoff documented in her father Wes Skiles' 1999 National Geographic photography and later films on Florida's cave systems. The county is currently reviewing the zoning request; the state, meanwhile, just recorded its driest August since 1895.

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