05/24/2026
An Open Letter to Pasco County Leadership About the Land We Are Losing.
I am a fifth-generation Floridian and a fifth-generation Pasco County resident. My family roots run through Dade City, San Antonio, St. Joe, Darby, Blanton, ranchland, citrus groves, kumquat farms, and cow pastures. My family stayed here because this was rural Florida. We stayed because this land meant something.
And now many of us who stayed no longer recognize the place we fought to protect.
People moving here today say they “moved to the country.” But this is not the country anymore. The country is disappearing beneath subdivisions, widened roads, retention ponds, warehouses, and endless development projects built where wetlands, floodplains, cypress preserves, and pasture once stood.
Those of us who were born and raised here have watched this transformation happen in real time. We watched Wesley Chapel before it became what it is now. We remember when there was nothing there but open land, woods, and cattle. We remember two-lane roads, dark skies, orange groves, and the smell of rain hitting dry pasture. We remember when springs and rivers felt wild and alive instead of crowded, overdrawn, and chemically strained.
And now we are watching the consequences arrive.
The flooding after Hurricane Milton was not normal Florida flooding. Lifelong Floridians understand what rivers like the Withlacoochee do after storms. We know certain roads flood. We know low areas fill temporarily. We know how hurricanes work because we have survived them our entire lives.
This was different.
The water did not simply rise and recede. It kept rising for days and weeks after the storm had already passed. Entire neighborhoods in places like Ridge Manor, areas that had existed for decades without catastrophic flooding, were swallowed. Homes disappeared underwater. Families lived in RVs outside gutted houses while trying to rebuild what they could. Some people gave up entirely and left.
People who had weathered Florida storms for generations suddenly found themselves watching floodwater continue climbing higher every day with no clear end in sight.
That kind of event changes people.
I drove through these areas after the storm. I watched water pouring across roads where water had never crossed before. Car lots that had existed for decades sat underwater. Entire stretches of familiar land became inland lakes. Along rivers and in the Green Swamp, water marks still stain trees ten to twelve feet high years later. Cypress forests remain scarred and uprooted from the force of moving water.
And then, somehow, after historic flooding, some of these same waterways reached historic lows. Rivers exposed bottoms that many lifelong residents had never seen before. Landscapes that once felt stable now feel unpredictable and fragile.
The scientific reality behind this is not complicated. Florida’s wetlands, cypress domes, floodplains, ranchlands, and swamp systems are not empty land waiting to be developed. They are natural infrastructure. They absorb floodwater, recharge aquifers, filter pollutants, reduce downstream flooding, and support interconnected ecosystems that have functioned for centuries.
When these systems are fragmented by roads, rooftops, compacted soil, and rapid development, the land loses its ability to absorb and slowly release water the way it was designed to. Water does not disappear simply because concrete is poured over the places it once occupied. It moves elsewhere, often into neighborhoods and homes that never previously flooded.
And still, despite what we witnessed after Hurricane Milton, development continues accelerating.
In Dade City alone, multiple new housing developments have appeared in just the past two years. More are planned along sensitive waterways and former rural land. Places like the Hillsborough River and the edges of the Green Swamp continue facing increasing pressure from growth that ignores the limitations of the land itself.
At public meetings, many of the people finally speaking up are not newcomers. They are my generation. The generation that remembers what this area was before the explosive growth. The generation that watched the transformation happen piece by piece and now understands what is being lost.
We are not opposing growth because we hate change. We are sounding alarms because we know this land. We know where the water historically went. We know which areas flood and which areas recharge aquifers. We understand that cypress preserves are not decorative scenery. They are functioning ecological systems that protect communities whether people realize it or not.
The tragedy is that many of the same individuals and interests who built fortunes from this land continue profiting from its destruction. Rural Florida is being marketed and sold while the very qualities that made it valuable are erased.
And the consequences are coming.
Another storm like Milton, combined with the amount of development now occurring across Pasco County and surrounding areas, could create catastrophic flooding beyond what we have already experienced. Many longtime residents understand this instinctively because we have already seen the warning signs written across the landscape itself.
The trees remember.
The rivers remember.
The land remembers.
The question is whether we will listen before the damage becomes irreversible.
Ron Oakley, Pasco County Commissioner District 1 Seth Weightman Jack Mariano Pasco County Board of County Commissioners Phillips Infrastructure The Laker - Lutz News Tampa Bay Times Wilton Simpson Senator Rick Scott Congressman Gus Bilirakis
