Eco-tunnel is the best answer for Split Oak Forest environmental concerns
Split Oak Forest is a crown jewel of Central Florida’s conservation lands. Since its creation in 1994, the 1,689 acre parcel reaching across the Orange-Osceola county border has provided a respite for development-weary residents and is home to protected species such as gopher tortoises, sandhill cranes and southern fox squirrels. Split Oak Forest has also been used as a resettlement site for gopher tortoises uprooted to build the Orange County Convention Center and other large projects around Central Florida.
When the Central Florida Expressway Authority announced that their preferred route for the Osceola Parkway Extension would be located on 60 acres at the southern end of Split Oak, dividing the southernmost 100 acres from the rest of the forest, the citizens of Central Florida rose up in opposition. Many of them journeyed to the Tallahassee meeting of the Florida’s Communities Trust on April 20 to express their outrage that such a plan would even be considered.
Unfortunately, the FCT board voted to allow the foundational documents of the conservation area to be amended in order for a highway to be built through the forest under the linear facilities provisions in their rules. That provision allows for such manmade construction so long as “… the land use is designed to have minimal impact to the site.”
At the April FCT meeting, one of the public comments came from Dr. Reed Noss, Chief Scientist for Conservation Science, Inc. and former Provost’s Distinguished Professor at the University of Central Florida, an eminent authority on biology, conservation and ecology.
Noss expressed his concern that the proposed highway would not only impact the 60 acres upon which the highway would be built and the 100 acres south of the highway that would be isolated from the rest of the forest but that potentially the entire Split Oak Forest parcel would be disrupted due to road noise and exhaust coming from the vehicles using the roadway.
In an effort to allay environmental concerns, Commissioner Lee Constantine proposed a resolution at the May 12 meeting of the board of CFX. Among other items, Constantine proposed to provide substantial bridged wildlife crossings along the 1.3-mile expressway through Split Oak and for CFX to advocate for the expansion of wildlife corridors to provide more wildlife connectivity to other preservation lands based on the 2021 Florida Ecological Greenways Network. In discussion over the proposed resolution, Commissioner Brandon Arrington indicated that the current design being discussed with FCT called for the entire 1.3-mile highway through the forest to be bridged.
While these are certainly steps in the right direction, the bridging of the entire 1.3-mile stretch will only serve to broadcast the road noise amid the remaining 1,529 acres of the forest. The fumes from trucks and cars along the highway will similarly detract from the usefulness of the forest as wildlife habitat and a place of solitude for man and animal alike.
With these problems in mind, we proposed in a recent letter to the editor of the Orlando Sentinel that it would be good to consider an eco-tunnel that would encase the road noise and exhaust while simultaneously providing a wildlife corridor over the road. Additionally, soil berms alongside the tunnel would provide additional habitat suitable for gopher tortoises. This conceptual design unifies the southern 100 acres with the rest of the forest as desirable habitat for protected species.
The use of berms as noise barriers is not new. Indeed if you examine the original 1955 design for Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., Walt Disney himself utilized a berm around the entire park to block the unsightliness and noise from the surrounding commercialized area. Upon this berm he placed his railway to enhance the appearance of the berm and cross-utilize its purpose. The Split Oak eco-tunnel would similarly shelter the forest from the sights and sounds of the development which is planned for land contiguous to the western and southern sides of the forest.
In the discussion over the design of the proposed roadway, it is clear that this eco-tunnel would have minimal impact to the site and meet the requirement as laid out in the FCT rules. It should be given serious consideration as Orange and Osceola counties move forward in conjunction with CFX and FCT in the planning for this highway of immense public concern.