Wetland Regulatory Specialists
Before a site plan is worth drawing, you need to know what is actually on the ground.
A site assessment identifies wetlands and surface waters, evaluates their likely jurisdictional status under State and Federal rules, and flags potential listed species and habitat issues. The product is a clear picture of where the constraints are and how much developable area realistically remains — early enough to inform layout rather than react to it.
Typical scope includes desktop review of aerials, soils, and historical imagery; field delineation of wetland limits; habitat assessment; and a written summary of the permitting path and the significant risks.
Freshwater permitting means running parallel tracks that do not always agree with one another.
We prepare and prosecute Environmental Resource Permit applications with the South Florida Water Management District, Federal authorizations with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the county approvals that apply in Miami-Dade. We handle the pre-application meetings, the delineation concurrence, the impact analysis, the mitigation proposal, and the responses to requests for additional information.
Where mitigation is required, that includes evaluating mitigation bank credits against on-site or permittee-responsible alternatives, and being candid about the cost and schedule consequences of each.
Work in, over, or adjacent to the water carries its own set of reviews.
Docks, seawalls, boat lifts, and other in-water structures; dredging and filling; and mangrove trimming or removal all require authorizations that sit outside the standard freshwater track, often involving submerged land interests and additional county review.
We evaluate what is achievable at a given shoreline, prepare the applications, and coordinate the reviews so a project is not redesigned twice.
Regulatory questions are spatial questions.
We build project GIS that overlays the things that actually decide outcomes: wetland limits, soils, historical aerials, listed species occurrence, county land use and zoning designations, the Urban Development Boundary, and the footprints of regional restoration projects.
The result is a set of exhibits that hold up in front of a reviewer, and an analysis tool that shows how a change in one constraint moves the others.
A Miami-Dade CDMP amendment application is a team effort, and the environmental analysis is one of the pieces most likely to draw staff objection.
We prepare the environmental component of CDMP amendment applications and work alongside land use counsel, civil and traffic engineers, planners, and economists through the review cycle. That includes characterizing wetland and habitat conditions on the application property, addressing how the proposed amendment interacts with adjacent public lands and regional restoration projects, and preparing responses to the environmental findings in County staff reports.
We have carried multiple CDMP applications through this process and know how the environmental issues tend to be framed by staff — and where the record needs to be built early to answer them.