After more than a decade of trying, business leaders and elected officials hope to jumpstart the stalled Ridge Road extension project.
Donna Cardellino, a real estate agent with Florida Luxury Realty, has been rallying supporters to help persuade the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to give the project a hearing.
“We’re a couple hundred strong in 48 hours,” Cardellino said Wednesday after supporters circulated emails and exchanged phone calls.
Pasco County officials long have argued the road is needed as an evacuation route in the event of a hurricane or other disaster.
Cardellino believes the road could boost the local economy as well.
The Corps of Engineers must grant a permit to cross wetlands and other environmentally sensitive lands if the road is to be built from DeCubellis Road-Moon Lake Road to the Suncoast Parkway.
A second phase could extend the road farther east to U.S. 41.
The Suncoast Parkway, which opened in 2001, was built to accommodate a Ridge Road interchange.
Citizens for Sanity and other environmental activists, however, have long opposed the Ridge Road extension.
The Corps of Engineers is still awaiting additional information on Pasco’s revised plan to mitigate any environmental damage Ridge Road extension construction might cause, according to Tracy Hurst, a Tampa-based biologist with the federal agency.
Pasco submitted a revised application in May, she said.
“The ball is in their court,” Hurst said Thursday of county officials.
Last year, the Corps of Engineers suggested the Ridge Road extension would violate federal environmental laws and proposed an alternative, such as widening State Road 52 or State Road 54.
In November 2010, however, state Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, wrote Corps of Engineers officials urging approval of the Ridge Road extension.
Once the mitigation details are available, the Corps of Engineers will announce a public comment period of 30 days. The agency will accept written comments, emails, faxes, and other communications.
Interested parties can request the Corps convene a public hearing.
County commissioners welcome the backing of west Pasco businesspeople.
The county filed its initial application for the Ridge Road extension project with the Corps of Engineers. Several false starts followed.
The county redesigned the project at one point in the early stages. Securing land proved more difficult than officials anticipated.
Commissioner Pat Mulieri has written to state legislators about the snail’s pace of the permit review. She said it’s important that the public comment “regarding the importance of this road.”
Mulieri said the project would be “an economic engine” for Connerton, a central Pasco development that has stalled after only building 256 of its planned 8,000 houses.
The Ridge Road extension project is “incredibly overdue,” said former Pasco Commissioner Peter Altman. He still backs the road as a “critical link” to supplement S.R. 52 and S.R. 54 as east-west evacuation routes.
Cardellino wants to get the Ridge Road extension moving again. She said it took firefighters 30 minutes to reach the scene after a fire in her home.
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