Case Summary: Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District

In 1972, when Coy Koontz acquired a 14.9 acre vacant parcel of land east of Orlando, the Florida Legislature was busy enacting a series of conservation and environmental protection laws: the Land Conservation Act of 1972 (Fla. Stat. § 259), which created a program to acquire and conserve environmentally endangered lands, the Florida Water Resources Act (Fla. Stat. § 373), which granted the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the state's five water management districts authority to protect Florida's water resources, and the Florida Environmental Land and Water Management Act of 1972 (Fla. Stat. §§ 380.012 - 380.12), which established procedures for increased protection of wildlife and wilderness. Florida adopted the Warren S. Henderson Wetlands Protection Act 12 years later, which provided the water management districts wetland resource permitting authority. Consequently, all but 1.4 acres of Koontz's property became a part of a Riparian Habitat Zone, which could not be developed without authorization from the St. Johns River Water Management District (the District)1.

In 1994, Koontz applied for a permit to fill 3.7 acres of wetlands on his parcel. The District's examiner agreed to recommend approval of Koontz's permit subject to Koontz's consent to either: (1) decrease development to one acre and dedicate the remaining 13.9 acres into a deed-restricted conservation area; or (2) deed the rest of his property into a conservation area and perform offsite mitigation by either replacing culverts located four and a half miles from his parcel or plug drainage canals on a property located seven miles away. Koontz agreed to deed the rest of his land into a conservation area but rejected the reduction in development and the proposed off-site mitigation.

Subsequently, Koontz's permit was denied premised upon the assertion that his development would adversely impact the Riparian Habitat Zone without adequate mitigation, and Koontz brought suit against the District for inverse condemnation. The trial court cited the constitutional principles pronounced by the U.S. Supreme Court in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1997), and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994) and concluded that the District had effected an improper exaction of Koontz's property. The two-prong Nollan/Dolan analysis recognizes that exactions are permitted if there is a "rational nexus" (under Nollan) and "rough proportionality" of impact...