Published by: www.MiamiDade.watch
Date
of Record: January 20, 2026
Disclaimer: This document is for educational and research purposes only. It is not legal advice. All regulatory claims should be taken with a grain of salt and independently verified.
This manual starts from a simple premise: every regulatory claim about land must be proven with site-specific evidence. Generalized maps, models, or administrative repetition are not evidence. Public Law 101-229 requires parcel-specific proof based on soils, vegetation, and hydrology.
This guide shows landowners how to audit claims, expose contradictions, and restore constitutional process to land-use decisions in the Las Palmas / 8.5 Square Mile Area.
Congress makes law. Agencies execute law. If the practical effect on citizens is the same as a new law, then a new law must be passed by Congress.
Public Law 101-229 exists to stop map-based and assumption-driven expansion of environmental jurisdiction and requires site-specific evidence based on soils, vegetation, and hydrology.
A common answer from policy circles is:
“Agencies act under statutes. Regulatory systems merely implement legislative goals.”
Formally, that is correct. This manual does not claim that agencies act without statutes, nor that legislation has disappeared.
But that answer is incomplete, because it describes only where authority is said to come from—not how control is actually exercised in modern regulatory systems.
Today, many land-use outcomes are not determined primarily by new statutes, but by changes in:
Maps and models
Classifications and service areas
Guidance and administrative practice
Mitigation, offset, and credit systems
Without any change to the underlying statute, the practical allocation of land use, value, and permission changes.
The statutes remain.
The allocation mechanism changes.
The legal shift does not occur at the level of formal law. It occurs at the level of classification, accounting, and credit systems.
This manual makes a precise and testable claim:
That agencies, operating under broad statutory frameworks, increasingly govern land, value, and development through the creation and administration of regulatory classifications, credits, and offset systems—and that these systems functionally reallocate rights and burdens without any new act of Congress or legislature.
If governance still operated primarily through statutes alone, then:
The economic effects of regulatory expansion would be debated openly in legislatures;
The costs of lost use, devaluation, and opportunity would appear in budgets and appropriations;
The allocation of land to regulatory purposes would appear as explicit public choices.
Instead, many of these effects appear off-balance-sheet:
Value is removed without appropriation;
Use is restricted without new legislation;
Whole regions are functionally repurposed by classification and credit systems.
The control mechanism is no longer primarily the rule. It is increasingly the ledger.
Regulatory credit, offset, and compliance systems do not eliminate costs. They relocate them.
Instead of appearing as explicit public expenditures, these costs are embedded into land prices, housing prices, infrastructure costs, financing costs, and rents. This functions as a form of off-balance-sheet taxation.
Because these systems attach mandatory financial obligations to permits, land, and development, they operate as structural cost multipliers, producing persistent inflation in land, housing, and infrastructure.
At the same time, when large areas are administratively treated as “mitigation space,” “offset capacity,” or “environmental service areas,” developable land becomes artificially scarce, further inflating prices and concentrating regulatory rents.
As these costs compound, the public eventually cannot afford the outcomes. Governments then intervene through subsidies, grants, bonds, guarantees, tax credits, and public programs.
The result is a predictable cycle:
Hidden regulatory costs inflate prices;
Inflated prices trigger public intervention;
Public intervention is funded by debt;
The losses are socialized;
The control system itself remains in place.
This is a system that governs through ledgers, inflates through constraints, and socializes the consequences through public debt.
The proper oversight question is not:
“Is there some statute somewhere?”
But rather:
“Is the specific burden imposed on this specific parcel actually traceable to a clear statutory command—or is it being produced by a classification, mapping, or credit-allocation system operating beneath the statute?”
And further:
“Is this parcel being treated as part of an accounting system rather than as an individual property governed by evidence?”
This manual treats that as a constitutional, economic, and evidentiary audit problem—not as a local permit dispute.
Regulatory systems often repeat an assertion until it is treated as true. This manual breaks that loop.
Never argue with conclusions; always audit the inputs.
Only site-specific, testable facts count as evidence.
Each system below is an authority over one type of fact. None may substitute for another:
W — USDA Web Soil Survey (Soil reality)
T — USDA PLANTS Database (Vegetation reality)
S — SFWMD DBHYDRO (Hydrology reality)
B — FDEP Mitigation Service Areas (Incentive map)
F — FDEP Permit Search (State authority check)
U — USACE RIBITS (Federal mitigation reality)
D — MDC RER / DERM (Local narrative)
A — Legislation Search (Actual law)
V — Meeting Videos (Intent evidence)
O — Official Records (Legal reality)
L — Courts (Judicial reality)
This is a practical audit you can run on your own property.
Create a folder called "Property Evidence File". Save everything you download or screenshot. Date everything.
Why: Soils are the legal foundation of most wetland determinations.
How:
Open Web Soil Survey
Draw your property boundary
Generate Soil Map and Soil Report
Check:
Are soils hydric?
What is the drainage class?
What is the capability class?
Use: If soils are not hydric, any inherent wetland claim is suspect under Public Law 101-229.
Save the report as PDF.
Why: Vegetation is often used as a shortcut to claim wetland conditions.
How: Look up any plant species cited by inspectors.
Check: Is it actually OBL or FACW, or is it upland/ornamental?
Use: Misidentification collapses the biological premise.
Save screenshots.
Why: Distinguishes natural wetness from infrastructure-created wetness.
How:
Find nearby monitoring stations
Pull historical graphs
Check:
Is water seasonal or permanent?
Does it correlate to canals, pumps, storms?
Use: Engineered wetness is not natural wetland hydrology.
Save graphs.
Why: Sometimes land is administratively viewed as offset capacity.
How:
Check whether your area is inside or near mitigation service areas
Use: Reveals economic/regulatory incentives behind narratives.
Why: Local agencies often imply state requirements that do not exist.
How: Search your parcel or project type.
Use: No state file = no state jurisdiction narrative.
Why: This is where the story is created.
How: Pull case notes, referrals, inspection comments.
Check: What conclusions are stated? What evidence is cited?
Use: Highlight every conclusion not backed by documents or datasets.
Why: Sometimes policy exists only in speeches and custom.
How: Find the ordinance, resolution, or statute. Watch the meeting.
Use: No statute = no lawful new rule.
Why: If something is not recorded or adjudicated, it often does not exist in enforceable form.
Your folder should include:
Soil report
Plant verification
Hydrology graphs
Mitigation context
State search results
Local case notes
Laws
Video timestamps
Official record searches
Use this packet with counsel, in appeals, or for oversight.
Rule: If it is not supported by site-specific evidence, it is not valid under Public Law 101-229.
If the conclusion is not supported by site-specific evidence, it is legally void under Public Law 101-229.
Not because it is anything — but because it is being treated as something. And that treatment must be proven, not assumed.
MDC DERM administrative hearings are not neutral courts. They are internal, agency-run processes where:
The agency acts as investigator, prosecutor, and rule‑interpreter.
The record is often limited to the agency’s narrative.
Evidence that contradicts the agency’s position may be excluded, minimized, or reframed.
These proceedings are best understood as one‑sided administrative processes, not as a final forum for constitutional or statutory rights.
Do not assume an administrative hearing is where your rights will be fully protected. It is primarily where the agency builds a record.
Your real protections live in state and federal law and are enforced in real courts, not inside the agency.
From the beginning, you should:
Build a clean evidence record using this manual’s audit steps.
Preserve all documents, screenshots, maps, and correspondence.
Object (politely and on the record) to:
Conclusions without evidence
Reliance on generalized maps
Reliance on policy narratives instead of statutes
Anything that conflicts with Public Law 101‑229 and site‑specific evidence requirements
Assume that:
The administrative phase is about creating the record. The circuit court phase is where law is actually applied.
In circuit court:
Local, state, and federal law apply.
Constitutional issues can be raised.
Statutory limits (including Public Law 101‑229) matter.
Evidence rules exist.
Agencies must defend their claims with proof, not just repeat them.
This is where:
Map‑based narratives get tested
Assumption‑based classifications get challenged
Jurisdictional overreach gets examined
Treat the administrative hearing as:
A place to preserve issues
A place to force the agency to state its claims clearly
A place to introduce your evidence into the record
Do not treat it as the final battlefield.
☐ Save every notice, email, and report
☐ Run the full Part IV Field Audit
☐ Bring soil, plant, and hydrology evidence into the record
☐ Object to narrative‑only claims
☐ Keep a timeline of events
☐ Prepare as if a circuit court appeal is inevitable
The administrative hearing is where the story is told. Circuit court is where the story is tested.
You are not required to accept administrative stories. You are not required to accept map-based conclusions. You are entitled to evidence.
This is a public research and oversight document. It does not accuse any person or agency. It exists to restore evidence, law, and constitutional process to land-use decisions.
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