Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist.
| Decision Date | 25 June 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 11–1447.,11–1447. |
| Citation | 186 L.Ed.2d 697,133 S.Ct. 2586,570 U.S. 595 |
| Parties | Coy A. KOONTZ, Jr., Petitioner v. ST. JOHNS RIVER WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT. |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
570 U.S. 595
133 S.Ct. 2586
186 L.Ed.2d 697
Coy A. KOONTZ, Jr., Petitioner
v.
ST. JOHNS RIVER WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT.
No. 11–1447.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued Jan. 15, 2013.
Decided June 25, 2013.
Paul J. Beard, II, Sacramento, CA, for Petitioner.
Paul R.Q. Wolfson, for Respondent.
Edwin S. Kneedler, for the United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the respondent.
Brian T. Hodges, Pacific Legal Foundation, Bellevue, WA, Michael D. Jones, Michael D. Jones and Associates, P.A., Oviedo, FL, Paul J. Beard II, Counsel of Record, Pacific Legal Foundation, Sacramento, CA, Christopher V. Carlyle, The Carlyle Appellate Law Firm, The Villages, FL, for Petitioner.
William H. Congdon, Jr., Rachel D. Gray, St. Johns River Water Management District, Palatka, FL, Paul R.Q. Wolfson, Counsel of Record, Catherine M.A. Carroll, Steven P. Lehotsky, Albinas Prizgintas, Daniel Winik, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Washington, DC, for Respondent.
Justice ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.
Our decisions in Nollan v. California CoastalComm'n, 483 U.S. 825, 107 S.Ct. 3141, 97 L.Ed.2d 677 (1987), and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, 114 S.Ct. 2309, 129 L.Ed.2d 304 (1994), provide important protection against the misuse of the power of land-use regulation. In those cases, we held that a unit of government may not condition the approval of a land-use permit on the owner's relinquishment of a portion of his property unless there is a "nexus" and "rough proportionality" between the government's demand and the effects of the proposed land use. In this case, the St. Johns River Water Management District (District) believes that it circumvented Nollan and Dolan because of the way in which it structured its handling of a permit application submitted by Coy Koontz, Sr., whose estate is represented in this Court by Coy Koontz, Jr.1 The District did not approve his application on the condition that he surrender an interest in his land. Instead, the District, after suggesting that he could obtain approval by signing over such an interest, denied his application because he refused to yield. The Florida Supreme Court blessed this maneuver and thus effectively interred those important decisions. Because we conclude that Nollan and Dolan cannot be evaded in this way, the Florida Supreme Court's decision must be reversed.
I
A
In 1972, petitioner purchased an undeveloped 14.9–acre tract of land on the
south side of Florida State Road 50, a divided four-lane highway east of Orlando. The property is
located less than 1,000 feet from that road's intersection with Florida State Road 408, a tolled expressway that is one of Orlando's major thoroughfares.
A drainage ditch runs along the property's western edge, and high-voltage power lines bisect it into northern and southern sections. The combined effect of the ditch, a 100–foot wide area kept clear for the power lines, the highways, and other construction on nearby parcels is to isolate the northern section of petitioner's property from any other undeveloped land. Although largely classified as wetlands by the State, the northern section drains well; the most significant standing water forms in ruts in an unpaved road used to access the power lines. The natural topography of the property's southern section is somewhat more diverse, with a small creek, forested uplands, and wetlands that sometimes have water as much as a foot deep. A wildlife survey found evidence of animals that often frequent developed areas: raccoons, rabbits, several species of bird, and a turtle. The record also indicates that the land may be a suitable habitat for opossums.
The same year that petitioner purchased his property, Florida enacted the Water Resources Act, which divided the State into five water management districts and authorized each district to regulate "construction that connects to, draws water from, drains water into, or is placed in or across the waters in the state." 1972 Fla. Laws ch. 72–299, pt. IV, § 1(5), pp. 1115, 1116 (codified as amended at Fla. Stat. § 373.403(5) (2010) ). Under the Act, a landowner wishing to undertake such construction must obtain from the relevant district a Management and Storage of Surface Water (MSSW) permit, which may impose "such reasonable conditions" on the permit as are "necessary to assure" that construction will "not be harmful to the water resources of the district." 1972 Fla. Laws § 4(1), at 1118 (codified as amended at Fla. Stat. § 373.413(1) ).
In 1984, in an effort to protect the State's rapidly diminishing wetlands, the Florida Legislature passed the Warren S.
Henderson Wetlands Protection Act, which made it illegal for anyone to "dredge or fill in, on, or over surface waters" without a Wetlands Resource Management (WRM) permit. 1984 Fla. Laws ch. 84–79, pt. VIII, § 403.905(1), pp. 204–205. Under the Henderson Act, permit applicants are required to provide "reasonable assurance" that proposed construction on wetlands is "not contrary to the public interest," as defined by an enumerated list of criteria. See Fla. Stat. § 373.414(1). Consistent with the Henderson Act, the St. Johns River Water Management District, the district with jurisdiction over petitioner's land, requires that permit applicants wishing to build on wetlands offset the resulting environmental damage by creating, enhancing, or preserving wetlands elsewhere.
Petitioner decided to develop the 3.7–acre northern section of his property, and in 1994 he applied to the District for MSSW and WRM permits. Under his proposal, petitioner would have raised the elevation of the northernmost section of his land to make it suitable for a building, graded the land from the southern edge of the building site down to the elevation of the high-voltage electrical lines, and installed a dry-bed pond for retaining and gradually releasing stormwater runoff from the building and its parking lot. To mitigate the environmental effects of his proposal, petitioner offered to foreclose any possible future development of the approximately 11–acre southern section of his land by deeding to the District a conservation
easement on that portion of his property.
The District considered the 11–acre conservation easement to be inadequate, and it informed petitioner that it would approve construction only if he agreed to one of two concessions. First, the District proposed that petitioner reduce the size of his development to 1 acre and deed to the District a conservation easement on the remaining 13.9 acres. To reduce the development area, the District suggested that petitioner could eliminate the dry-bed pond from his proposal and instead install a more costly subsurface
stormwater management system beneath the building site. The District also suggested that petitioner install retaining walls rather than gradually sloping the land from the building site down to the elevation of the rest of his property to the south.
In the alternative, the District told petitioner that he could proceed with the development as proposed, building on 3.7 acres and deeding a conservation easement to the government on the remainder of the property, if he also agreed to hire contractors to make improvements to District-owned land several miles away. Specifically, petitioner could pay to replace culverts on one parcel or fill in ditches on another. Either of those projects would have enhanced approximately 50 acres of District-owned wetlands. When the District asks permit applicants to fund offsite mitigation work, its policy is never to require any particular offsite project, and it did not do so here. Instead, the District said that it "would also favorably consider" alternatives to its suggested offsite mitigation projects if petitioner proposed something "equivalent." App. 75.
Believing the District's demands for mitigation to be excessive in light of the environmental effects that his building proposal would have caused, petitioner filed suit in state court. Among other claims, he argued that he was entitled to relief under Fla. Stat. § 373.617(2), which allows owners to recover "monetary damages" if a state agency's action is "an unreasonable exercise of the state's police power constituting a taking without just compensation."
B
The Florida Circuit Court granted the District's motion to dismiss on the ground that petitioner had not adequately exhausted his state-administrative remedies, but the Florida District Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit reversed. On remand, the State Circuit Court held a 2–day bench trial. After considering testimony from several experts who
examined petitioner's property, the trial court found that the property's northern section had already been "seriously degraded" by extensive construction on the surrounding parcels. App. to Pet. for Cert. D–3. In light of this...
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