Emails Emerge in Honeymoon Island Debacle

Emails about the state’s sudden (and eventually abandoned) plan to add campsites to Honeymoon Island show it was an admittedly hurried decision based on Gov. Rick Scott’s promise to create 700,000 jobs in seven years, according to media reports.

would have added privately run campgrounds to 56 state parks — Dunedin’s beloved Honeymoon Island among them.

“Park officials told the public the choices were rooted in their extensive expertise, but internal e-mails show they knew it was a rush job,” staff writer Craig Pittman reported Aug. 10 in the St. Petersburg Times.

Emails between DEP officials, the Times reports, demonstrate that a state biologist who visited one of the proposed parks found the area was not suitable for camping and full of endangered plants. The emails even suggested that federal officials found legal flaws in the plan, the Times reports. The flaws centered on legal conditions attached to the federal funds used to purchase the land.

The controversial plan met staunch opposition from the , experts, and elected , Pinellas County and the state. Scott eventually .

“However, the push for campsites has not been abandoned,” the Times reports.

Read the full St. Petersburg Times report.