Cape Coral residents worry planned homes, hotel and marina could hurt wildlife, increase flooding

CAPE CORAL – Eight hundred homes, 300 hotel rooms, retail and a 200-slip marina are being considered on the wetlands just south of Rotary Park in Cape Coral.

Now people are concerned about how this will impact the wildlife who call the land home and the traffic. Not to mention, if mangroves are impacted, the flooding concerns, since they protect against storm surge.

Mike Jaquin lives on El Dorado Parkway. He’s concerned this will harm the mangroves.

“I can’t imagine that it’s not going to take some of the mangroves away. It seemed to have a marina in there, which I know will affect the mangroves,” Jaquin said. “It offers a great deal of protection from storms.”

Paul Bonsais with Protect Our Wetlands in Cape Coral told NBC2 that without the mangroves, flooding from Hurricane Ian would’ve been much worse.

“If you remove that then flooding would be higher with the same type of storm or with a lesser storm, say a Cat 3 or Cat 2, we may get similar type of flooding,” Bonsais explained.