The new highway has shattered Hernando County's quiet, rural charm.

In the three years since a toll road connected Hernando County to downtown Tampa, a once-quiet retirement haven has turned into a booming suburb.

With the 10,000 new residents came familiar urban problems: jammed roads that weren't paved 20 years ago, a flood of children in a community where building new classrooms had been below bingo night on the priority list and concerns that growth is threatening the groundwater supply.

As state lawmakers for a second consecutive year stumble over a plan that would build an expressway across Central Florida's sensitive Wekiva River basin while putting growth controls in place, the Hernando toll road offers a glimpse of what the Wekiva area might face if the road is built without those environmental protections.

Northwest Orange and east Lake counties could get the same kind of boom -- and the same problems.

"It could be more explosive in Lake County because of the proximity to Orlando," said Jennifer McMurtray, who studies transportation issues for the Defenders of Wildlife. "The fact you put a toll road in a rural area and three or four years later it's not a rural area is not a big surprise."

Rampant development atop the Wekiva's watershed -- the area where rainwater percolates into the ground and supplies the springs that, in turn, feed the river -- could have a disastrous impact on the ecosystem.

"If you lose the [water flow], you lose the river entirely," McMurtray said. "It will be a much quicker cause and effect."

Pastures to subdivisions

In Hernando County, officials since January 2000 have issued more than 6,200 building permits for single-family homes, with thousands more on the way. The construction has so overwhelmed the county that one builder said the time to finish a new home has stretched from four months to a year. There aren't enough skilled laborers to meet the demand.

Rooftops are springing up in old cattle pastures, housing prices are on the rise and for the first time, apartment complexes aimed at younger residents are no longer impossible to find.

Local officials have embraced the Suncoast Parkway as the key to bringing Hernando into the metro Tampa market.

"The county needs that growth," Brooksville Mayor Mary Staib said. "If you didn't have that, you just stagnate and you might as well die."

Those thoughts are shared by politicians in Central Florida, where lobbyists for Apopka, Eustis, Mount Dora and Lake County helped kill the Wekiva bill last year. They were concerned that growth controls were too strict.

As a result, this year's bill was watered down in order to win the support of the local governments. Still, environmentalists say the bill is a better option than building the road without any attempt to control growth.

That's what happened in Hernando County.

While growth would have occurred in Hernando with or without the parkway, most people agree that the toll road greatly accelerated development.

Before the 43-mile parkway was built, young families didn't want to move to Hernando because it took too long to get to Tampa's malls, airport and offices, Staib said.

Now, depending on what part of Tampa you want to get to, the drive can be made in 45 minutes or less.

In Spring Hill, progress is marked by the arrival of new chain restaurants and the escalating home prices. Lots that had been vacant for years are now in demand.

At the Suncoast Villa Apartments, one of the new developments that has sprung up in Spring Hill, the parkway is the prime selling point, said Janet Knight, operations manager for the developer.

"People in Spring Hill are no longer isolated," Knight said. "The parkway is absolutely imperative for the residents here."

Wekiva bill edges ahead

Environmentalists and opponents to the Suncoast Parkway warned that the road would lead to environmental damage. Their fears were realized, they said, when sinkholes began opening up in parkway retention ponds, allowing contaminated water to flow directly into the aquifer.

Protecting the water supply in the Wekiva basin is just as important. That's why environmentalists say it's critical that the state purchase as much habitat for preservation as possible and steer development away from open areas needed to recharge the basin's groundwater supply.

The worst-case scenario, they say, is that the Legislature approve the road but not the growth controls or the money needed to buy nearly 10,000 acres identified by a governor's task force.

Last year, the bill died when state Rep. Fred Brummer, R-Apopka, allowed his version to languish in a House committee.

This year, Brummer has moved his bill forward, but it still contains significant differences from the Senate version, differences that will have to be worked out before the session ends this month.

But while the proposed Wekiva Parkway prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to appoint two panels to come up with environmental protections and suggestions on how the road should be built, Florida's Turnpike Enterprise controls the Suncoast Parkway's fate.

Florida's Turnpike Enterprise is in the middle of a five-year study to determine where the Suncoast extension in Citrus County, dubbed Suncoast 2, should be built.

And just as they fought against the original Suncoast Parkway, residents are gearing up to fight the extension, as well.

Hanh Vu, who acknowledges that she moved to south Citrus County two years ago because of its easy access to Tampa via the Suncoast Parkway, is now one of the leading opponents of the extension.

One of the proposed alignments would take the expressway through the 40 acres she and her husband bought near Homosassa Springs.

Vu, a computer consultant, says she has gone from being motivated by her own interests to knowing more about the impact of roads and growth on the environment.

Unlike the Wekiva plan, which was hammered out in public meetings by two separate state task forces, some of the Suncoast 2 discussions are taking place in private.

That has brought a lawsuit by one landowner, who says Florida's Turnpike Enterprise is violating the state's "Government in the Sunshine" laws.

Vu said that property owners, whether they're in the Tampa Bay region or Central Florida, need to get involved when the state plans a road.

"People don't understand this process at all," Vu said. "They notice only when the bulldozers show up -- then it's too late."

McMurtray, with the Defenders of Wildlife, says road builders should take a lesson from the way the Wekiva Parkway has been planned.

All the stakeholders, from the environmentalists, developers, and property owners, were involved in the discussions at public hearings. Managing growth -- not necessarily preventing it -- also needs to be considered when building toll roads, McMurtray said.

"I think we're understanding the impacts [of highways] much better," McMurtray said. "I think the lesson for the road builders to learn is to listen seriously to the technical experts who can help you find solutions to the impact.

"It only delays the blowup till the end of the process if you don't do that."