A Crusader In Tennis Shoes- Rosa Durando Born July 1, 1926

Those who mistake Rosa Durando for just another retiree in tennis shoes do so at their peril.
For two decades, she has been the agitator at the microphone before local governments and, of course, the South Florida Water Management District, which controls no less than the drinking water and flood control for more than 6 million people.
Her platform: Control growth.
The Brooklyn native, a former horse trainer, “retired” with her late husband to a training farm west of Boynton Beach after she flew off a horse and broke her back in the late 1950s.
When she spotted trucks that didn’t belong in her neck of the Boynton woods, she became an environmental gadfly.
“We followed them, (and) there was a big drag line raising huge piles of
shell rock,” Durando said. She and neighbors went to the county, whichcriminally charged the company for carving the landscape without a permit.
“We won the case,” she said, “believe it or not.”
Since then, Durando has filed 18 other legal challenges to growth in Palm Beach County and run twice – unsuccessfully – for the Palm Beach County Commission, in 1988 and 1990. This year, some former water management board members urged her to apply for an appointment to the board, but she failed to get the appointment. Her response: “I’m not going anywhere.”
Florida, she said, “has some of the best state (environmental) law in the country. It’s just that nobody enforces them.”
Durando believes the environmental forces are losing: “We have less land to play with, less natural resources, less species to protect.”
So Durando keeps fighting.
Her car bumper sports this sticker: “Leaving Florida? Take a Developer.”
- ELIOT KLEINBERG