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BONITA SPRINGS — When the Lee County Conservation 20/20 committee meets Thursday night in Fort Myers, some residents of Bonita Springs will be paying close attention.

And one person from Sarasota as well.

That’s where attorney Bill Moore has his office. Moore is the attorney for a few dozen east Bonita Springs residents who are fighting the South Florida Water Management District, trying to keep their homes.

“I just have to see what they’re going to do,” said Moore. “If they change governmental ownership and don’t change the purpose, that’s one thing. If they change owners and spin it off for development or some other use, that’s a different deal.”

The saga started in 1999 when the district started condemning land east of Bonita Springs. The plan was to remove the homes, roads and other signs of civilization and return the land to its natural state. The belief was that it would lessen flooding.

The plan was to buy 4,770 acres of land, estimated to cost about $14 million. Nine years later, the district has bought about 3,700 acres and spent $28 million. District officials expect to need another $16 million.

What they want now is to have Conservation 20/20, the county’s environmental land purchase program, buy some of the land. It would then use the money from that transaction to buy other pieces of land. It’s offering 240 acres for $6.8 million. The land the district wants to sell cannot be used for flood attenuation as originally intended because it is west and south of the proposed route of the County Road 951-Collier Boulevard extension and south of the Kehl Canal.

First, the district will have to convince the committee. The Conservation Lands Acquisition and Stewardship Advisory Committee, which oversees Conservation 20/20, meets on Thursday. It’ll hear the pitch from the district.

It better be a good one. Conservation 20/20 deals only with willing sellers, and some committee members are already balking at buying land that was wrested from owners who’d had no plans to move.

George Wheaton is a lifelong Lee County resident who has sat on the committee since its beginning. He said Conservation 20/20 doesn’t buy land that’s already being preserved, and the district land meets those specifications.

“If the land is already preserved, which it is, it precludes us even fooling with it,” he said. “And the condemnation part definitely goes against my better judgment.”

Assistant county attorney Melody Bowers said that since the district now owns the land and the district is a willing seller, Conservation 20/20 can legally buy it. Wheaton doesn’t think so.

“The people who initially sold it to the district possibly weren’t willing sellers,” he said. “I would submit that follows right through with the land.”

Wheaton said he doesn’t like the idea of the district condemning the land, selling it to Conservation 20/20 and then using the money to condemn more land.

“That’s a double-faced deal,” he said. “They use eminent domain with our money. It looks to me like it circumvents the situation. It doesn’t smell good to me.”

Or to Shane Snell. Snell still lives in the area, down the road from his father, Sam Snell, on a street Sam built and which bears the family name.

“Number one, they said they were never going to sell and they were never going to do anything different with the property,” he said.

District officials have said they want to sell the land for conservation. If that doesn’t work, they’d look to the open market. District spokeswoman Susan Sanders said district representatives will make their case on Thursday.

The committee meets at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Community Development and Public Works building at 1500 Monroe in downtown Fort Myers.