A report outlining the progress of Collier County’s rural growth plan is on its way to the state Department of Community Affairs.

Collier County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to forward the report, the first phase of a two-phase review of the landmark 2002 plan.

The plan grew out of a 1999 order by then-Gov. Jeb Bush and the Cabinet after the DCA successfully challenged the county’s original growth plan.

In recent months, the DCA and the county have exchanged critiques of how well the new county plan, called a Rural Land Stewardship Area Overlay, is protecting the environment and controlling growth on almost 200,000 acres around Immokalee.

The report commissioners approved Tuesday shows the amount and location of land that has been preserved under the plan, where development is planned and the fate of agricultural land.

Commissioner Frank Halas told the chairman of the citizens committee reviewing the 2002 plan that he hoped the committee would come up with a way to protect agricultural land better and satisfy the DCA.

“It looks like you have a challenge in Phase II,” Halas said.

In a memo to county commissioners Tuesday, county planner Tom Greenwood writes that the county has a “major concern” that the DCA will require a “major overhaul” of the county program.

The memo cites “highly critical remarks” about the program in a 2007 report the DCA wrote to the state Legislature on rural land stewardship.

The report concluded that the county plan wasn’t living up to its goal of preserving agriculture and raised concerns about whether the plan would allow too much growth.

County Manager Jim Mudd wrote to DCA Secretary Tom Pelham in March, accusing the DCA of having a “negative bias” to the county’s plan and saying the 2007 report isn’t based on facts.

Pelham responded in a May 8 letter, calling the DCA report fair and objective and responding in detail to each of Mudd’s allegations of factual errors.

“Although the Collier program is a commendable effort to improve rural planning, it certainly can be improved,” Pelham wrote.

He wrote that he hopes the county review will be open and objective and not driven by large landowners and their consultants.

“The Department will be following the County’s evaluation very closely,” Pelham wrote.

Under the county’s 2002 plan, written by a consultant for large landowners, landowners can earn development credits by preserving and restoring land deemed environmentally sensitive.

So far, credits are being used to build the new town of Ave Maria. A second new town, Big Cypress, is on the drawing board to be built under the new plan.

Ave Maria and its centerpiece, Ave Maria University, is approved for almost 11,000 homes on 5,000 acres, and Big Cypress is proposed to have almost 9,000 homes on 3,600 acres.

Landowners have preserved 24,000 acres and have proposed another 30,000 acres of preservation, according to county figures.

Florida Wildlife Federation field representative Nancy Payton told commissioners Tuesday that the figures speak for themselves.

“From an environmental perspective, I think the program is a big success,” she said.