The Miami Herald

Posted on Thursday, Mar. 23, 2006

ENVIRONMENT

Mining permits hit legal snag

Citing concerns about drinking water and the environment, a federal judge ordered regulators to reexamine 4-year-old permits they issued for rock mining.

BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

A Miami federal judge on Wednesday ordered two agencies to take a new, harder look at the threats that rock mining poses to the public water supply, to wildlife and to the Everglades, saying that permits they issued four years ago are riddled with "a multitude of defects.''

Senior U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler found that the federal agencies -- the Army Corps of Engineers and the Fish and Wildlife Service -- rushed to what seemed a predetermined approval of the limerock industry's controversial plan to carve up 77.5 square miles of northwest Miami-Dade County.

In the process, he wrote in a scathing and exhaustive 186-page opinion, the agencies rebuffed concerns from Miami-Dade County managers about contamination threats to the county's largest wellfield and ''apparently were overly influenced'' by pressure from Florida lawmakers and ''menacing threats'' of lawsuit from miners.

The ruling, issued in a lawsuit filed in 2002 by three environmental groups, could have a profound influence on the future of ''the lake belt,'' an area named for the massive grid of 80-foot-deep quarries that the rock-mining industry hopes to dig in 22,500 acres of wetlands near the Everglades. The ruling's immediate impact was the subject of some debate.

Environmentalist believe it should immediately block mining in 5,400 acres the Corps signed off on in 2002 -- the first phase of lake-belt excavation the industry intends over the next half century.

Paul Schwiep, a Miami attorney who represented the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Parks Conservation Association in the lawsuit, said the ruling effectively set aside the 2002 permits until a new federal review was completed.

''You can't continue doing rock mining based on permits that were issued illegally. They're invalid,'' he said. "The only appropriate course now is for the Corps to prohibit further mining until the analysis the court said they should have conducted in the first place is complete.''

HEARING ON INJUNCTION

The Miami-Dade Limestone Products Association, a coalition of 10 companies, will certainly dispute that interpretation. While the judge clearly states that ''the permits should not have been issued,'' he also notes that mining has proceeded in the interim. He asked all parties to file legal briefs, and he set a May 10 hearing to discuss how and whether to craft an injunction.

''The Court has not yet determined an appropriate remedy in this case,'' he wrote.
But clearly, the ruling was a major victory for environmentalists, who have long argued that a powerful, politically influential industry was profiting at the expense of a degraded Everglades ecosystem and drinking-water supply. The Miami-Dade companies alone supply more than half of the state's cement and fill.

The opinion also comes on the heels of new findings from federal scientists and engineering consultants -- not considered in Hoeveler's ruling -- that more rock pits will raise the risk of contamination in the Northwest wellfield, which supplies water to more than one million people in Miami-Dade.

County administrators stress that they believe the water is safe, but they also are recommending new treatment technology as a precaution -- at a cost that could reach a quarter of a billion dollars. It's undecided yet who might pay that tab -- the public or mining companies. Environmentalists also urge the county or federal regulators to expand half-mile no-mining zones around the wells.

''The scientific evidence is loud and clear, but the administration didn't want to hear it,'' said Barbara Lange of the Sierra Club. 'The people of Miami-Dade County should not have to pay to clean up their drinking water fouled by mining companies, and they should not have to subsidize these companies' profits with their health.''

The ruling disappointed rock-mining companies, which have long argued that the rock pits pose no environmental or health threats.

INDUSTRY'S REACTION

Paul Savage, an attorney for White Rock Quarries, one of the 10 companies in the limestone association, issued a written statement saying the industry looked forward to disputing the judge's findings in court.

A range of groups -- the industry, local and federal agencies and activists -- had spent eight years coming up with a plan to regulate an ''essential industry,'' the statement said.

''The judge's decision attacks the Lake Belt and upsets the careful balance of wellfield and environmental protection and economic interests,'' the statement said.
The federal agencies did not return calls for comment on the judge's ruling, which was issued Wednesday afternoon and was harsh and numerous in its criticisms.

Among them, he said the agencies:

• Relied on old data, with nearly half of 38 scientific studies cited at least 20 years old and none newer than five years old.
• Rebuffed requests from Miami-Dade County to hold public hearings on the lake belt.
• Approved permits without an adequate plan to protect the Northwest wellfield.
• Failed to adequately assess how the loss of thousands of acres of wetlands would affect the wood stork, an endangered bird that lived in the area.
• Failed to adequately address how to prevent the ring of rock pits from siphoning too much water from nearby Everglades National Park.