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East Corkscrew residents say ‘never mine' our areaSaturday, July 7, 2007 As mining operations in Lee County go, the fill dirt excavation the Estero Group Ltd. is proposing along Corkscrew Road would be a small one. The mine wouldn’t be hauling out rock, and there wouldn’t be any blasting. But no mine is a small one for a group of residents in that part of eastern Lee County. Nor do they trust that a mine that starts as a small operation will stay that way. These east Corkscrew Road residents mean to stand by the position they’ve posted on signs all along that road near the county’s eastern edge. The signs read: “No new mines.” Public hearings are scheduled to begin July 18 on whether the Estero Group should be allowed to start hauling dirt out of 318 acres of Corkscrew Road land now used for cattle grazing. Ahead of those hearings, Bill Lytell, one of the leaders of the Corkscrew Road Rural Community, has been doing what he can to encourage his neighbors to show up and explain, yet again, why they oppose more mining in their area. “It’s the Corkscrew area. The DR/GR. It’s a protection area,” he said. It’s also an area where two mines already operate and where four mines are trying to get county approval to start digging. Lytell said any sort of mine clashes with what the rest of the land is used for: largely ranches and scattered homes. “What we feel is happening is there is an onslaught to change the character of our neighborhood,” he said. “This is war. For us, it’s huge.” The Corkscrew Road Rural Community’s Web site, www.corkscrewroad.com, already is full of tips on how best to testify before the county hearing examiner and directions to both a community meeting Wednesday night and the July 18 hearing site in downtown Fort Myers. Lytell said he hopes at least 150 people from Estero and the eastern Corkscrew Road area will show up to oppose the mine then. The group also has raised money to hire a lawyer and experts. As this mine proposal moves through the county’s zoning process, the residents also will have the support of some environmental groups and the Estero Council of Community Leaders. As much of a fight as they’re able to put up, Lytell said he expects the Estero Group will be fighting, too — there’s too much money in mining not to, he said. The land the Estero Group wants rezoned for mining is land the company bought for $2,121,400 in summer 2003, and since then, the landowners have paid more than $11,000 in fees to Lee County, both to apply for rezoning and to postpone a public hearing that had been scheduled for earlier in the year. As for the east Corkscrew residents, their fight isn’t just with landowners who want to open mines, likely bringing more truck traffic and noise to their area. Their fight is also with the county and the land-use regulations that describe mining as something that’s permissible in their part of the county. Following those zoning rules, county staff recommended last fall that the Estero Group dirt mine be approved, so long as the mine agreed to certain conditions, such as limiting the depth of the mine to 20 feet and limiting the hours during which the mine could operate. The mine operators would also have to monitor groundwater regularly, and there would have to be signs posted on the site reminding truck drivers not to use Corkscrew Road west of the junction with Alico Road. Those are just recommendations, but for Lytell, even if this mine were permitted with many more restrictions, it wouldn’t do much to help what he sees as the problem. “The county’s real lax at enforcing,” he said. The consequence, he said, is if the mine owners estimate they’ll be sending trucks loaded with dirt on more than 400 round trips a day, there’s nothing the county does to hold them to it. For Mark Preston, who has lived in eastern Lee County for about eight years, what he said he really hopes will happen is for Lee County to change its land development rules to prohibit mines along eastern Corkscrew Road, ending the issue. In the meantime, Preston plans to do all he can to oppose the Estero Group’s dirt mine. “The bottom line on all of them is it’s incompatible with rural residential living. All of them,” he said. “There’s no reason for them to mine there.” CORKSCREW ROAD RURAL COMMUNITY MEETING The Corkscrew Road Rural Community, a group that opposes new mines in the area, is meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the South County Regional Library, 21100 Three Oaks Parkway, Estero. HEARINGS ON THE ESTERO GROUP MINE The Estero Group’s request that Lee County rezone 318 acres of agricultural land at 22951 Corkscrew Road and issue a mining permit for the site will be the subject of public hearings that begin July 18. The hearings are scheduled to last up to five days and will be held at 1500 Monroe St. in Fort Myers, on the building’s second floor.
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