Graphic: Designated mining and protected zones
http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2007/07/29/18/MLD_G30_ROCKMINE.source.prod_affiliate.56.pdf

In the soggy outskirts of Northwest Miami-Dade, miners scoop up millions of
tons of limestone with heavy equipment, including the world's largest
dragline, a machine so massive it requires its own power plant.

Work goes on around-the-clock in 80-foot-deep quarries bordered by the
Everglades and the county's biggest drinking water source, the Northwest
well field.

But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that is supposed to know,
can't say how many acres are being blasted and excavated -- at least not
exactly.

To Senior U.S. District Court Judge William Hoeveler, it was only one
example of shoddy oversight.

When Hoeveler restricted excavation near the Northwest well field two weeks
ago, he hit the industry's bottom line hard. But the brunt of his criticism
was aimed at key regulators -- Miami-Dade's Department of Environmental
Resource Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Corps.

He singled out the Corps as the weakest of environmental watchdogs, an
agency he found unable to accurately assess fundamental questions from a
major mining expansion it approved in 2002: Precisely how much digging was
happening and where?

The Corps had agreed to open 5,400 acres of wetlands but federal estimates
of impacts have varied by hundreds of acres since, shifting numerous times
along with the locations of some quarries. To compound problems, the Corps
didn't verify how much land had already been excavated and instead largely
relied on miners' reports, the judge wrote, making it ``impossible to
conduct accurate analysis.''

''Unfortunately,'' Hoeveler wrote, ``nothing in the extensive evidentiary
hearing demonstrated that the Corps has since obtained a firm grasp of the
number of acres being mined or impacted.''

Citing a benzene plume serious enough to shut down wells and risks of
bacterial contamination risks from quarries, Hoeveler imposed a new,
dramatically expanded no-mining zone until the Corps completes a new
environmental assessment he ordered last year. A draft could be done by next
month.

For environmentalists, who sued the federal agencies, the ruling echoes
years of complaints that regulators and lawmakers have cut too much slack to
a powerful industry that supplies much of the state's concrete and fill --
essential ingredients in Florida's economy.

Miners, who have filed for an emergency stay, argue they fell victim to a
biased judge too mindful of his legacy of Everglades protection.

''The judgment was extremist and marked by kind of a zealotry,'' said
Richard Ovelman, an attorney for Tarmac America.

Ovelman said he could not comprehend how Hoeveler could lament the predicted
loss of 1.8 endangered woodstork fledgings a year as justification for
blocking access to 20 million tons of rock -- an action industry and state
transportation officials warn could cost thousands of jobs and delay
schools, roads and other projects.

ONLY TEMPORARY

Paul Schwiep, an attorney representing three environmental groups in the
suit, said the order amounts to only a temporary restriction on sites that
are closest, and pose the highest risk, to the well field.

Schwiep dismissed industry ''doomsday'' predictions, citing corporate
statements downplaying losses and noting the time between rulings gave the
only three companies affected more than a year to stockpile material.

''We didn't get everything we wanted,'' said Schwiep. ``It's really a very
modest approach.''

Federal agencies, citing the pending appeal by miners, declined to comment.

But DERM and Miami-Dade's Water and Sewer Department defended county efforts
to protect a well field that supplies more than one million people. Benzene,
found in solvents and fuels, still shows up at low levels, but county
regulators insist tap water is perfectly safe.

''The only reasons the issues are in there are because the county brought it
up from day one,'' said DERM director Carlos Espinosa. ``None of those
issues were generated by the Corps, the state or anybody else.''

Espinosa and Joe Ruiz, the Water Department's deputy director, said the
agencies always make safeguarding the water supply top priority.

That's why the county shut down well field pumps to assess the risk when
benezene was detected in 2005, Ruiz said. But the benzene has stayed well
within treatment capacity, he said.

''Don't think we're not concerned,'' said Ruiz. ``When we see any kind of
pollution, hey, we should be jumping up and down. We did shut down the
wells, even though we could handle it.''

RISK ASSESSMENT

Though DERM has not completed a planned risk assessment, the county has
decided the wells need more protection. But rather than expand the no-mining
zone, as environmentalists have sought and the judge ordered, the county
wants to upgrade two water treatment plants.

With uncertainty about groundwater flow in the area, Ruiz said the county
believes treatment would be more protective and practical. The industry has
pledged to bankroll the work, which could be up to $180 million, and buying
mining land could prove legally difficult and staggeringly expensive.

Regulators declined to discuss the ''merits'' of the case; mining attorneys
argue there are none, with Ovelman dismissing the ruling as ``something of a
travesity.''

In papers filed with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, the
Miami-Dade Limestone Products Association, a coalition of mining companies,
argues the judge improperly overstepped his authority when he forced three
companies to stop mining on ''nothing more than speculation'' of a public
health threat that miners argue is all but non-existent.

2003 REMOVAL

The appeal cites Hoeveler's controversial removal in 2003 from an Everglades
cleanup case he'd presided over for 15 years. The judge then drew charges of
bias from the sugar industry after he criticized an overhaul of pollution
laws by the Legislature.

''The district court's conduct in this case similarly creates the appearance
-- if not the reality -- of a lack of impartiality,'' miners argue.

Tom MacVicar, an industry consulting engineer, said many of the judge's
concerns are easily explained.

Permit changes, for instance, are common in construction and the miners'
requests came mainly because companies and county, state and federal
agencies all were sorting through an initial array of conflicting wetland
maps. The time it took to get everyone on to the same ''footprint,'' he
said, also explained a few inadvertent excavations outside approved areas.

Lake Belt miners, he said, face more scrutiny than any industry in the state.

''Without a doubt,'' MacVicar said. ``Look at the issues we have to deal
with. We've got a well field, we've got the Everglades. Look at the big
developers, they don't have this kind of attention.''

INDUSTRY RHETORIC

Brad Sewell, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council,
credited Hoeveler with cutting through industry rhetoric to reveal a flawed
process that often put mining interests before public ones.

''The tough issues keep getting punted down the road, mitigation, drinking
water protection,'' he said. ``This is how incredibly important public
health decisions are made.''

 

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