Miami Herald  Wed, Sep. 19, 2007

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/story/242907.html

Rock-mining forces turn out to protest proposed restrictions

BY CURTIS MORGAN

Rock miners hauled in the heavy equipment Tuesday night -- hundreds of sign-waving quarry workers, dozens of representatives from trucking, rail and contracting companies, even horn-blowing cement trucks -- to urge federal regulators to support more digging at the edge of the Everglades.

The overflow turnout ensured that much of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hearing on a new study of mining ordered by a federal judge would closely follow industry script: Mounting economic losses from curbing mining will far outweigh environmental impacts from continued excavation in West Miami-Dade County.

A string of speakers, from high-priced executives to blue-collar workers, warned of lost jobs, canceled projects, skyrocketing construction costs and a multibillion-dollar loss if the Corps follows the lead of U.S. District Court Judge William Hoeveler, who ordered a partial halt to mining around the biggest drinking water wellfield.

''I represent 400 people that work for me and I don't know what to tell them,'' said Raul Smith, vice president of Allied Trucking of Florida.

''I don't know if this industry is going to survive,'' Smith said.

LAST TO SPEAK

A handful of environmentalists and mining foes were relegated to the tail-end of a long list of speakers, prompting one to walk out, grumbling that mining companies, which hired a public relations firm to promote a street protest prior to the Doral meeting, had stacked the deck.

John Adornato, regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said there was a ''win-win solution'' that would marginally reduce mining while better protecting the Everglades, endangered birds and the water supply.

''There is not an inconsistency between protecting the environment and maintaining jobs in the industry,'' he said.

The meeting was intended to gather public input on a new federal analysis of mining that Hoeveler ordered last year following a lawsuit brought in 2002 by environmental groups.

In July, the judge halted mining in three quarries near the Northwest wellfield, source of water for more than one million people, citing ''grave concerns'' about contamination risks.

County water and environmental managers say existing treatment systems ensure safe drinking water but several activists urged maintaining a no-mining buffer similar to one set by the judge.

The Corps won't finalize its plan until later this year, but only one of seven alternatives in the new Corps study would halt or limit mining.

MAJOR EXPANSION

The rest would allow existing levels of excavation or clear the way for a major expansion that mining companies had originally sought, allowing up to four times as many acres to be excavated than the Corps originally approved in 2000.

Several of the options would add buffer zones designed to reduce water seeping from the adjacent Everglades, but none would include expanding a no-mining zone around the wellfield.

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