STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

RELATED STORIES

• Existing mines will keep rocking along Alico Road

More Environment

• South Florida Watershed Journal: The hare that breaks the camel's back
• Rookery Bay’s efforts to protect threatened sea turtles result in increased hatchling success
• Mold, mosquitoes among Fay’s parting gifts

Share and Enjoy [?]

Scott McCaleb was all alone Wednesday afternoon.

Actually the Florida Rock executive was in a crowded room in downtown Fort Myers. But when he told the rest of Lee County’s DR/GR committee that the protection of limerock resources should be one of the central themes they recommend to county commissioners in August, he was all by himself.

“We do need to look out 50 years, and we need to realize limerock is a scarce resource,” he said. “Many states have identified where the natural resources are and established protection zones. They protect them from houses being built on top of them.”

That’s obviously not a priority for the majority of the committee.

“On the other side, I would say, ‘So what if we run out of limerock,’” said committee member Peggy Apgar Schmidt, who lived along Corkscrew Road until noise, dust and traffic from a nearby mine drove her out.

County commissioners created the 15-member committee when they imposed a one-year moratorium on new mine applications last September. Its membership is divided between residents of the 83,000-acre Density Reduction/Groundwater Resource area in southeast Lee, representatives of large landowners or mining interests and an open category.

That was supposed to ensure balance. Two of the five major landowners, however, are Brenda Brooks, executive director of the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed, and Jason Lauritsen, assistant director of the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

With Youngquist Brothern mine executive Richard Friday and landowners’ consultant Dennis Gilkey absent McCaleb’s try at making limerock a priority didn’t receive any support.

“I don’t think we’ll get a consensus on that,” McCaleb said after the committee meeting.

McCaleb said there will be a constant demand for limerock in the future, limerock that’s found in only a few Florida locations, one of which is southeast Lee County.

That use clashes with others, however, particularly the environmental restoration and protection and rural residential character the committee did agree were priorities.

But they can’t make their recommendations work, McCaleb said, without including a concern for private property rights. There are landowners who bought huge tracts in the DR/GR planning with intentions on mining it. Some have put the county on notice they expect to be allowed to mine, a broad hint of future legal action. Landowners attorneys regularly attend committee meetings, though they refuse to discuss the issue.

“If we don’t deal with the property rights issue it’s going to be difficult to make this whole thing work,” McCaleb said. “We could just put together the plan we think works best and let the judge decide.”

Assistant county attorney Dawn Lehnert said whatever the committee recommends — and whatever county commissioners eventually decide — likely will spark legal action.

“There’s going to be a legal issue with whatever scenario you choose,” she said.

Committee members took home copies of a report by consultants Dover, Kohl and Associates, a report that recommends restricting new mines to the Alico Road corridor. That likely will win the support of the committee when it meets again July 16, but as Lehnert said that won’t end it.

County commissioners will begin to debate the recommendations on Aug. 1. The moratorium ends in September.