Hardee awakens to mining reality
Officials: Industry leaves broken promises
WAUCHULA -- In the 1970s, Hardee County's future couldn't have looked brighter. It proved to be an illusion.
Known as the "cucumber capital of the world," the county's picturesque small towns, riverfront parks and traditional values attracted newcomers as much as its booming agricultural industry.
Phosphate mining was moving in from the north. The county approved a half-dozen mines after the industry promised in applications that some 3,000 residents would find jobs in the mines and another 9,000 in side businesses connected to the industry.
And when the mines played out, the "disturbed" lands would be "reclaimed" for beneficial uses, according to the county's applications.
Mine pits would be turned into "thousands of acres of lakes," creating ideal locations for golf course communities and parks, according to 1975 mining agreements.
Other lands would be available for new industries and a variety of agricultural uses, the agreements stated.
Before long, such companies as Agrico, Mobil, CF Industries, Farmland and Cargill started buying up cow pastures and swamps. They paid two to three times the average market price, making sellers ecstatic with their windfalls.
But, for almost everybody else, dreams of prosperity never materialized.
Today, fewer than 200 to 300 Hardee residents work in the mines, which have permanently altered some 30,000 acres of Hardee's landscape. Hardee County has 407,000 acres in its county and 109,000 are owned by phosphate companies. Most of the industry's employees reside in Polk County, where the industry has been concentrated for the past 100 years, say Hardee County leaders.
Hardee now ranks as the poorest of Florida's 67 counties, with 37 percent of the population living below the poverty level, statistics show.
In a state that grows by 1,000 people per day, Hardee actually experienced a negative growth rate in 2000, as a generation of Hardee Countians seem to be moving out to find meaningful employment elsewhere. The growth rate was -.7 percent between 2000 and 2001, according to the U.S. Census. With a population of about 280,000, that means a loss of 196 people.
County officials interviewed this month say they have all recently come to the same realization: Instead of paving the road to prosperity, the phosphate industry left a trail of broken promises.
The county is now mustering its small mine permitting staff to take the industry to task, in an effort to reverse the legacy of phosphate mining: a dramatically altered landscape and economic depression.
'Disenfranchised' by mining
"Through the '90s we began to realize that Hardee County had been disenfranchised," explains County Commissioner Bill Lambert, a lifelong Hardee resident who owns a plant nursery. "We looked to see what had occurred to cause that."
He says much of the reclaimed mine sites remain in the hands of the mining companies. Most of those lands now sit idle or as marginally used cow pastures.
Some 40 percent of the mine sites are "clay settling areas," which are huge impoundment areas for waste clays. During a helicopter ride last week, the reclaimed clay areas all appeared to have standing water on them -- water that no longer drains to the Peace River.
Typically, they encompass 500 acres each and rise 40 feet above the surrounding terrain. Hardee County will one day have 27,000 acres of the clay settling areas, according to proposals now being reviewed.
Hardee Commission Chairman Walter Olliff said one mining company has donated a lake to the county for a future park. But, the county can't afford to develop and maintain the park, so it sits unused, according to Olliff.
Gray Gordon, a spokesman for Cargill, says the mining industry isn't to blame for Hardee's woes. He points out the county has only 4,000 acres of row crops elsewhere, so other factors must be holding the county's agriculture back, he argues.
"Right now, phosphate mining is the county's economic engine," he says.
Lambert, however, believes the mining is the reason other investors and speculators shy away, he says.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist," Lambert says. "(The mine companies) own about 27 percent of the county. They contribute nothing meaningful during the mining.
"After it's mined, the land is not divested (from mine holdings). Then there's the uncertainty of what's left to be mined."
The Hardee County Commission faces two Development of Regional Impact applications that are due for decisions within the next year. They are the first large-scale developments to hit the county since the mining began in 1975 -- and both are for new mines totaling another 35,000 acres. More than 44,000 acres have already been permitted, including 13,000 acres of clay settling areas. If the new mines are approved, a total of more than 79,000 acres of Hardee County will be mined, including 23,000 acres of clay settling areas.
Those mines represent the leading edge of the migration of the industry. It is moving south now that most of the Polk County mines are played out. Before long, DeSoto County will be faced with a similar decision on the proposed 24,000-acre Pine Level Mine, submitted by IMC-Agrico.
As the juggernaut cuts ever deeper into the Hardee's western half, the county has mustered its small mine permitting staff to take on the billion-dollar industry.
The goal, according to Olliff, is not to stop the mining, but to "get some equilibrium."
"Right now, it's completely lopsided," he adds.
Olliff has begun demanding the industry design reclamation plans to leave behind more lakes. In the future, mine sites could even be used for reservoirs, he says.
The mining industry has recently been lobbying the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to allow wetland mitigation on clay settling areas. That would free up land to accommodate more lakes.
But, Olliff also questions why there are clay settling areas in the first place.
"Why does DEP allow clay settling areas at all?" he asks.
Patience thin
In the past, county officials were known to just tell the companies "go mine," according to Olliff. No one objected, least of all him; Olliff worked in the mines himself, for eight years. He quit to run his tree-trimming business.
The awakening that phosphate mining may have done more harm than good increased exponentially several months ago, after the county commissioned a study of reclaimed mine sites.
The study produced maps that graphically showed how mining would turn good farmland to bad. Soils suitable for agricultural would be replaced by sand tailings and clay. The sand dries out too fast and the clay stays wet too long.
A map produced by the county last week also depicts what the county will look like once all the mines are completed in the future. Clay settling areas would blot the landscape like a jumbled checkerboard.
"We're basically looking at a radical transformation of the resource in this county," says Lambert.
The study was based on a National Resource Conservation Service soil ranking scale. The Florida Phosphate Council, based in Tallahassee, is now working to get the service to change its ranking of mined soils.
The industry argues its reclaimed lands could be farmed. In fact, the soils are high in nutrients.
The problem is, the clay gets "smooshy" when wet, explains Mary Ellen Murphy, spokeswoman for the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research.
Once all other farmland is used up for developments, "clay settling areas will become the hot place to farm," she predicts.
Concern for water
Charlotte County shares Hardee's concern over the proliferation of clay settling areas -- but for a different reason. Charlotte fears the areas, which would one day line much of Horse Creek and the Peace River, will impair the ability of rainwater to soak into the ground and seep into the river through the surficial aquifer.
Charlotte County has assigned former environmental consultant Bill Byle to represent the county in expressing such concerns.
Charlotte County also has spent more than $1 million seeking to block permits for one Manatee County mine and has budgeted $3.8 million to fight another -- IMC Phosphate's 20,000-acre Ona mine located in southwestern Hardee County.
Tripling the troops
Mining companies typically hire teams of consultants and lawyers to help draft their mine agreements. Once the applications are deemed complete, Hardee County has just 90 days to review the plans.
In order to better scrutinize the proposals, Hardee last month tripled the size of its mine permitting department -- from one staffer to three, plus a secretary, who also works for the planning director.
The county also made a concerted effort to hire qualified professionals. The two permitting specialists that were hired are both biologists with experience as state water and environmental regulators.
Presiding over the reformation is County Planning Director Kris DeLaney, a former ecology consultant who writes articles in his spare time about plants he discovers. The county hired DeLaney a few years ago.
Ninety days ago, DeLaney hired Doug Knight, a former insurance adjuster, as chief mining coordinator.
Knight is working on a master's degree in business. He says his former employer at Foremost Insurance had told him as soon as he achieved the degree, his insurance career would take off.
But Knight gave up that path to regulate the mining.
"I just saw it as an opportunity to do something to help," he says.
"He's just a good ol' local boy who jumped in with both feet," says Olliff.
The commissioner recalls that a certain mining company executive complained after his first meeting with Knight that the county had sent him "a good ol' bull dog."
Olliff laughs as he recalls that when he told Knight about the comment, Knight peeled back the collar of his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a bulldog on his chest.
It would be a fitting logo for Knight's department.
Digging in
Two weeks ago, under a recommendation from Knight, the commission fined Cargill Fertilizers $12,000 for being 10 days late in completing the reclamation of a 320-acre mine. The reclamation was years overdue and the county had given the company a one-year extension one year ago.
"And it will be a cold day in hell before I give you another break," Olliff warned the Cargill officials.
Another decision by Knight two weeks ago ruled IMC's Ona mine application "insufficient" -- a bureaucratic setback that could delay permit consideration for months.
The ruling came after Knight discovered that IMC had omitted plans for a major cross-county pipeline for clay slurry in its DRI application.
'Hard-up County'
Knight still remembers Hardee's glory days. His family moved to the county from Michigan in 1976, primarily because they liked its Christian values, he says.
"I can honestly tell you people moved here because it was a wonderful place to live," he says of the '70s. "Now, people laugh when I tell them that.
"They say, 'I'd never move to Hardee County; there's nothing there.' Now, we're referred to as Hard-up County."
Knight doesn't want to blame the mining companies. But, "they didn't help," he says.
Knight recently completed a review of a half dozen DRI agreements for mines signed in the 1970s.
One Agrico agreement states that "over 96 percent (of the mine site) will be available for agricultural, recreational, ecological and other uses."
Another claims "the proposed project will double total property assessments in the county." As a result, "it is probable that millage rates will be decreased."
Still another claims "lakes totaling 1,000 acres will be built."
One application declared the plans would "improve the flow of water in creeks and the recharge of aquifers."
Several promised extensive monitoring of air and water pollution.
A month ago, one of the new Hardee permitting specialists, Elizabeth Serdynski, sent letters to all the mines seeking permission to inspect their pollution monitoring operations. Most have yet to reply; one replied that the monitoring of air pollution was "not required."
Knight refers to the promises in a letter he drafted last week to his commissioners. The letter is titled "Broken Promises."
Knight acknowledges that many of the promises were "extracted" one by one in amendments approved by the county over the last 26 years.
Some of the promises couldn't be fulfilled because of new regulations from state and federal agencies, he concedes. Now, however, the county needs to take stock of reality, he suggests.
"I feel that over the past several years, the leaders of this community have begun to open their eyes," he writes. "We have asked the industry to help with economic development and when the reporters are there, they say they have and they will.
"When the reporters are gone, they tell us that it is our problem."
Knight also complains that the Legislature, the DEP and Florida Institute of Phosphate, a state scientific agency, have failed the county.
In 2001, he notes, the county requested the Legislature boost the mined-counties' share of a state severance tax on mining.
State Rep. Lindsay Harrington, R-Punta Gorda, sponsored a bill that increased the county's percentage -- but also reduced the total severance tax by 20 percent. In other words, the county got a bigger piece of a smaller pie.
The net effect was "a wash," according to County Administrator Lex Albritton.
Knight also charged that the research institute, which also receives a share of the severance tax, spends its money "funding research projects solely centered on increasing profits for the industry."
That research has failed to find alternatives to such banes as clay settling areas.
"We have an industry that only responds to this problem by stating that there is no cost-effective technology to deal with this at this time," Knight writes. "We have an industry that when I ask for a Master Mining Plan, they hand me a bunch of maps."
He called for the county to push for a shake-up in mining and state regulatory staffs.
Knight says he wrote the letter after discovering that other fertilizer companies elsewhere were using "state of the art technology" to solve reclamation problems.
Commissioner Gordon Norris, a fifth-generation Hardee native who grows citrus, points out that in the past, the county only reviewed mining projects once a year, when the companies presented annual reports.
Now, the county realizes that's not enough.
"(The mining projects) are fast-paced, huge and fragmented," he says. "It's so big, it's bigger than all of us. We have to get it easier to understand."
He added, however, that the mining companies have responded more humbly to county concerns of late.
"I think we're communicating better," he says. "I see a willingness on the part of the mines to work with us."
By GREG MARTIN
Staff Writer