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Brooksville quarry forever silent
By JENNIFER LIBERTO The mammoth crusher has long stopped grinding limestone chunks, ending the song of steel upon rock upon steel. The snaking labyrinth of conveyor belts -- all 2.8 miles of them -- looks like an abandoned, rusted-out roller coaster. No more rumbling, no more rushing, no more rocks. The Brooksville quarry that helped make Florida Rock a major player among the nation's largest construction material producers will officially close for business today, said Bob O'Brien, vice president of the Jacksonville-based company. The Brooksville operation was the company's first hard rock quarry. "It's been there for the county for many years, and we were certainly not excited about having to close the mine," O'Brien said. For months, an eerie silence has reminded Florida Rock employees of waning days at the quarry, just off U.S. 98, 6 miles north of Brooksville. Yet employees knew their fate years ago, when the mine started running out of limestone, which is stripped from the tops of some of the county's rolling hills. Florida Rock began shutting down last June and has gradually retired, reabsorbed or laid off all but 13 of some 85 employees who worked at the quarry up until last year. At 4 p.m. today, three more workers will be out of a job. "It really hurts my feelings to know that 80-plus people are without a job," said retired plant manager Jimmey Crossan, who spent 42 years with Florida Rock until April. "I worked with those people a long time, and there's not a thing in the world I can do about it." Company officials and many employees are bitter and blame anti-mining public opinion and politicians for the mine's demise. Indeed, in the early 1990s, Florida Rock attempted to expand and mine on its acreage in Citrus County. However, the Citrus County Commission moved to prevent this by rezoning the area in 1992, which Florida Rock fought in court for almost a decade. When it became clear that its Hernando acreage would dry up before they would get a judgment, they dropped the case and decided to close. "Our rights were stolen," plant manager and 41-year Florida Rock veteran Charles Jones said in an essay about the mine's closing. "After we served a 10 year legal battle with the county, we threw in the towel. Time was on their side, and we were desperate for raw material." However, company leaders acknowledge, mining the Citrus County acreage would have extended the plant's life expectancy only by about a decade. More than a half-century of mining has taken its toll on the area's natural resources. "It's a sign of the changing business economy we have, that they are departing," said the county's Office of Business Development director, Mike McHugh, who previously worked as a vice president for Florida Crushed Stone, which runs the county's largest hard-rock mine. "It'll be difficult to replace the jobs and economic impact." Florida Rock stopped processing last year, and has spent most of this year loading trucks with piles of tiny sun-bleached rock, shipping out the last of the quarry's inventory across the state. The company will move some of the plant's equipment to other mines. The rest gets scrapped. The 10 remaining employees will focus on "reclamation," the process of re-scattering top-soil and replanting trees and shrubbery, expected to last about two years. Florida Rock mined about 600 of its 4,500 acres, as the hard rock deposits are not consistently found throughout the area, O'Brien said. The company also leased and mined Withlacoochee State Forest land from the federal government over the years. Company officials could not say what they planned to do with the land once reclamation is complete. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Florida Rock materials went to paving Florida's vast web of highways, interstates and turnpikes, as well as the runways along the Cape Canaveral space shuttle launch site. The company has a smaller soft-rock mine in the county, which it will continue. Florida Rock's earnings rose 2.1 percent for the third quarter ending June 30 to $19.3-million, up from $18.9-million for the same quarter last year, the company reported Tuesday. -- Times researcher Barbara Oliver contributed to this report. Jennifer Liberto covers business and development in Hernando County and can be reached at 848-1434. Send e-mail to liberto@sptimes.com.
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