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Cementing growth, or debate?

Florida's booming demand for concrete block housing has led Florida Crushed Stone to seek a permit to expand. Environmentalists worry about pollution, and regulators want answers.

By WILL VAN SANT
Published January 23, 2005

	[Times photo: Maurice Rivenbark]
	Florida Crushed Stone announced a $150-million expansion of its Brooksville cement and electric generation plant in December.

BROOKSVILLE - It's a good time to be in the cement business.

A construction boom, increased importation costs and what some say is a move toward more concrete-block housing in Florida after a troubling hurricane season have boosted demand for cement.

Seeing its chance, Florida Crushed Stone recently announced a $150-million expansion at its operation north of Brooksville. The move would double the amount of cement produced at the plant every year to 1.8-million tons - nearly a quarter of what Florida consumes annually.

Company officials trumpet the positive economic impact the project will have on the county, while downplaying environmental costs. They acknowledge, however, that the new operation will spew thousands of tons of pollutants into the air each year.

Another company, Florida Rock Industries, is seeking a comparable expansion of its plant in Newberry. Not since the late 1990s, state regulators say, have they been asked to approve such huge production increases for Florida's cement industry.

Cement plant expansions in Florida have sometimes led to battles between industry and environmentalists. But at this point, local environmental groups say they know little about the plan put forward by Florida Crushed Stone, which is owned by Rinker Materials Corp. of West Palm Beach.

Still, they urged skepticism whenever any industry claims a planned expansion will help the economy while doing little or no harm to the environment and public health.

"Generally," said Arline Erdrich, founder and vice president of the Coalition for Anti-Urban Sprawl and the Environment in Hernando County, "industry puts the concerns of their shareholders first, before the interests of the community at large."

Charles Allen, who runs Rinker's Cement Division, has a different view.

Allen works out of Florida Crushed Stone's Brooksville plant, a vast industrial operation that county residents rarely glimpse. Driving into the site, sheer walls of limestone, a key ingredient of cement, dwarf trucks that ferry the product throughout the region.

There is an electric plant owned by Delta Power that helps drive the cement operation and the state's power grid. Only the cement silos and a smokestack tower above the rock faces.

Kentucky coal and old tires fuel the cement production process, which involves mixing a few elements on the periodic table and firing them into what's called klinker. The klinker is then ground, mixed with a little gypsum, and the result is cement.

Limestone has been mined at the site since the 1930s, when there was little or no regulation of such activity.

The industry has changed dramatically over the decades, Allen said, and the growth of pollution control technology in recent years will make it possible to create a state-of-the-art facility that incorporates the latest advances.

The emission standards proposed in Florida Crushed Stone's permit application to the state Department of Environmental Protection are even more stringent than those the company proposed in 2000, he said.

At the time, the company was considering a similar expansion and had all the state and local approvals needed, but Allen said the plan was scrapped because economic conditions were not favorable.

Allen views potential critics of the plant expansion as people who simply don't have all the facts. All human activity has some environmental impact, he said, and people would do well to realize that every housing development approved in Hernando means more polluting vehicles on area roads, and the vehicles emit many of the same chemicals as his plant.

"This will be as efficient a facility as any in the United States," he said. "There's nothing environmentally bad about this at all."

Allen said the company now pays about $786,000 a year to Hernando County in property taxes, a figure that could grow by $400,000 in about two years when the expansion, if approved, is completed.

In a portion of the air permit application sent to the DEP that suggests the expansion will place little drain on county services, it says that only 15 to 20 new jobs will be created. Stressing the expansion's benefits to the local economy, Allen said the true number of new jobs will be about 60.

Allen said he had no idea how the consultant hired to write the permit application had come up with the 15 to 20 figure.

Florida Crushed Stone has run afoul of regulators in the past. In 1999, it was fined more than $18,000 for failing to keep proper records and adequately monitor how its operation was affecting area groundwater supplies, said Merritt Mitchell, a DEP spokesman.

Since that time, Mitchell said, the company has been operating under a consent order, trying to come into compliance. Outstanding issues remain, Mitchell said, regarding how best to protect drinking water supplies from the industrial waste generated at the site, but the company has been responsive to the DEP's concerns.

To date, Mitchell said, there is no evidence that groundwater has been contaminated.

"Tell us what to do, and we will do it," Allen said of his approach to dealing with the agency.

In 2000, the company agreed to a county demand to set up air monitoring devices around the plant. The monitoring continues to this day, and county environmental planner Dawn Velsor said emissions are always well below state standards.

According to the permit application filed with the DEP, the expansion would result in 255 tons of dust particles, 118 tons of sulfur dioxide, 1,124 tons of nitrogen dioxide, 2,044 tons of carbon monoxide and 97 tons of volatile organic compounds being pumped into the air each year.

All five compounds are subject to regulation.

Jim Pennington, an air permit administrator with the DEP, said the company's emissions have always been well within what is allowed. Scanning through a list of plant emissions for 2003, the last year for which numbers are available, he said that appeared again to be the case.

Pennington then came to the volatile organic compounds category. While allowed to emit 38.8 tons of VOCs a year, the records indicated the plant had released 52 tons in 2003.

The high figure could have been a data entry error, Pennington said. "I just now noticed," he said. "I will follow up on that."

On Wednesday, the DEP sent Florida Crushed Stone a request for more information regarding the permit. Among the 26 requests for clarification and further information, the letter asks whether the company has any outstanding violations and how increased mercury emissions will be handled.

"We fully expected them," Allen said Friday of the requests. "We already have answers prepared for most."

Once the DEP deems the application complete, the agency has 90 days to approve or reject it. About 60 days into the process, Pennington said, the agency will release a draft determination and seek comments from the public and from the company.

From the date a permit is issued, the public or the company will have 14 days to call for an administrative hearing, he said.

The company must also get a land use variance to allow for heavy manufacturing at the site. A similar variance for the company has been approved in the past, and the matter is tentatively scheduled to be heard at the county Planning and Zoning Commission's Feb. 14 meeting.

Will Van Sant can be reached at 352 754-6127 or vansant@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 23, 2005, 00:13:14]