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Guest Column

Our land is being plundered - where's outrage?

By CHARLES MIKO
Published July 11, 2006

Another chapter in the Hollinswood saga has been opened.

The new page turner is the Mexican firm, CEMEX Inc., which has been granted the "right" to dig up and haul away 526 acres of the Nature Coast; 40 tons per truck, 350 trucks per day.

The new chapter makes no reference to a marina, five-star motel, dry boat storage or public boat ramps, as is the case with the Dixie Hollins plans for the site north of the Cross Florida Barge Canal and west of U.S. 19.

Instead, there is an application to increase mining acreage by 306 acres to 832, which includes an additional 41.47 acres of wetlands connected to Outstanding Waters of the state.

A few miles to the south is a similar but larger operation involving about 6,000 acres made available to another U.S. branch of a foreign conglomerate that is digging it up and exporting it by barge.

This has a familiar ring. It is associated with the term colonialism, loosely identified with the exploitation of less advanced peoples by those of more sophisticated societies. It is characterized by the plundering of resources.

What is astonishing in this is the absence of outrage, the unquestioning acceptance of this devastation of such a huge segment of what we so proudly promote as our "Nature Coast."

We accept an ugly transformation. Some 7,000 acres, almost 10 square miles, of once pristine coastal land is being converted to holes in the ground - more accurately, holes in the aquifer.

We express no concern over projections such as the predicted loss, by evaporation, of up to 2-million gallons of freshwater each day from each 1,000 acres of exposed aquifer. We ignore considerations of the ecological and aesthetic devastation wrought by these mining operations.

One of the guiding principles in creating our Comprehensive Plan was directing development away from the lakes and coastal regions into the central ridge. The logic was that while continued growth would inevitably result in typical urbanization, the recreational opportunities and aesthetic values preserved in the lakes region and along the Gulf Coast would keep Citrus County unique and attractive.

There was no intent to preserve these treasures so that they could be dug up and carted away by trucks and barges.

Our state and local governments, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unwittingly, facilitate this outrageous action. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has, through its permissive policy, reduced its very name to an oxymoron.

The Florida Department of Transportation feeds its insatiable appetite for easily available, low-cost limestone by serving as principal lobbyist for the mining industry.

Our local government exempts the mining industry from regulation applicable to all other land uses in the county. It grants the industry the undeserved privilege of self-monitoring. As a result, mining in Citrus County is essentially unregulated.

The local press, which proclaims its role as guardian of the public interest, remains silent. So do its readers, the Citrus County public.

The carefully crafted growth-management strategy, providing for growth while preserving assets that make Citrus County attractive, is suffering the death of a thousand cuts.

Our Nature Coast is being squandered as though it were ordinary real estate, being exploited in any way somebody can make money from it.

When the coastal and lakes regions are gone, they will be gone forever. An opportunity conceived and presented 25 years ago will have been lost.

Charles Miko is a northwest Citrus County resident and a longtime community activist. Guest columnists write their own views on subjects they choose, which do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.

[Last modified July 10, 2006, 19:16:34]