State: Sit-in protests cement plant

TALLAHASSEE -- For the second time this year, protesters blocked Gov. Jeb Bush's office in the Capitol, chaining their necks together with bicycle locks Tuesday and demanding that Bush revoke a permit for a cement plant near the Ichetucknee River.

Crews broke ground for the cement plant near the tiny town of Branford on Monday. Tuesday, five Alachua County protesters, three of whom refused to give their full names, occupied a vestibule outside the governor's office just before 9 a.m.

"Come out Jeb!" they shouted.

Bush was in a nearby room giving a news conference on his One Florida plan to reform state affirmative action policies -- the same plan that sparked a January Capitol sit-in.

Bush refused to meet with the protesters, and about 1:15 p.m., they agreed to unlock themselves and go to the Department of Environmental Protection for a meeting. They were not arrested and left the DEP at about 5 p.m.

"We felt like the thing to do was get national attention," said Tim Robbins, who chained himself to protesters who called themselves "Luna," "Sympathy River," "Japhy Ryder" and "Nadine." They called themselves Ichetucknee Earth First, but said they were not connected to the national Earth First! group.

The protesters put a spotlight on the controversial environmental deal just as the governor's brother, George W. Bush, is battling avowed environmentalist Vice President Al Gore for the White House.

"If they wanted to have a meeting with me, chaining themselves together is not the way to do it," Jeb Bush said.

Police locked the front doors of the Capitol and demanded identification from anyone who entered. About 30 more protesters were outside, waving signs and chanting.

They had a puppet that portrayed Bush as "Jebocchio," a play on the children's story character Pinocchio, whose nose grew longer when he lied. The protesters said Bush lied about his true intentions to permit the cement plant.

Environmentalists have been outraged at Bush because he and his DEP Secretary, David Struhs, canoed the aquarium-clear Ichetucknee in June 1999, called it spectacular, and abruptly denied a permit for a cement plant about 3 miles away.

But a year later, the DEP gave the cement plant a permit after all. DEP ombudsman Benji Brumberg said the state has received 500 letters on the cement plant, all but two criticizing the state for the deal.

The cement plant met all state pollution requirements and had already been approved by the Suwannee County Commission.

It would have likely won easy approval, but Struhs invoked an unusual argument: He said the plant's parent company, road-builder Anderson Columbia, was a repeat environmental violator and could not provide "reasonable assurance" that the cement plant would not pollute.

The DEP negotiated a settlement with the cement plant company in secret, prompting charges of back-room dealing. The company's chief negotiator, Steve MacNamara, is a longtime political insider who worked for Florida House Speaker John Thrasher, one of the governor's confidants. Some state staffers complained later that they didn't know who MacNamara was representing -- Anderson Columbia or Thrasher.

DEP Secretary Struhs, who met with the protesters Tuesday, defended the state's decision. He said the state got better environmental protection by making Anderson Columbia agree to a long list of special conditions.

The company had to put $1-million into a river-protection trust fund, clean up an old industrial facility the company owns on the Panhandle's Blackwater River, donate 22 acres for a state park, settle all pending environmental cases with the state, start an employee environmental training program, put expensive pollution filters on the cement plant and sell the state a lime rock mine near Lake City for $23-million.

Environmentalists filed several lawsuits, and lost.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk