State: Pit plan has powerful backers

PALMETTO -- Down a two-lane road near Port Manatee is a piece of land where the remnants of an orange grove cluster around a big hole in the ground. It may not look like much, but of all the holes in Florida, this is the one with the most political clout.

The owners of this particular hole include Sen. John McKay, who as incoming president of the state Senate is one of the most powerful politicians in Florida. McKay's partners in purchasing the land last year for more than $1-million included state Rep. Mark Ogles, Manatee County Commission Chairman Stan Stephens and a controversial Bradenton developer, Bill Manfull.

The hole is currently a mine supplying sand to builders. Some days, 300 trucks roll down Buckeye Road bound for what's commonly known as the Buckeye Pit. At this rate, the mine probably will be played out in a year or so.

So the partners, under the name Crescent Moon Enterprises, have announced big plans for their pit. Ogles, the company vice president, has touted it as a landfill and recycling center for construction debris. Or maybe a merchant power plant, hooked up to a natural gas pipeline scheduled to cross the property. Or perhaps a place for the port to dump the silt and rock it will soon begin dredging from Tampa Bay.

Environmentalists and neighbors to the pit, meanwhile, watch and worry. They fear the vague plans could mean pollution for their wells and a nearby aquatic preserve, but they think the property's high-powered ownership gives them little hope of prevailing in a fight.

"We're concerned about our water quality out there," said Lynndel Scaggs, who helped organize a petition drive among her neighbors opposing Crescent Moon. But she didn't have much hope of blocking the company because "all these political ties they have are probably going to push it through."

Last week, despite the objections, Manatee County commissioners approved Crescent Moon's request to change its land use designation. Stephens abstained from the vote, although he said he recently sold his interest -- he would not say to whom.

To win approval, McKay's partners agreed to create a buffer around whatever they build on the 238-acre parcel. That satisfied commissioners and state officials, but not environmental activists, who say the buffers will not prevent pollution.

"It's a classic example of approval of a land use which is admittedly harmful to the environment and the neighbors, for the short-term gain of a few well-connected property owners," said Dan Lobeck, attorney for the environmental group ManaSota-88.

McKay, R-Bradenton, describes himself as merely "a passive investor," recruited by onetime political rival Ogles. The senator said he has done nothing to push the project beyond sinking $100,000 in it.

Ogles, who invested $50,000, said he is distressed at encountering opposition: "I typically try to do things that are sensitive to the environment," said Ogles, who is leaving office because of term limits. This is not the first McKay investment to run afoul of environmentalists. The Sarasota County Commission recently rejected a McKay-Stephens project because it would have destroyed a 21/2-acre wetland.

McKay and Stephens sued, arguing that the Sarasota commissioners meeting was a "virtual lynch mob after the heads of the president-designate of the Florida Senate and a Manatee County commissioner." A judge rejected their complaint.

McKay's development interests may bode ill for when he becomes Senate president, Lobeck said.

"Unfortunately, the senator doesn't have a very reputable record when it comes to protecting the environment," Lobeck said. "But we'll have to give him the benefit of the doubt until we see how he does as president."

McKay said he has sunk so much money into the Crescent Moon project because of its location. It's close to the port, the railroad, U.S. 41 and Interstate 275, making it attractive for some kind of development even if Crescent Moon's plans fall through.

"You always have to have an exit strategy from an investment," McKay said.

The property has a lot of obvious drawbacks, too. Silver towers carrying electrical transmission lines march along the front of the parcel. Across the road looms Piney Point Phosphate's 70-foot gypsum stack, which can contain radioactive elements unearthed when the ore is mined.

A brown thread of a creek twists out of the old grove around the 160-acre mine, ultimately draining into Bishop Harbor in the Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve.

"Any potential hazardous substance spill or groundwater contamination would likely directly impact the aquatic preserve," state Department of Environmental Protection officials wrote in their initial review of the Crescent Moon application.

Larry Aldrich, who once owned the Buckeye Pit and still operates it, always figured that when the mine was used up he could call the water-filled hole a lake and turn the orange grove into 5-acre home lots.

But Aldrich said he got an itch to sail around the world. To finance his dream, he agreed last year to give a client, Manfull, an option to buy the mine. They closed the deal in December for $1.15-million.

Manfull has been in the headlines in Bradenton because he sued city officials for blocking his plan to build homes on a pristine island in the Braden River. He said Ogles and McKay are not part of that project.

Ogles said he had been hunting for a piece of property for a construction debris recycling center and landfill when Manfull approached him with the ideal property: the Buckeye Pit.

"He's the one who had the property under contract and brought it to our attention," Ogles said. Manfull's option on the mine gave him the leverage to be named president, Ogles said, because "the person who controls the property controls the company."

But Manfull said he only wanted to control the Buckeye Pit, until the other partners came to him with the Crescent Moon proposition.

"I'm in the dirt end of it," Manfull said. "I had this property under contract and was moving forward, and they came to me and said, "What are you going to do with it when you're done with that part of it?' "

Originally, the Buckeye Pit was listed on the county's future land use map as a light industrial area. In January, Crescent Moon applied to change that designation to public/semi-public.

What has made some people nervous is that designation can cover a multitude of uses -- including an out-and-out garbage dump -- that have what county planners called "noxious attributes" and would "pose a major threat to air, land and water quality, as well as to healthy, safety and welfare of citizens."

So when the application came up for its first commission vote in May, Ogles emphasized the nicer possibilities, such as a power plant using clean-burning natural gas.

Coastal Corp. hopes to build a trans-Gulf gas pipeline that would come ashore at Port Manatee, and Ogles said that "by the grace of God" the pipeline would slice across the northeast corner of the Crescent Moon property. A power plant would need millions of gallons of water, and Ogles said the pit could supply that.

A power company has announced plans to build next door to the Buckeye Pit, but so far no power company has expressed a strong interest in Crescent Moon's property or its water supply.

"The power plant is a long shot," Ogles conceded last week. "It's just spitting in the wind almost."

At the May hearing, Ogles' pitch to the commissioners was bolstered by port director David McDonald, who said the Buckeye Pit would be a good place to dump the spoil from the port's upcoming expansion dredging.

That came as a surprise to environmentalists who had battled the dredging project, the biggest to hit Tampa Bay in 30 years. The port's dredging permit requires disposal of all dredged material in a site already owned by the port, surrounded by dikes and equipped with a special drainage system.

The port's current disposal site won't hold all 5-million cubic yards of dredged material, which is why port officials were considering Crescent Moon, said port special projects director Steve Tyndall. But now port officials are leaning toward raising the dikes so the current disposal site will hold more.

That leaves only the construction debris recycling center and landfill. Last year the Manatee County landfill took in more than 63,000 tons of wood, concrete and other construction debris at $23 a ton.

Ogles contended the debris is filling up the landfill so fast that county officials are eager to send it somewhere else -- hence the need for a place to recycle whatever can be salvaged.

But county officials say they have no plans to stop accepting construction debris at the landfill. They had talked of starting their own recycling center, said solid waste director Gus DiFazo, "but with the potential of this Crescent Moon facility, we decided to take a wait-and-see attitude and see what develops there once all the smoke clears."

- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.

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