Got a Win!

Man.. what a day!

You had heard me talk up the sand mine quite a bit the last few days. There was a reason for that. I was asked to help do the presentation by the intervenor. We wanted to keep that a secret until the meeting took place so I didn't reveal too many details of it. We felt that we could catch them off guard during the hearing when I got up to do the questions and presentations.

We will get into that in a bit.

First, I want to get into a history of how I got involved.

Back in December, a resident in Citrus reached out to me to ask for my help in investigating a sand mine operation in Lecanto, off Homosassa Trail. They were worried for the residents out there. They had tried to navigate the code compliance complaints and all of that and were getting no where.

They reached out to me, knowing that I like to do research and can find things. We met at my office and they provided me with documents that they had gathered. We chatted about about an hour or so. I said that I would do what I could to research it.

I spoke with about a dozen individuals since that December meeting. Some were engineers. Some were land use experts. Some worked in the mining industry. Most reached out to me unsolicited to provide me insight. Some were people who cautioned me about uncovering too much.

Long story short, you can read about the events that took place in the articles I wrote on this. These will provide the full picture without using 2500+ words here. They cover the code cases and all of that.

The crazy thing about this entire process is that I almost did not have the information that I needed to get all this put together. The county was going to charge me a pretty significant sum of money for the records requests to get the information. The problem was the documents I needed went back to the 80's. Those are not easily accessible and takes significant time to go back and find them.

That is fair.

However, I knew that staff would have to do that research for me if I could get some information to push back on them on. Remember, staff was going with "this is a historical mine site and had valid non-conforming use".

What I needed fell into my lap.

Chris (the owner of the mine) was cited by SWFWMD for mining without an Environmental Resource Permit (ERP) in February. In his response to them, Chris added an attachment PDF that included 100 pages of documents. This was the beginning of the end.

These were the documents that I needed and that the county wanted to charge me for. These documents are what would be used to do the presentation at the BOCC yesterday. These are the documents that provided EVERYTHING needed to contest the mining operation.

Why he included those in an email to SWFWMD is beyond me... huge blunder on his part. That saved a lot of time/money from not having to do the records requests... so thank you!

Once the code cases happened and this went to the special master and was approved there, I was approached by some other people from that area. They asked me what they could do to stop this from being approved at the BOCC.

I told them that there needed to be an intervenor at the BOCC. This would allow them to have a 30 minute presentation, but more importantly, the ability to cross examine both Chris and the County and ask pointed questions to lay out the narrative needed for the board to deny the application.

I offered to help with the process but I told them I could not be the intervenor since County Ordinances require the intervenor to have greater harm than the average person of the public. This generally includes someone who lives nearby the location. I did not have greater harm than the average person, but I could help them navigate it and put it together.

Megan stepped up and said she would do the intervenor application and we began working on the presentation. I told her that I could be a witness for her and could do the presentation if she wanted. She agreed that would be best, but everything had to be submitted before the deadline which was in 3 days. It took about 10 hours or so to put everything together, but she got the application and presentation submitted the day before the deadline.

Since the BOCC can only make a ruling based on competent and substantial evidence, I knew the presentation had to be based on facts. I spent a day taking pictures, researching the LDC and including various portions of it into the presentation. That resulted in 100 slides of information. Too much to really go through in 30 minutes, but I know that the commissioners read the material prior to the meeting, so I wanted to make it detailed, even if I would not spend significant time at the meeting going through each slide.

But as I mentioned before... the real power in the intervenor is the ability to ask questions. The presentations can only be 30 minutes but there is no time limit for cross examination. We could ask as many questions as we wanted.

That was the key in all this. The questions can be used to provide the full narrative. The questions can be used to lay out the case before our presentation even began.

This is where the documents Chris provided to SWFWMD came in handy.

The main issue for Megan and the residents out there was the status of McClure Point. It is a dirt road in bad condition and dangerous to travel with all the truck traffic. I found in the documents that the county has historically required McClure to be paved for the approvals of uses out there. The sites largely died because none of the owners doing the projects wanted to do the paving, which is a requirement of the LDC.

Knowing this, that allowed me to phrase many of the questions around that.

I had questions pre-written in case Megan had to present them. The questions were based off the documents that were submitted, the land development code and so on.

Needless to say... neither Chris nor Joanna expected what was coming.

The goal with the questions was to establish a pattern.

With Chris, it was to establish a bad actor problem.

We wanted to show that he apparently did not have regard for the LDC and did not want to adhere to it. He admitted that he continued mining the site despite receiving the code compliance violation and he admitted he got a 2nd violation on another parcel he purchased connected to this. He stated on the record he was not taking any yard debris, but I sat in the road on Tuesday morning at 845am and watched a truck bring in debris to his property and leave empty.

The other goal with the questions was to establish what he purchased. He purchased a site that the county previously stated required mining permits to be mined. Several of those letters were in those documents he submitted. Again, not sure why he sent those, as they ultimately led to this denial.

He apparently did not have a clue about any of this and tried to say that staff told him it was ok to mine there because that is how it has always been done.

With staff, the goal was to establish that the county had historically required McClure to be paved. I wanted staff to admit that over and over. The LDC is clear that mines require paved road access.

I was also able to get staff to admit that there were no valid non-conforming use and that these were in fact new mines and not existing mines. I also had an inkling that staff did not know some of these letters existed, since they were not mentioned in the staff report, so I wanted them to read them into the record for the hearing. The questioning allowed for that.

When it came time to walk through the presentation, we were able to go back to the answers that staff and Chris gave to paint the picture we needed to paint... that this site does not adhere to the Land Development Code and that Chris had continued to mine this site and other things despite having a code compliance violation, no SWFWMD permits, no county permits, etc.

This presentation focused on the Comp Plan, the LDC and other standards for mining in Citrus County. We wanted to show that this site met none of those things. That would give the commissioners the ability to deny the application outright. We did have a list of conditions if they were to approve it that we would have liked to see implemented, like paving McClure.

We then got several neighbors to show up and share their story. Some of these individuals have been dealing with this site and others in the area for decades. One of the speakers also spoke at a meeting in the 90's, according to the minutes I had gotten from that packet from SWFWMD (the gift that keeps on giving).

I told them going into the hearing that the goal was not necessarily a denial. That would be great if we could get it, but the goal was to require McClure to be paved. Why? Because that would essentially shut down the mine, as was the case previously.

But how?

You see, in those documents was a letter from the previous owner of the site to the county asking them to waive the requirement for paving. They claimed they had the plans approved, but SWFWMD required them to get all the people who owned property on McClure to sign off and approve it. This would require them to give up some of their property for the right of way. They could not get those approvals, so SWFWMD would not issue a permit for paving.

I knew that some of the owners on McClure would not give the approvals for this today. Therefore, Chris could not do the paving of McClure and the mine would not have paved access, as required.

It would essentially shut down the mining operation. That is why the focus was on paving McClure.

All in all... it shows what is possible when a group comes together and focuses on the facts. The problem a lot of times is people want to get up and give their opinion. That is fine of course, but the commissioners cannot consider opinions when making the determinations. These things have to be fact driven.

Ultimately, Bays made the motion to deny. Kinnard added the portion about the county directing the attorney to file for an injunction to force him to stop mining... and the board voted unanimously to deny the application.

One thing I want to address.. Commissioner Bays threw me under the bus for including photos from a drone. She called it invasion of privacy and called me a bad actor for including those photos. Ultimately it did not affect her decision to deny the application, but it was placed into the record.

The problem with that is that there is no expectation of privacy if it can be seen from ground level, without a drone. This photo was taken at ground level. As you can see, you can see just about the entire mine site, going back to where the vegetative debris is being stored. Everything in the drone images can be seen from ground level, therefore, no expectation of privacy exists. Besides, laws concerning drones are largely aimed at police departments and the like, not private citizens.

That is all for today... Have a great day!