Sand Mine Hearing

Cue up things that don't make sense.

Remember the Sand Mine in Lecanto? I wrote about it several times over the last few months, mainly because they were operating a mining operation without the required county and state permits.

Well, Citrus County sent out staff to investigate a code compliance case and found them to be in violation of County land development code. That was April 17, 2026.

I was tipped off that they purchased two additional parcels that were adjacent to this property a few days after this code compliance case. They are the blue parcels in this picture below. The pink are the ones in the code case.

I was told that they were running trucks in and out of these new parcels. So I went to the property and flew the drone over the road. I saw this.

To the left in this picture you see a vegetative debris pile. You also see it in another area in the middle (the dark area). There is also an excavator on side with a bucket full of sand. I did observe trucks driving in empty and coming out with sand. It was too windy that day to keep the drone up too long, so did not get it on video.

In any case, a permit is required to store vegetative debris. That is in the LDC section 3785.

It appears the vegetative debris is on the site with the active code case as well as the new parcels they purchased on April 29, 2026... so I filed a code complaint to have the county go out and take a look.

I followed up on that Thursday afternoon with an email the JC Charlton. He emailed me back and told me to call him on Friday morning. On the phone, he told me that staff went out to the new site and found that they were mining those parcels as well as storing vegetative debris... without permits for any of it. I was told the code compliance gave them a violation notice with 30 days to come into compliance.

I checked to see if they received the SWFWMD Environmental Resource Permit (ERP). They have not received one for either site.

As we know from the previous articles, they cannot get a mining permit without getting the ERP from SWFWMD.

So we have someone who was previously cited by the county in April 2026 for violating the mining element of the LDC... who buys more property and then begins to do work on that site without permits.

Why does any of this matter?

Because they are going to the board to get approval to expand their mine site further south and to get the required permits. This will apparently wipe out the code case on the original parcels (the new parcels are not part of the application).

Help me make sense of that.

According to the county... they are actively in violation on two separate parcels for pretty much the same thing... the newest being after they were notified previously of being in violation with a pending special master hearing.

And then they want to go to the BOCC to get approval to expand their operation?

I have a feeling Tuesday's meeting could be an interesting one. There is an intervenor as well, so they will be able to present evidence and ask questions. It starts at 5pm if you want to watch it online.

Someone in the comments previously mentioned that the mine will make more money than the fines the county will assess for not being in compliance. It appears the maximum fine the county can institute is $500 per day for non-compliance. State agencies can do $1,000 per day it looks like.

So potentially $1500 per day in violations.

Well what is the sand worth?

According to the application, it appears that they plan to pull 2.4 million cubic yards from each phase of the property. That is roughly 4.8 million cubic yards of sand from these parcels.

Looking at their website, it appears the cheapest sand available is $7 per cubic yard. Using that number, that represents $16.8m in sales from each phase or $33.6 million total.

I have no idea the cost to dig a cubic yard of dirt and load it into a truck, but I bet there is a hefty profit margin involved.

With fines at $1,500 per day, they would need 667 days of code violations to equal more than $1m in fines.

I am not sure the fines are a big enough deterrent and clearly the first code violation did not make them go through the proper process for the 2nd parcel.

Let's see what the BOCC does tomorrow! Hope to see you there!