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After unsuccessfully lobbying Governor Jeb Bush to
veto a senate bill that would take lake belt blasting regulation
authority away from Miami-Dade County and give it to the state fire
marshal, Miami-Dade Commissioner Miriam Alonso said that she will
pursue legal means to keep the new law from taking effect.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Miriam Alonso
The state legislation pre-empts the Miami-Dade
ordinance regarding blasting and is considerably more lenient towards
industry than the previous one.
At the center of the controversy is the lake belt
region, an area in which blasting for limestone rock--critical for
fueling Florida's explosive construction growth--had been previously
permitted by the state legislature but regulated locally.
The commissioner is seeking what equates to a
permanent injunction that would block the new law and likely result in
jurisdiction over blasting reverting back to the county.
"If we prevail in court, we'll go back to square
one--the county will regulate," she said. "We expect
resolution for the court case for sometime in September I
suppose."
The new law would also allow the mining companies to
blast with an intensity three times what engineers have determined is
high enough to cause structural damage to surrounding homes.
It is the latest installment in the epic saga in which
Alonso has become the stalwart heroine for many citizens on the
western fringes of Miami-Dade and southern Broward County. The region,
which stretches just west of the Florida Turnpike from Kendall all the
way to south Broward County, was until recently regulated by
Miami-Dade County, which had placed stringent restrictions on how much
blasting would be permitted and at what intensity.
West Dade Federation of Homeowners Associations (WDFHA)
Vice President Jesse Jones rejected the notion of stripping local
government of the control of something so vital.
"The concept of Tallahassee having the final say
in blasting matters," he explained, "and the only medium
through which a local homeowner can get a response on this issue is
ludicrous. The further away you remove the remedy from the problem,
the higher the likelihood of that problem continuing. Whatever it
takes to return control to local government is the paramount
issue."
Alonso sponsored and pushed for the original county
legislation because of an increasing number of complaints from
constituents who said their property had been damaged by the lake belt
mining.
"When I first ran for office in 1996," she
explained, "I went out knocking on doors, introducing myself, and
people started telling me about the problems they were having--I
hadn't really been involved with or aware of the issue before then.
But in response, as a newly elected commissioner in November 1996, I
got very involved."
Subsequently, Alonso managed to pass some one of the
most stringent ordinances for industry ever seen in Miami-Dade in
February of 1998--one that would not just pay lip service to the goal
of reducing the effects of blasting but actually help to bring about a
real change.
Alonso said that she realized the only real way to
force the companies to comply was to put teeth into the ordinance.
"None of the companies would be allowed to blast
more than three times a week," she said, "nor would they be
allowed to blast with a peak particle velocity (PPV) of more than .15.
Any company that exceeded those figures would be fined $10,000 and we
could strip them of their license."
However, by the summer of 1998 as new areas began to
be mined, the problems began again and after unsuccessfully seeking a
moratorium on the blasting, Alonso convened a task force to study the
effects and find a possible resolution to the issue.
The task force included engineers, county
administration, industry officials, and community leaders, all of whom
came together to examine the effects of the lake belt mining on the
homes just east of the Turnpike.
"We learned Miami-Dade County is truly unique in
its underground composition," she said. "Even though the
companies were blasting at low intensity, the limestone underneath
meant there was six times the amplification as might be found
elsewhere--the shock waves can be felt very quickly."
However, even as the task force appeared close to
finishing its work, the mining industry was secretly lobbying
Tallahassee legislators to vote for the amendment and attach it to
something sure to pass--in this case it was the popular bill that
ended auto emissions testing in Miami-Dade.
"While we were sitting down here negotiating in
good faith," Alonso said angrily, "just 14 neighbors trying
to solve our differences, in Tallahassee Doug Bruce [a lobbyist for
the mining industry] wrote the amendment and gave it to Senator Smith.
He introduced it 48 hours before the end of the session when the
computers were down and without hard copies to for the rest of the
legislators, and they just passed it on his word."
"Through my representation on the task
force," Jones added, "I met many fine individuals working
for the industry. However, the industry as a whole has approached a
systemic problem in a very underhanded fashion--although I believe
that the majority of mining companies did not know of this effort of a
select few in the industry. All of them might agree with it [the
decision] but I don't believe they knew it was going to happen."
Alonso also made it clear that she would press on even
if the law suit failed, and that she would make the mining industry
suffer the consequences in the long run if they did not come back to
the negotiating table.
"Unless we can reach a compromise with
industry," she said, "number one we will not allow
development in areas where there is uncertainty about the amount of
blasting and its intensity--there will be less of a market for their
materials. We will also push the legislature to repeal this bill and
place the jurisdiction back with the commission where it
belongs."
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