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Lake County rejects sand hauling from conservation area – “the impacts are just too great”

Lake County rejects sand hauling from conservation area – “the impacts are just too great”

by DeVore Design, April 2, 2019

Neighbors on Tuesday warned of dire consequences from an enormous sand-hauling operation at the 3,600-acre Lake Norris Conservation Area — increased traffic congestion, damage to roads, threats to wildlife and falling property values, among other concerns.

“It’s gonna be a living hell every day,” area resident Tom Bergstresser told Lake County commissioners. “Right now we need some help from y’all…Let’s put an end to this.”

They did.

Culminating a nearly nine-month battle, commissioners heeded residents’ wishes and unanimously rejected the plan to allow for the removal of leftover lower-grade sand from a previous mining operation at the conservation area northeast of Eustis that decades ago retrieved top-grade sand.

Cheers erupted from opponents after the vote to scuttle an operation calling for 400 trucks a day — 200 in and 200 out — for several years to clear out the sand from the conservation area owned by the St. Johns River Water Management District.

“The impacts are just too great,” County Commissioner Wendy Breeden said.

Commission Chairwoman Leslie Campione said it’s “completely unfair” for the county and residents to bear the burdens of such an operation “when the sand in fact could be left on that land.”

The vote came about a year after the St. Johns district OK’d the plan to get rid of the discarded sand — dumped in large piles decades ago — as part of a long-term goal of restoring the land as part of a “mitigation bank” project at the conservation area east of County Road 439 and north of County Road 44A.

Under the plan, a private company would have restored or revived wetlands and then sold permissions to land developers elsewhere to destroy other wetlands. Blackwater Creek Wetlands Mitigation, LLC, a venture of The Wetlandsbanks Group, would sell the sand for road construction.

“Common sense tells me this is just about money,” resident Jim Hepp said. “The people involved are going to make millions of dollars.”

Geri Sullivan with the Rifiki Foundation, a nonprofit group located on C.R. 44A near Hart Ranch Road that helps orphaned children in African countries, said it would bring noise, dust and inconvenience.

“I don’t understand what the benefit is to residents or taxpayers from this project,” Sullivan said.

Gary Pardue, representing the homeowners association at Black Bear Reserve, a community of 800 residents off C.R. 44A, called what was being attempted the “great sand rush of 2019.”

A proposed agreement with the county called for the mitigation company to, among other things, resurface Hart Ranch Road, provide a flagman in the morning and afternoon near bus stops, haul sand only during a 10-hour period during the day and not on weekends.

In July, commissioners voted to require permits for trucks weighing above 10 tons, except for trash haulers and deliveries, along Hart Ranch Road and portions of Lake Norris Road leading to the former sand mine site. The contract under consideration banned hauling along Lake Norris Road.

jfallstrom@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5444.