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Hernando Today

Spoil Site Opponents Will Get Hearing

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By TONY MARRERO

Hernando Today

Published: March 5, 2009

BROOKSVILLE - The opponents of a plan to dump material dredged from the bottom of the Hernando Beach channel onto a county-owned piece of land on Shoal Line Boulevard will get a hearing in front of a judge.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has deemed three separate petitions as worthy of hearing and forwarded the requests on Monday to the state's Division of Administrative Hearings.

Once the division receives the request, it will notify the petitioners and ask for dates they are available for a hearing. Those dates must fall between 30 and 70 days after the petitioner receives the notification from the DOAH.

DEP had been poised to issue a permit to allow the county to dump and drain roughly 50,000 cubic yards of dredged material on the county-owned property on the east side of Shoal Line, north of Petit Lane, that once housed a wastewater treatment plant.

The three petitioners claim that dumping the roughly 50,000 cubic yards of the material, called spoil, on the land and letting it drain will harm nearby Minnow Creek and the surrounding wetlands. All three of the petitioners own land on Minnow Creek.

The development further complicates an already convoluted situation that has held up the already long-delayed effort to lengthen and deepen the channel.

Among the petitioners is Manuel LLC, the corporation owned by the Manuel family of Brooksville. The Manuels own the county's first choice for a spoil disposal site, a four-acre piece of land on Eagle Nest Drive and also on Minnow Creek. The Manuels maintain their site is safer because it's closer to the salty waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

DEP was ready to issue a permit for the Eagle Nest site last year, but residents who oppose the plan have followed the same petitioning process, citing concerns the material could contaminate that section of Minnow Creek and increase the risk of flooding in the area. The hearing, however, was postponed at the last minute in January when test results indicated the presence of petroleum contaminants in the sediment at the bottom of the channel.

Dealing with contaminated soil would almost certainly add to the cost of the $9 million project. DEP and the county's consultant are each doing more tests and await the results. The hearing on the Eagle Nest site that had been slated for Jan. 29 was postponed for 60 days.

"We expect them any time now," County Engineer Charles Mixson said of the test results.

The county has spent nearly $1 million on the project and is awaiting an updated cost estimate from its consultant, Mixson said. With a sour economy driving down prices and some cost-saving measures taken so far, it's not yet a given that the project will run over budget, Mixson said.

County officials worry that the $6 million in state funding could be lost if the project doesn't start soon, but lawmakers have said the money should be safe at least until early next year.

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.

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