Commissioners Show True Colors in Mining Permit

BRADENTON – Wednesday's special land use meeting gave citizens an idea as to just how much pull Mosaic Mining has in Manatee County. No matter how much tweaking, twisting and turning commissioners performed on Mosaic's dialog, it all sounded like they were lying to themselves in order to convince everyone else, or lying to everyone else to convince themselves.

Wednesday was the third day of a quasi-judicial process targeted to get Mosaic Mining a zoning change and a Master Mining Plan that would allow the $20 billion company the right to extend their current phosphate mining at their Wingate East mine in east Manatee County.

Mosaic wants to add 3,596 additional acres to their portfolio of scorched earth at Wingate, while destroying 327 acres of wetlands in the process. But that's not all: the proposed mining is in the Myakka River and Peace River watersheds.

On January 26, Mosaic made their case before the BOCC. That lasted the entire day and commissioners scheduled another Special Land Use Meeting for January 30, just to finish public comment. At that meeting, of almost 100 speakers, over 90 percent spoke against approving the mining permit. They spent the day destroying most of what Mosaic's special teams delivered with perhaps the best collection of informed citizens the county has ever seen.
On top of the plethora of detailed information that challenged almost everything Mosaic presented at the January 6 meeting, was a parade of citizens pleading to commissioners not to unleash the tragedies that often follow Mosaic around, onto their lives.

Mosaic had originally scheduled the request for zoning change and master plan back in August of 2016, but a giant sinkhole opened up at their New Wales Phosphate facility just days before that scheduled meeting, sucking 215,000,000 toxic gallons into the aquifer.

At the January 30 meeting, commissioners were given many documents and testimony confirming the careless way Mosaic often operates. Dozens of documents citing Mosaic's operations for out of compliance, broken meters and requests for additional wells, confirmed that the company tends to produce critical water issues.

With the Wingate extension in the Myakka and Peace River watersheds, citizens had reason for concerns. But none of that or any other concerns were going to stop Mosaic from getting what they always get; which is to say, whenever they want it.

When Commission Chair Betsy Benac was asked at Wednesday's meeting whether Mosaic donated to her recent reelection campaign, Benac said it wasn't any of the public's business and refused to answer further.

One of Mosaic's specialists, John E. Garlanger, stated, "There is no risk of the a dam (the berms they construct to capture fugitive water) breaking, or a water spill in the watershed." Garlanger said there weren't any breaches in the past. One would only have to Google "Mosaic Spills" to get the real story on that.

Shannon Gonzales, PWS, Mosaic's wetland specialist said, a created wetland's water level and functionality is immediate, adding, "although the canopy takes time to come back, the success rate is 100 percent." Gonzalis also told the commission that the proposed mitigated wetlands will have a UMAM score of .73 or higher, "and that's a high rated wetland," Gonzales said. A 7th grade science text book seemed to be in order.

Mosaic's Janis Britt said, "There isn't any history of harmful radiation coming from rehabbed land." That may be true were it not for the community of Kathleen, outside of Lakeland. There, is the only real community built of reclamation land. Through the '70s and '80s, and into the '90s, a community of 4,000 filed thousands of complaints of radiation and radon gas poising. In the late '90s, the EPA called it a Superfund Site, saying clean-up could cost as much as $9 billion.

I don't believe anyone at Wednesday's meeting left without enormous praise for both DiSabatino and Smith, with the most common sentiment being that they are the only commissioners who listen to and fight for the citizens of Manatee County. As for the rest of the board members, they were often difficult to distinguish from the mining company's paid employees.