Farmland Owners Oppose Mine's Bid To Rezone, Expand

By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jun 16, 2007

WIMAUMA - Leeanne Martin and Carlos Negrón came to the southeastern corner of Hillsborough County in 2004.

They chose 13.5 acres of pasture land - surrounded by orange groves, green fields and narrow winding roads - to build a Paso Fino horse farm.

"There are trails. It's safe," Martin said. "We bought this because we wanted to be in the country."

Their neighbor, Mary DiPaolo, arrived the same year. She came to this rural enclave to get away from what had become of her hometown.

"Key West got too commercial, too crowded, just ruined," DiPaolo said. "Here it's strawberry fields, cows, horses. It's just a very peaceful area. And we don't want industry and trucks."

But the largest owner of agricultural land in Hillsborough - phosphate and fertilizer giant Mosaic - is trying to rezone several hundred acres to expand its phosphate-mining operations westward. Some of it is Mosaic's land. Some of it is pasture and citrus groves owned by rancher C. Dennis Carlton and his family. It's all part of a planned 1,599-acre expansion of the Lonesome and Four Corners mines.

The most westward part of it lies just across Keene Road from the Paso Fino farm.

DiPaolo wrote a letter to the county opposing the rezoning effort once she learned of it.

Negrón and Martin had received required notices from Mosaic about the plan, but the maps didn't include street names of the westernmost boundary. Occasionally, a dragline used to scoop tons of earth in search of phosphate ore peeks above a tree line beyond neighboring fields and a cattle pasture. They were surprised that the field across the street was part of Mosaic's plan.

They, like DiPaolo and a number of neighbors, are worried.

"I had no clue," Negrón said. "They say they're going to restore it. I think it's going to hurt the agriculture business - our fruit and our animals. The more land they mess up, they less land for our animals. As a business, it can even hurt us. We ride (horses) all over this area."

It's Temporary, Company Says

Christine Smith, a Mosaic spokeswoman, said that the phosphate mines have always been a part of the landscape in this corner of the county. She said any change of landscape to the area would be temporary - contrary to other types of development.

"Mining has always been in that vicinity. I guess it is a little closer to the neighbors," Smith said. "It's not like you're going to build a mall there. Mining temporarily disturbs the land, but after it's mined and reclaimed, the land is put back as close as possible to its prior use."

Smith estimated that if the new properties were mined for phosphate, it would take five to eight years from the start of mining to the end of reclamation, a government-required effort to restore the land. She said there would be no need for the new properties to include pits that allow the water to settle from the clay scooped up in the mining process. Reclamation for such areas takes much longer.

Another Mosaic spokeswoman, Diana Youmans, said the expansion is a practical business decision.

"These are parcels that are either contiguous to or are outparcels within the Four Corners Lonesome Mine boundaries," she said. "These are logical areas that we could efficiently mine. So we want to try to incorporate them and mine them."

In early 2005, Plant City farmers Charles and Linda Lawton signed an agreement with Mosaic, allowing the company to test their property in the area for potential phosphate mining. In February 2006, Carlton and his family signed a similar agreement for their citrus groves, crop fields and pasture that makes up the most westward sections of the expansion.

The Lawtons' property is already zoned for mining. So is some of the Carltons'.

The westernmost pieces of property - the one across the street from Martin and Negrón's Paso Fino farm - are not zoned for mining. So the Carlton family agreed to let Mosaic seek the rezoning request now scheduled for a July 23 hearing.

Carlton, with interests in citrus, cattle and real estate, said the change still would allow agriculture on the land.

"It doesn't restrict the ag zoning at all. It just allows (mining)" said Carlton, an elected member of the county's Soil and Water Conservation Board. "They'd have to buy it to have it done. We might [sell]. But we don't have anything worked out right now."

Youmans said: "We have been consulting with the Carlton and Lawton families about possible purchase of their properties. It is customary because of the long lead time in permitting that if the prospective people that we're buying the land from, if they are willing to have their parcels included, we go ahead and include them."

Conversion Trend

This latest move in Hillsborough's farthest southeastern corner is part of a trend - countywide and beyond - to convert agricultural land to other uses.

Most often, that change is to build homes for Hillsborough's ever-growing population. In rural northeastern Hillsborough, for example, the Thomas ranching family successfully sought last year to create a new county land-use category that they hope to apply to a 1,937-acre piece of cattle pasture and timberland. It would allow as many 968 2-acre mini-estates in an area now devoted to cattle and timberland.

Robert Thomas and his family businesses are the second-largest owners of agricultural land in the county, according to a Tribune analysis of county property records.

Mosaic is No. 1, by a long shot, with more than 18,000 acres classified as agriculture. The company doesn't farm most of that land itself. Smith said Mosaic has its own citrus operations on 470 acres, but the great bulk of its agricultural land - 17,600 acres - is leased to farmers for their own operations.

The agricultural classification - known as a greenbelt - provides Mosaic, and any other property owner that has it, a significant break on property taxes. According to property appraiser's records, Mosaic's agricultural lands have a market value of more than $153 million. But Mosaic only pays taxes on about $27 million, thanks to greenbelt classification created to protect farmland from development.

Smith said Mosaic's agricultural leases are a business strategy.

"It's a good business practice to use it as an agricultural classification," she said. "While the land is not being mined, we earn some revenue and, at the same time, while we're earning revenue, we're being good stewards of the land by letting it just not sit there. By putting it to good use for agriculture, we actually have more requests from folks that want to lease the land than land we have available."

Smith declined to provide lease details. A Tribune review of property records of the county's largest owners of agricultural properties showed that many often charge nominal rents. Mosaic's files on agricultural-classified properties showed just one lease: $525 a year to cattle farmer Jack Fingar for 38 acres of pasture land.

Carlton also said he leases 800 or 900 acres of Mosaic-owned land for cattle operations. He and Mosaic declined to reveal his annual rent payments.

But it's Carlton's property that has Bonnie Maynard worried. Carlton owns 40 acres of pasture land just east of Maynard's 3-acre lot, which her family has owned since 1985. That pasture land is now part of Mosaic's effort to rezone for mining.

"I moved out here for peace and quiet - to where I can raise my child away from all this stuff - and here it is creeping on my back door," Maynard said. "If these phosphate trucks start traveling down there, it's going to make it a whole lot tougher on us. My daughter likes to go bicycle riding. What happens when the phosphate trucks come?"

She hopes to get her questions answered at a public meeting that Mosaic will hold Monday night.

Tamar Brock, who lives next door to Maynard, laments the mine's potential arrival for a much simpler reason:

"It's the only country we have left anymore."

Reporter Karen Branch-Brioso can be reached at (813) 259-7815 or at kbranch-brioso@tampatrib.com.

MOSAIC COMMUNITY MEETING ON EXPANSION PLANS

WHEN: 5:30 to 7 p.m. Monday

WHERE: University of Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center, 14625 County Road 672, Wimauma

WHAT: Information stations on Mosaic's mining expansion proposal, including maps. Presentation on the plan at 6 p.m.