Miami Herald and rock miners: cancer is not just bad luck by gimleteye

Nearly two weeks passed before the Miami Herald's in-depth report on Judge William Hoeveler’s landmark federal court ruling to modestly curtail rock mining in West Miami Dade County: the culmination of five years of litigation by environmental plaintiffs against permits issued by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

But this Herald article falls short in a critical respect and should be redressed through an in-depth investigation.

The issue of great concern to Miami Dade County residents is how county agencies and a majority of local county commissioners allowed the wellfield protection zone to be violated, and not just by rock miners but also by the encroachment of development into an inadequate wellfield protection zone--inadequate as judged not by federal court, but an accumulation of evidence by local agencies that routinely deferred to profit motives of special interests.

It would be worthwhile for Herald editors to track back its reporting, over nearly two decades, on the matter of our drinking water wellfields.

A more recent timeline of stories printed in the Herald (over the past five years) and issues raised by the sequence of events outlined in Judge Hoeveler’s ruling would comprise a clearer picture than even the devastating one outlined in federal court because the record (or lack thereof) would include actions supported by local county commissioners in favor of rock miners: blurring their role in benzene contamination, voiding the requirement for public hearings in conjunction with permit requests by rock miners (a key point noted by Judge Hoeveler in the breakdown of agency capacity to track changes and land swaps and actual acreage mined), refusing to increase fees to miners in order to accommodate new water treatment facilities for the entire county, on account of the industry’s pollution of drinking water supplies, the efforts by rock miners to cap their liability for costs of new water treatment plant upgrades, and last but not least: the permitting of new suburban and industrial development to the edge of the wellfield protection zone by politically connected lobbyists, despite the considerable evidence and entreaties of environmental groups that the zone itself was not protective of drinking water quality.

Cancer-causing substances in drinking water is not just bad luck.

Each of these stories may have been printed in the local section in a few paragraphs here and there.

Yesterday, on Sunday the Miami Herald editorial page finally weighed in concluding of the judge’s ruling, “shame on us if we fail to heed the warning”.

Well, these warnings don’t exist because they were hammered in stone from a federal court ruling.

The warnings have been there for a very long time. The performance of the majority of local county commissioners and agency managers, in respect to a major public health threat, was never held up for censure by the mainstream media. When these incumbents ran for re-election, did The Miami Herald editorial board ever ask the question or print the response, on rock mining and drinking water quality?

The mainstream media did not have to wait for a federal court decision to mount a drumbeat against the insertion of a cancer-causing chemical in the drinking water aquifer serving more than 1 million residents and visitors to Miami-Dade County.

If Miami Herald executives had insisted on a tight focus on rock mining violations of the law, to protect the interests of its readers (as well as its non-readers like Natacha Seijas), it would have asked the question long ago: why did the County fail to comply with the federal requirement to notify all citizens of the presence of a violation of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act: that benzene had infliltrated the drinking water supply, in concentrations measured by the county in excess of 50 times that deemed to be safe by the federal government?

The Miami Dade County Commission was not on trial in the rock mining permits before Judge Hoeveler. But the ruling, and very extensive footnotes, makes perfectly clear that local government failed the citizens of Miami Dade County.

The failure by the county to notify Miami Dade County residents of benzene as required by federal law should rise to the threshold of a Miami Herald investigation.

It is not too late.

The children of Herald executives drink tap water even if the water from the Herald water coolers is shipped in, from elsewhere.

It is not too late for the mainstream media to recognize that environmental plaintiffs like Sierra Club and other groups are not just another “special interest” that has to be “balanced” in print or reportage against an economic interest. These groups operate on voluntary donations (always far short of the resources required) to support litigation: there are no marketing budgets or ongoing mining activities to support their efforts to hold special interests and government agencies accountable to the law.

Those environmental groups deserve thanks, by the mainstream media.

The rock miners, of course, are now whining that Judge Hoeveler is an “extremist” judge (despite the fact that Judge Hoeveler’s peers have honored him as exemplary of the highest standards of the judiciary).

It is not a matter of equal treatment in print when the plaintiffs in federal litigation are trying to protect us all from prostate cancer, or liver cancer, or pancreatic cancer.

Cancer is not just bad luck.

To the credit of the Miami Herald, the last word of today’s article is given to Brad Sewell, lead attorney on the rock mining case for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Sewell says, ''The tough issues keep getting punted down the road, mitigation, drinking water protection,'' he said. ``This is how incredibly important public health decisions are made.''

And Mr. Sewell is right.

Across the state of Florida, the tough issues on growth, not just rock mining, get “punted down the road” by government because of undue influence by special interests, often under-reported by the mainstream media.

It is the main reason that hundreds of thousands of Floridians are signing the ballot referendum by petition proposed by Florida Hometown Democracy that would subject amendments to local comprehensive development plans, required by state law, to first be subject to a vote before consideration by local commissioners.

When the Florida Chamber of Commerce states, as it has, that it will raise $65 million to fight the people of Floriida, what it really means is that business will spend any amount of money to defeat this measure should it qualify for a state-wide ballot.

You see, the rock miners are not the only special interest that wants to keep making money by punting the concerns of the public down the road.

It’s the reason you are stuck in mind-numbing traffic in Florida’s congested urban areas. It’s the reason your children’s classrooms are overcrowded. It’s the reason your quality of life gets ratcheted downward, one generation after another. It’s the reason no one in government tells you when your drinking water supply has cancer-causing benzene in it.

And you’ve been punted down the road on a bedrock of limestone scoured from the Everglades.