Editor's Desk

As this goes to press, the battle over Mosaic Company’s request to expand its Fort Green mine into the headwaters of Horse Creek in Ona continues.

A key issue pending clarification surrounds the design and installation of hundreds of “recharge wells” the company may be required to install around the mine’s 10-mile perimeter to keep adjacent wetlands from drying out.

What happens next or when is unclear.

The protracted battle pitting Mosaic against opposition groups lobbying to prevent mining’s expansion south into the Peace River basin has cost leading adversary, Charlotte County, upwards of $9 million. It’s also refocused attention on the impacts, potential and real, to Florida’s most precious natural resource – water.

The discussion couldn’t be more timely.

For Florida’s phosphate industry, the Peace River represents the final frontier. “It’s not a matter of having a choice,” says Mosaic Vice President Gray Gordon. “That’s where the phosphate is.”

The public company, formed last year when agribusiness giant Cargill spun off its fertilizer holdings in a merger with IMC Agrico (then the world’s largest phosphate mining company), is one of the few companies still standing in a shrinking industry marked by volatile markets, razor-thin margins and an insatiable thirst for capital.

Staying in the game means moving south, and the clock is ticking. Phosphate is a non-renewable resource and Florida – which provides American farmers with 75% of their fertilizer needs – is running out. Some say reserves may be exhausted in as little as 30 years.

For those downstream in the recent debate, principally Charlotte County, mining offers little in the way of economic reward and opens the door to plenty of risk. Tourism is big business in Charlotte County, and the Charlotte Harbor estuary, terminus of the Peace River, is its crown jewel, renowned for its sport fisheries.

Even with improved environmental safeguards and progress in mining land reclamation, mining’s impacts on the Florida’s underground waterworks and ability to effectively repair streams and other sensitive habitats remain topics of heated debate.

All that must be weighed against impacts from other development and land uses in the watershed, issues that will be addressed in a cumulative impact study due out next year.

Stay tuned.

– Mary Kelley Hoppe

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