By DOTTY NIST
Proposed revisions to the Walton County Mining Ordinance, long in the works, have been scratched, and the county will pursue another way of helping people who want to build ponds on their property.
The issue was on the agenda for the April 28 Walton County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) regular meeting at the Walton County Courthouse.
The county had first started to look at revisions to the mining ordinance over 1 1/2 years ago. This was after then-District 2 Commissioner Kenneth Pridgen brought up problems that rural landowners who wanted to build ponds were experiencing. Per the mining ordinance, it was prohibited for them to remove material excavated during pond construction from their property, even to give away the material.
Pridgen had also spoken in favor of landowners in agricultural areas being able to remove dirt from higher elevations on their property for sale for to be used on road projects in nearby areas.
These and subsequent discussions and BCC direction had led to county staff investigating these possibilities and later to the proposed revisions to the mining ordinance.
Scott Caraway of Walton County Public Works Environmental Resources presented the revision ordinance to the mining ordinance at the April 28 meeting.
As proposed at the meeting, the revision ordinance would have provided for a “temporary small scale mineral extraction permit” to be issued by the county for property located in Large-Scale Agriculture (LSA) and General Agriculture (GA) land use districts. Through the permit, extraction and removal of material from upland areas and excess material from pond construction would have been allowed by property owners under certain conditions, with sale of the material for county or state road projects possible. The ordinance would have been limited to properties north of the bay with no current code violations.
The ordinance would have limited the area used for removal of upland material to less than five acres per 40 acre property, with properties smaller than 40 acres to be eligible to be permitted for removal of 10 percent of the parcel acreage.
County Commission Chairman Bill Imfeld asked Caraway if there would be a limit on acreage for pond construction. He responded that there was no limit on acreage for a permitted pond, which would require approval from the Northwest Florida Water Management District.
There was public comment both for and against the proposed revision ordinance. Rock Hill Road resident Jillian Wolfe urged the commissioners not to “open up” the mining ordinance to pond construction. She complained that a pit had been dug by a neighbor on property near hers under the pretext of creating a pond. The excavated area never resembled a pond and now is stagnant and breeding mosquitoes, Wolfe reported. No more “ponds” like this are needed, she told the commissioners.
Local businessman Thomas Hicks spoke in favor of the revision ordinance. He told the commissioners that he has two ponds that were approved for construction by the water management district and that he would like to construct another one. He said the district regularly monitors his ponds even though they were built five to six years ago. There is wildlife around the ponds, Hicks said.
Rock Hill Road resident Chester Carter also expressed support for the ordinance. He said he and his wife have owned their property since 1978 and want to build a 15-acre pond. They are only asking to benefit from their land, he told the commissioners. Carter called for removal of the restriction on the parties to whom the extracted material could be sold to the county or state for road projects. He could not understand how this type of restriction on free enterprise could be proposed.
Todd Burke, an attorney representing a group of other Rock Hill Road residents, spoke against the ordinance as proposed. He told the commissioners that a 15-acre excavation yields over 300,000 cubic yards of dirt that can be sold for approximately $900,0000. “It’s a slippery slope,” he warned.
Burke said that if revisions were approved, the county would need to limit excavation to five acres and not rely on the water management district to determine how large a pond can be. Burke added that all mining needs south of I-10 are being met and that the ordinance should only apply north of I-10.
Local resident and borrow pit owner Lee Perry indicated that he understood the reasons that the revisions had been proposed but was concerned that without enough of a limit on the activities proposed for permitting there would be the possibility of abuse as had taken place before the county put the mining ordinance in place.
Both Imfeld and District 5 Comissioner Cindy Meadows observed that the ordinance as proposed had gone beyond what had originally been envisioned. Walton County Administrator Larry Jones also commented that staff had instructed that the revisions were aimed at allowing people owning 40 acres or more to sell up to five acres of dirt. Imfeld said this had also been his understanding on the proposed revisions. District 2 Commissioner Cecilia Jones commented that her understanding was that the revisions were being proposed to help people build ponds and dispose of the resulting dirt.
District 1 Commissioner Bill Chapman countered that landowners being able to sell material for road projects near their property would be beneficial, reducing project costs. He also complained that the existing ordinance made landowners constructing ponds “criminals” just for removing material excavated for ponds from their property.
District 4 Commissioner Sara Comander said she could see both sides of the question but recalled that one of her big concerns during her last term and current term had been to make sure that people with borrow pits were abiding by the law and ensuring that reclamation of excavated areas was completed. She suggested requiring projects on which excavated material would be used to be within a short distance of the property, possibly seven miles.
Meadows spoke in favor of dropping the proposed revision ordinance, leaving the mining ordinance, “as is,” having people wanting to sell dirt go through the procedures already set for mining operations, and addressing pond construction in the agricultural districts through language in the code provisions applying to those districts. This was her motion, which received a second and carried in a 4-1 vote, with Chapman voting no.
Administrator Jones agreed to proceed with proposed code language to provide for pond construction within the two agricultural land use and a method to dispose of material, with proposals to be brought before the BCC for review and a decision on allowable size of ponds.
