Below is the text of VoteWater Executive Director Gil Smart’s comments during the May 22 Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners meeting, where commissioners approved the Southland rock mine rezoning request.

Smart will also speak against the rock mine at a South Florida Water Management District meeting on the proposal this Thursday, May 29, in Belle Glade. ***

Good afternoon, my name is Gil Smart and I’m Executive Director of VoteWater, we’re a statewide group that advocates for clean water by supporting strong policies and the leaders who champion them.

At the April meeting of the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board, some board members expressed concern about the fact that they had not had a chance to vet the Southland project, yet that project was progressing through the Palm Beach County Approval process based at least in part on an assertion by project proponents that they had all they needed from the WMD to move forward.

But as you’ve heard from others today, there has been no determination by the governing board that this proposal will work. It has been “identified” as a project that MIGHT work, not as a project that “will” work. Indeed Drew Bartlett’s letter to the applicant on New Year’s Eve states that “the project will likely provide viable alternative technologies.”

But in fact on page 8 of today’s staff report it states that “the December 31 SFWMD letter identifies the Southland site as a project that will provide viable alternative technologies for water management and water treatment associated with ecosystem restoration”

Drew says it will LIKELY provide; your staff say sit WILL provide. There would seem to be a bit of a difference there.

The water management district has not completed its review process, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not yet studied how this project might affect the $4 billion EAA Reservoir being built right next door.

To allow this plan to move forward without sufficient scrutiny of its environmental impacts and in particular the potential physical impacts on the EAA reservoir would be reckless.

But it appears this project is being fast-tracked, perhaps in part because the politically powerful sugar industry owns the 8,600 acres in question.

We ask that you to do the prudent thing and wait until the project has been thoroughly reviewed by the Army Corps and the water management district completes all steps of its review process before this board signs off on it. Thank you.