Miami Lakes to sue Florida over home-rattling blast mining

After years of home-rattling explosions and failed legislation to address it, Miami Lakes moved this week to sue Florida over a state ban on lawsuits against limestone mining operations.

The Town Council voted 7-0 for a measure by member Steven Herzberg to challenge the constitutionality of a state law that today requires property damage claims related to blast mining to go through the state’s Division of Administrative Hearings.

That essentially “strips an entire class of claims from the court,” Herberg said, and reroutes what is clearly a judicial issue to an administrative process under the executive branch.

It’s a rocky issue about which South Florida residents — including those in Doral, Miramar and Palm Springs North — have complained for years, pointing to cracking walls, rattled foundations and emotional distress stemming from mining detonations at nearby quarries.

Miami Lakes Vice Mayor Bryan Morera told Florida Politics after the Tuesday vote that upholding property rights and supporting the “extremely important” rock mining industry shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but they are because of existing state protections.

“And to be clear, we’ve tried every possible alternative prior to getting to this. We’ve tried talking to the miners. We’ve tried taking the legislative route. We’ve tried the executive route, because the Florida State Fire Marshal, who is also the state CFO — Jimmy Patronis (who now serves in Congress) — essentially sided with the miners, because he has the power to single-handedly change blasting regulations,” Morera said.

“Unfortunately, those efforts haven’t borne through, so we’re left with the only alternative, which is the judicial system, and we’ll see how it goes. We’re optimistic we have a good case.”

Efforts to reform state policy on blast mining have repeatedly stalled in Tallahassee. A February 2024 workshop in the House on a bill aimed at limiting the strength of explosions failed to produce any formal committee hearing.

Lawmakers heard from industry professionals who maintained that while quarry explosions may cause cosmetic damage to buildings close to dig sites, including small cracks in drywall and other comparatively weak materials, they’re not strong enough to cause structural damage at the currently allowed level.

Residents and members of the town’s Blasting Advisory Board, on which Herzberg and three other Miami Lakes Commissioners have served, argued any damage is unacceptable.

The bill died unheard, as did related legislation this year by Hialeah Gardens Sen. Bryan Ávila and Miami Lakes Rep. Tom Fabricio — the latter of whom has filed bills in each of the past five Sessions to tackle the blast mining issue.

“Our view is pretty simple. We believe that the limestone quarry blasting limits in the state are generally fine,” Fabricio said during the workshop. “However, in situations where we are about 1,000 yards from a residential community, where the homes are shaking every day and causing damage to the homes, it’s a problem.”

Herzberg’s item challenges “blanket immunity” that it says Florida law provides for “activities which may be causing harm to residents and properties without affording them an opportunity to be heard in a court of law.”

“Miami Lakes has led on this issue for years,” he said. “Now we’re taking the next step and I hope other cities, many of which are clearly affected by the blasts, will step up too.”

He said it shouldn’t take long for the city to sue, which he estimated would cost the town $50,000 to $100,000, depending on whether other municipalities join in on the suit or welcome Miami Lakes onto theirs.

That’s markedly less than what the companies mining limestone, which is used in virtually every construction project in Florida, have made in state-level contributions to elected officials and political committees.

Cemex, a Mexico-headquartered building materials company operating in Miami-Dade, made $347,0000 worth of in-state political donations between 2001 and early 2024.

White Rock Quarries, the largest mining company in the county, contributed $480,000 since 1996. Nearly half of Florida’s 40 sitting Senators and a fifth of its House members have accepted contributions from the company.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, those are the two companies that are responsible for the damaging explosions, Morera said, adding that White Rock Quarries’ detonations are especially jarring.

“They make the rest of the industry look bad. The other companies in the industry, they mine below the regulations and the neighboring communities don’t complain,” he said. “We’ve even urged a lot of the rock mining industry to get behind us on this, because it’s truly just the one or two companies, the bad apples.”

Herzberg said the Blasting Advisory Board has sought meetings with the mining companies to no avail for years, during which the companies and trade advocacy groups like the Miami-Dade Limestone Production Association spread “disinformation,” including claims that slamming doors and kids jumping on beds damaged homes more than subterranean detonations.

The current setup and approach simply isn’t working, he said.

“The law is structurally flawed,” he said. “The mining industry is the only industry that has this protection. Why should it be protected unlike any other industry?”