A group of eastern Florida residents are sounding the alarm about the potential pitfalls of a series of fuel depots planned for key locations along the Atlantic Coast.
According to the residents, a St. Petersburg-based company called Belvedere Terminals is slated to establish what’s referred to as a “fuel farm” in Ormond Beach.
As explained in a permit application filed with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection by Belvedere, “The Ormond Beach Terminal will receive the majority of gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, and propane products via railway tank cars from an out of state terminal. … Products will be stored in the tank farm area which contains 16 aboveground storage tanks.”
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Those tankers will travel along the Florida East Coast rail line, which was acquired in 2017 by Grupo Mexico, a major Mexican mining and transportation company.
Belvedere’s website shows that it already operates such terminals in Jacksonville and Fort Pierce. IOts website notes that its business is providing “safe and cost-effective distribution platform for the more remote and underserved Georgia and Florida markets, which are typically located outside the regional seaports.”
Opponents of the project claim they were not given adequate notice of the fuel farm, which they also say is encroaching into areas set aside for residential and small-business uses.
“Quite frankly this is not a good fit for Florida’s East Coast at all,” one concerned resident told the Tampa Free Press.
Residents, she added, are worried not only about the threat from natural phenomena like lightning and hurricanes, but accidents, such as the freight train derailment earlier this year in East Palestine, Ohio, and possibly “being a ‘soft target’ for nefarious actors.”
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And although the opposition has been vocal for roughly a month, they say Volusia County officials say their hands are tied by land-use laws — the denial of which could invite lawsuits by the companies.
The critics did seem to have one ally, County Councilman Jake Johansson. At a recent meeting, he told the rest of the council that current county regulations allow developers to grow in industrial areas “without really coming to us” for oversight.
Development of those areas “is not a conversation a lot of people have thought of,” said Johansson, “that we may be putting families … in harm’s way.”
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