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Editorial: Truck fees
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The ongoing civic discussion on what to do in the environmentally fragile density reduction/groundwater resource (DR/GR) area of south Lee County brought up an interesting point the other day.
Since trucks actually outnumber cars on some parts of Alico and Corkscrew roads, and while some citizens question the future of rock mining that drives that truck traffic, is it worth thinking about an extra fee for those trucks to mitigate their road impacts?
At least one mine executive was eager to embrace a fee of, say, 30 cents per truck trip to and from the mines.
If further mining is deemed in the overall public interest as the DR/GR review goes on, then yes —- the idea of an extra fee belongs on the table.
Construction of roads and subdivisions is going to continue in Lee and Collier counties, and raw materials will have to come from somewhere. We are better off taxing those caravans of trucks and using the money to offset their hard impacts than merely grousing about them.
Less clear is the advisability of putting county government at the helm of monitoring future needs for rock and regulating mining sites and their level of business accordingly.
The county and the industry has a distance to go before a long-range plan that balances competing interests is put into place, but paying for damages done to public roads appears fundamental.
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