Opinion Bill Scott Lakeland resident
Let’s talk about poop, that’s right Human shit –aka Biosolids.
No one I know really enjoys an honest and candid conversation on the matter, rightly preferring innuendo, puns, and jokes.
But in Lakeland, it’s a serious issue and our policies in managing human waste are front and center in our political discourse today. Polk County Commissioners approved that Lakeland becomes the dumping ground of BIOSOLIDS!! And since it’s outside the city limits the City of Lakeland can not do anything about.
Our elected leaders are allowing poop to come from all over Florida to be dumped in Lakeland Fl.
And allowing this company to sell “so-call” organic mulch to farmers in Polk and Hillsborough County’s
Your RED Sweet Juicy Strawberry’s from Plant City may be contaminated with Human Biosolids???
Biosolids being spread on farmlands have been the subject of much city, county, and state-level debate as new policies are required to deal with an expanding problem.
I’m going to focus on human biosolids. This is the dried solid material that is extracted from raw sewage treatment, and it has bits of everything that goes down our toilets.
This algal bloom is part of a larger problem facing the entire BS Ranch and Farm, Saddle Creek Area, Lake Hancock, Peace River, and Charlotte Harbor area and almost all scientific evidence points to BS Ranch and Farm in flood-prone areas adjacent to the river as the leading source of the nutrient overloading that is feeding these harmful blooms.
In response to the human health concerns and the threat to our drinking water supply, that Polk county finds its self in unfamiliar territory.
As South Florida counties began banning the spreading of biosolids on farmlands, and landfills quickly saw capacity filling up, treatment plants found themselves needing new places to dispose of this waste so they ship it to Lakeland aka BS Ranch and Farm, which is either a Ranch or Farm – See Photo Below……“The Mecca of Shit”.
We all agree that properly managing our waste in the face of growth has become a public problem in need of new policy solutions, but who is going to solve it? Our local representatives and governments seem unable.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has been untrustworthy at best when it comes to protecting the environment at the expense of special interest profits. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA under President Trump has made it clear that regulating pollution is the opposite of what it intends to do. All are passing the buck back and forth on the matter.
Poop jokes and puns might make us all giggle, and feel a little better about something we are helpless to prevent by ourselves. But our health and safety as a community depend on clean drinking water.
We all pay taxes and fees to have a good common solution to what is an unavoidable condition and sanitary need of human existence. I think if we don’t begin to call this crap from our government and elected officials what it is, we can expect it to continue.