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By Bill Scott – a resident of Polk County
With Piney Point and $100 million taxpayer dollars to permanently clean up and close Piney Point on the minds of FDEP……. Why will they not look at the Ecological Nightmare happening in Lakeland Florida?
Hurricane Season starts June 1 and BS Ranch and Farm is already illegally releasing untreated Toxic Sewer Sludge on to state owned lands that feeds into Lake Hancock.
BS Ranch & Farm, Inc. and their property butt up to Saddle Creek ecologically sensitive land owned by SWFWMD and Florida Audubon Society Inc. that runs into Lake Hancock and then discharges into the Peace River than runs into the Charlotte County estuary system out to the Gulf of Mexico.
By the import monthly tonnage schedule in the permit, it makes this the largest facility of its kind in Florida. That’s 1.08 million tons or 999,000 80,000 lbs. semi truckloads a year of feedstocks include wood (yard waste), pre-consumer and post-consumer vegetative waste, animal manure, and animal by-products, food scraps, wastewater treatment facility effluent, septage, biosolids, and organic sludges. The treatment process produces mulch, compost, fertilizer, and soil amendments. The approximate daily average weights of feed material and products are 3,870 tons and 1,088 tons, respectively.
This means the likelihood of an ecological nightmare at the same time for Saddle Creek and Lake Hancock.
BS Ranch & Farm is NOT allowed to discharge any odor or material outside of their grounds but by aerial photography (google earth)— photos seem to disagree with BS Ranch & Farm assessment of breaks in the berms going outside permitted area heading towards Saddle Creek and Lake Hancock.
Last year BS Ranch and Farm called the breach an act of God their berm broke. Now photos show that someone has made a NEW discharge point.
When are our leaders going to step up and do something about this?????