Work to raise Lake Hancock’s regulated level was completed in 2015 at great public expense to store water to replenish the depleted Upper Peace River and to comply with a state law requiring water management districts to set minimum flows and levels for water bodies and to come up with plans to restore flows in levels in places where they were lacking.

Now the Southwest Florida Water Management District is proposing formally reserving the water in Lake Hancock for river flow restoration.

A draft study outlining the plan and its background has been prepared and will be the topic of a public meeting at 5 p.m. Jan. 8 at Circle B Bar Reserve.

Swiftmud’s Governing Board is scheduled in February to consider authorizing the agency’s staff to proceed with formal rulemaking to implement the reservation.

Some highlights from the study include:

• It will not affect existing permitted water withdrawals from the river, primarily the Peace River Manasota Water Supply Authority’s withdrawals for public supply for coastal utilities.
  
• It will not significantly affect the amount of fresh water in the Lower Peace River needed to maintain the proper conditions in the Charlotte Harbor estuary, whose restoration has been the focus of years of efforts under the federal National Estuary Program.
  
• The reservation precedes a planned reevaluation of minimum flows in the Upper Peace River in 2025, which will also take a look at setting medium and high flow ranges as well, something the environmental community including Sierra Club has long advocated.
  

The study does not address a conceptual proposal by some Polk officials to establish an off-stream reservoir on mined lands near the Peace River to capture water from high river flows as part of Polk’s long-term water-supply planning and how that would affect the overall river flow standards on all sections of the river.

The Polk County Commission agreed Tuesday to draft a resolution to send to Gov. Ron DeSantis urging him to fill a vacancy on the Southwest Florida Water Management District Governing Board involving one of the two seats allocated to Polk County.

The seat has been vacant since August.

Haines City businessman Paul Senft, who was honored Tuesday for his public service, said he applied in February to serve another term on the board. His term expired in March, but under the rules was allowed to continue serving until August.

Whether anyone else has applied for the seat has been a well-kept secret in Tallahassee.

DeSantis’ so-called Communications Office has not responded to emails in recent weeks asking for a list of applicants for the position.

Polk received a second seat on the 13-member Governing Board in 2007 under legislation that expanded the board from 11 to 13 seats, putting it on equal voting footing with coastal urban Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, which had two members each.

Why DeSantis is holding up the appointment has been a matter of speculation.

One rumor is that DeSantis thinks the Swiftmud board has too many members and would like to reduce its size, though it is unclear what the reason is. There was a proposal in 2013 that was never considered by the Florida Legislature to reduce the board’s membership to nine seats to match the size of the other water management district boards. Any change in the board’s makeup would require legislation.

Another rumor is that DeSantis was looking for an environmentally-conscious Polk County appointee who was also a Republican and was not involved in supporting his opponent Adam Putnam in the 2018 gubernatorial race, which one observer said was like trying to find a unicorn or simply a ploy to keep the seat vacant so it would easier to eliminate.

This comes at a time when Polk is trying to continue to secure funding from Swiftmud to finance alternative water supplies to continue to support the county’s and cities’ growth ambitions.

The long-running dispute with Polk County code-enforcement officials over odor problems at BS Ranch & Farm, a soil manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Lakeland, continues going into the fourth year.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit filed against the company by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection earlier this year appears on the verge of being settled in a way that could solve the odor problem if BS Ranch’s owners abide by the terms of the settlement.

That would come from the construction and operation of something called an off-gas control and treatment facility.

If that facility, which was reportedly recommended some time ago as a solution to the odor problem, works as proposed, the strong sewage odors that have plagued area residents and employees at the surrounding industrial plant for years could end eventually.

The odor complaints were also the focus of a special master code enforcement hearing involving a series of enforcement cases involving recent odor complaints.

However, BS Ranch & Farm’s lawyer responded that the violation isn’t the odor, but the failure to correct the odor problems after being giving due notice, which she claimed did not occur.

Polk County’s lawyer didn’t immediately respond to that claim.

Both sides are scheduled to file written closing arguments By Wednesday.

My main observation is that BS Ranch has had plenty of notice that it had a chronic odor problem, regardless of whether Polk County properly afforded the company its proper due process rights.

That’s meant not to diminish the importance of due process, which is a core constitutional principle, or to defend Polk County’s handling of this case, which has been a disaster from the onset.

It’s just that sometimes legal claims can tax our credulity.

I was disappointed this week to read that the Lakeland City Commission is considering a move that would no longer require new development to pay its fair share.

The proposal, which will be up for discussion next Monday, involves approving cut-rate impact fees which will reduce the city’s revenues to deal with growth-related infrastructure by millions of dollars.

This is significant because for many years Lakeland was the leader in Polk County in adopting fiscally sound impact fee schedules that allowed the city to deal with growth responsibly, often in sharp contrast with the Polk County Commission, which did not.

The best example is Lakeland Highlands Road. Lakeland was able to widen the northern section years before Polk County widened the southern section.

Dealing with growth costs money. There’s no free lunch or shouldn’t be.

Maybe the taxpayers will show up Monday and give Lakeland commissioners some input.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided the tree know as Star Anise or Yellow Anise does not need to be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
One important reason for the decision is that this species is being protected as a result of the purchase of conservation lands that protect its habitat. The plant is listed as endangered by state environmental officials.

Locally the plant is found throughout the Marion Creek Basin in northeast Polk County .
This is one of several species that were protected by the efforts of Sierra Club and other conservation organizations and the late County Commissioner Ernie Caldwell to protect  the area..
Some of the first sites purchased under the Polk County Environmental Lands Program were in that basin and were supplemented by other lands purchased by the South Florida Water Management District.

Buried in next Tuesday’s Polk County Commission consent agenda is a resolution that relates to one of the controversial toll roads approved earlier this year by the Florida Legislature..
The resolution endorses the idea of joint planning with state transportation officials in selecting the location for the connection of the northern terminus of the proposed toll road between Polk and Collier counties.
Polk officials propose a location that would connect the planned Central Polk Parkway and State Road 60 to the new highway near what is now called Florida’s Gateway Intermodal Logistics Center, which is the CSX freight terminal that opened in 2014 in south Winter Haven.
The western leg of the Central Polk Parkway, a new toll road that would run from State Road 60 to the Polk Parkway, is in the middle of final design. Construction is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2024.
One of the unresolved issues is how big a bite the new road would take out of Marshall Hampton Reserve, a popular outdoor recreation site across Lake Hancock from Circle B Bar Reserve and how state transportation will mitigate the damage to public access the road project will cause.
An eastern leg of the Central Polk Parkway is proposed to arc through rural areas east of Haines City before circling back to join an already heavily congested section of Interstate 4. It  is on hold because state transportation officials concluded it would not generate enough toll revenue to justify its cost.
Under state legislation, the three new toll roads, which are now being discussed by state task forces, are supposed to be under construction by Dec. 31, 2022 if the projects are feasible.
There’s no word at this point on what kind of evidence would be necessary to persuade state officials any of the projects are not feasible.

County Road 557 has been used by some motorists in the Winter Haven area as the most direct route to get to and from Interstate 4 for some time now as U.S. 27 becomes more congested by new development and the consequent new traffic lights.
Now the County Commission is working on plans to four-lane the road through the southern portion of the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern between U.S. 17-92 and Interstate 4.
At Monday’s Polk legislative delegation meeting, County Commission Chairman George Lindsey asked legislators for  $12 million to purchase right of way. Polk County has already budgeted $70 million to cover estimated construction costs, he said.

Construction is still a few years out.

The question is whether in the long term the project will end at Interstate 4.
Deen Still Road and Old Grade Road are also used as shortcuts to avoid the very congested I-4/U.S. 27 interchange
In years ahead, more car and truck traffic will use that route. That could result in pressure to build a four-lane highway deeper into the Green Swamp to Deen Still Road and to rebuild sections of Deen Still Road, portions of which now flood where sections pass through swampy terrain and the minimal roadside ditches overflow, to improve traffic flow to and from U.S. 27.
Such road improvements could spur demands for increased development density to justify the public investment and revive a decades-old proposal to open that section of the Green Swamp to more development.
The land along the east side of Old Grade Road is occupied by either state conservation land or a defunct subdivision called Orlando Pines that was subdivided in the 1970s in the aftermath to attract gullible out-of-state investors seeking land “near Walt Disney World.”

The west side has fewer owners including a handful of homesteads. Although this may unrelated, someone is trying to assemble property there by filing adverse condemnation actions.

Stay tuned.