Polk’s Environmental Lands Program is fiscally sound and making progress as it proceeds into its second phase following a successful 2022 grassroots referendum to renew the property tax to buy and manage more lands, Polk commissioners learned Monday.
The first phase. which emerged from a 1994 referendum, acquired 44 properties totaling 26,000 acres. During that 20-year run, 132 sites were nominated. The lands were purchased using $29.3 million in local funds authorized by the referendum and $81.2million from other partners to stretch the program.
So far under the second phase, 23 of the 31 properties nominated have been recommended for potential acquisition.
Two acquisitions totaling 1,874 acres have already been approved. Others are pending. The program has raised $17 million and has the potential to obtain $31.1 million in partnerships.
Staff members Gaye Sharpe, Polk’s parks and natural resources director, and Tabitha Biehl, land and water resources manager, told commissioners another ley part of the program’s success is the fact that 25 percent of the tax funding is set aside for current and future management costs.
Sharpe said other counties have had to close sites they purchased because they had not set aside money for management.
That management fund, which has increased by $5.6 million under the current program, also allowed Polk’s sites to remain open during the period between the expiration of the first tax referendum and the approval of the second referendum.

The Polk County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to purchase a 649-acre tract near Babson Park for $5,245,000, the second purchase under the revived Polk County Environmental Lands Program.
The site owned by the Friedlander family is located off Friedlander Road and Golfview Cutoff Road adjacent to the former county southeast regional landfill.
Although the site is dominated by pasture, it contains some rare scrub plant species and rare animals including whooping cranes, caracara and fox squirrel have been documented on the site.
There are very few invasive exotic species on the site and it has a good potential for habitat restoration., according to the technical evaluation that occurred during a site visit.
It could also provide public recreation once a management plan is developed
County Manager Bill Beasley told commissioners part of the site could be used for monitoring groundwater in connection with the old landfill.
During Tuesday’s meeting commissioners also approved a $3.3 million project to restore wetlands at the edge of Dundee to improve water quality in nearby Lake Annie.

Highlands County commissioners are in the preliminary stage of authorizing a vote to establish an environmental lands purchase program.
On Oct 1 commissioners voted 4-1 to approve a two-year contract with the North Florida Land Trust to work toward an effort to evaluate community support for a 2016 referendum.
There is no determination at this point about whether the referendum will occur and what the funding source will be.
At the Oct. 1 meeting it appeared the emphasis may be on purchasing conservation easements on agricultural lands to reduce development pressure in outlying areas of the county where infrastructure does not exist to support new development.
On Nov. 7, commissioners approved $68,509 to advance what is being called the Ridge to Rivers Conservation Plan. This refers to the area between the Lake Wales Ridge and the Kissimmee River.
There will be a series of workshops and other public meetings during the study period. Stay involved.

During recent commission meetings in Bartow and Lakeland, residents whose homes flooded were looking for answers and so were elected officials who were. well, deluged with questions about their future. It is an apt and well-timed question.
The flooding was the result of perhaps climate-change-fueled record rainfall in the Lakeland area-in fact, several times the normal amount for October–and homes located in lowlands.
In places like Lake Seward. which was a swimming hole in the 1950s, a 1996 consultant report prepared for the County Commission after an earlier wet period, made two main conclusions.
One was that the neighborhood was likely to flood repeatedly in the future.
The other was that any approach to deal with the problem was likely to be expensive.
In fact, none of the places where flooding occurred were that surprising. The only surprise was how far and fast the water rose.
County Commission Chairman Bill Braswell wondered if there were a way to include warnings accompanying sales, noting the unwary may buy land during dry periods with no warning that there will be times when they will need a boat to reach their homes.
There was also some discussion of documenting the extent of flooding this year to guide future development approval decisions.
There are also other factors at work.
They include sometimes outdated stormwater runoff facilities, changes in the amount and velocity of stormwater runoff as new roads rooftops and driveways replace natural habitat and the continued reliance on the alleged “pre-post match” engineering calculations for runoff from developed properties that sometimes seem to fall short.
Fortunately. these tragedies could not have come at a more opportune time for people living in unincorporated Polk County.
County planners and consultants are in the process of writing a major update to the county’s growth plan and development regulations.
Dealing with this issue should certainly be part of it.

Circle B Bar Reserve will reopen Tuesday following hurricane cleanup, though some trails will remain closed.
The opening will mean Ancient Islands Sierra Clubs’s monthly meeting will proceed as scheduled at the workshop.
Members and guests should arrive at 6:30 p.m for a covered dish meal following by the program beginning a 7 pm
This month’s program will be presented by Jeff Spence, retired county director or parks and natural resources. He will describe the work that was involved to develop Circle B into the world-class ecotourism site it is today.
Its purchase and development were the result of a grassroots effort led by Sierra and its partners to gain voter approval in 1994 for a referendum to impose a tax to buy and manage some of the remaining environmental jewels in Polk County’s landscape to preserve parts of the county’s heritage.
Sierra was also a leader in the 2022 referendum to extend the program, which voters approved.

The national news may have given environmentalists some pause Tuesday and early Wednesday, but locally the -picture is brighter in this part of Florida.
Voters in Lake and Osceola counties approved referendums to buy more environmental lands.
In Orange County, voters approved charter amendments to protect rural lands, to require better financial analyses of the impact of sprawl development and to protect defined environmentally important lands. In neighboring Seminole County voters overwhelmingly approved measures requiring super majority votes to remove land from the rural zoning designation or to surplus environmental lands.
As mentioned in an earlier post, Polk commissioners –even one commissioner who consistently voted against both referendums to fund the program–celebrated the first purchase on the second anniversary of the 2022 referendum’s approval.
The constitutional amendment to place hunting and fishing rights in the Florida Constitution, whose vague wording was a subject of a previous post here, also passed.
Here is hoping that that this amendment does not encourage wildlife management in Florida to go off the rails as feared.
I will add a comment from the late Lee Hays, a member of The Weavers, a folk group popular decades ago, after Richard Nixon was elected President.
“Be of good cheer; this, too, shall pass,” he advised. “I know. I have had kidney stones.”
I know what he is talking about.

Despite concerns raised by Ancient Islands Sierra and other critics of the move, the Polk County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to allow nearly 500 new residences in the Green Swamp Area of Critical State Concern.
The issue was raised by County Commissioner Neil Combee on behalf of some fellow Green Swamp property owners, who said they were facing problems as a result of historic surveying errors.
Specifically, although a section of land is supposed to contain 640 acres, some contain less, which affects the true area of lots that are typically described as a portion of a portion of a section.
The fix will be accomplished by fudging the density requirements by allowing property owners to claim county right of way adjacent to their property when that’s enough to give them the full 10 or 20 acres they need to get a building permit, said county planner Erik Peterson.
Marian Ryan, conservation chair for Ancient Islands Group of Florida Sierra, testified that this violates the densities laid out in the1992 Green Swamp Task Force report that was part of an effort to resolve disputes between Polk County and the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which at the time was in charge of overseeing both the Areas of Critical State Concern and enforcement of Florida’s landmark 1985 growth management law.

The disputes, which continued for years, made Polk County the last major Florida county to have an approved growth plan. Approval of development regulations to implement the plan also lagged by several years.
The Florida Department of Community Affairs was abolished by former Gov. Rick Scott and today all growth and critical areas reviews are assigned to an office with the Florida Department of Commerce.
Ryan said department staff members were unresponsive to her inquiries.
Peterson, who presented the case Tuesday, said he was able to contact department officials and to convince them that the change would be inconsequential.
Ryan countered that this was simply another step in a long-running effort by Polk County officials to weaken state-imposed restrictions on development in the Green Swamp, which they have opposed to some extent ever since they were enacted in the 1970s.