I watched the first public hearing in St. Lucie County to consider the county’s first-ever ordinance regulating commercial composting plants.

The crowd there and planning commissioners didn’t share the optimistic assertion contained in the Polk County staff report accompanying December’s permit hearing for BS Ranch & Farm.

“There is no data to suggest that the soil manufacturing facility will be detrimental to the surrounding environment if developed according to the County’s standards,” the Polk staff report read.

One topic that generated a lot discussion at the St. Lucie hearing was how high a bond any applicant should post to guarantee enough money to clean up the site if the owners abandon it.

Polk’s ordinance doesn’t include such a requirement. That allowed BS Ranch’s reps to argue against a shutdown for serial code violations at the code enforcement hearing, raising the specter about the undesirable impact of their shutdown while tons of material remained unprocessed .

If there were financial responsibility provisions in Polk’s ordinance, that argument would be less persuasive.

Although it doesn’t apply to the Eaton Park plant site, a Florida Farm Bureau represented raised an issue that should be considered in an agricultural county such as Polk—food safety—if anyone proposes to build one of these plants .

It seems that there’s a consensus that crops being grown around these plants might be hard to sell because of the contamination threat.

There was another bear sighting in an urban area of Polk County Monday in a neighborhood in northeast Winter Haven between Lake Martha and Lake Elbert.

This is the latest in a series of recent bear sightings in Polk County that have occurred in the Winter Haven area since 2004, when a bear was treed in Inwood. There have also been reports in the past couple of years from the Dave nport and Poinciana areas as bear populations recover and young bears head out looking for unoccupied territories.

Many of the bear sightings in eastern Polk County involve bears dispersing along the Lake Wales Ridge from a population in southern Highlands and northern Glades counties.

Sightings in northwest Polk County, such as the ones at Colt Creek State Park, probably involve bears from Withlacoochee State Forest.

So what do you do if you see a bear in your yard or anywhere else?

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission offers advice on human-bear encounters.

It also provides information for living in areas where bears are more likely to be present.

Generally, FWC officials advise not deliberately (that’s a crime) or inadvertently providing food sources for bears, which have a strong sense of smell.

Also, as with any wildlife, give them space so they can move away from where you are.

FWC staffers set up a baited cage in the yard near the tree where the bear was seeking refuge in hopes of luring it down whenever it became hungry and moving it to a safer, less stressful location.

If you would like to learn more about bears in Florida, FWC has a lot of information on its website.

The South Florida Water Management District has opened 1,873 acres to general public use in Polk County.

The property had been opened to hunting for a couple of years and now will be open to hiking, bicycling and nature viewing as well as continued hunting and frog gigging.

This is part of the former Rolling Meadows Ranch along Catfish Creek between Lake Hatchineha and Camp Mack Road.

For now access appears to be by boat only—there are no designated access points on Camp Mack Road—though it seems possible there may be land access whenever the Florida State Park Service opens the section of Rolling Meadows that is part of Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek State Park. No date for the opening of that section to the public has been established.

U.S. Rep Darren Soto, whose district includes sections of Polk and Osceola counties at the headwaters of the Kissimmee River, has proposed seeking Congressional approval to designate the Kissimmee River an official Wild and Scenic River as allowed under the 1968 National Wild And Scenic Rivers Act.

Soto announced his proposal recently at a forum in Orlando, according to Politico.

The only Florida Rivers that have this designation are the Wekiva River near Orlando and the Loxahatchee River in South Florida.

The law recognizes significant streams and provides assistance to landowners along the rivers to help to preserve their important characteristics. It does not restrict development or land use.

Most of the land along the river is in public ownership or included in large tracts of agricultural land, which means there is little imminent development threat anyway.

The once wild free-flowing 103-mile river was ditched in the 1960s as part of a misguided flood-control project. The project destroyed thousands of acres of wetlands, displaced wildlife and removed the natural river’s ability to filter pollution coming downstream from urban areas at its headwaters before the water reached Lake Okeechobee and the lower portions of the Everglades.

Restoration work is under way to restore much of the river’s original channel. It is the largest river restoration project ever attempted anywhere in the world. The latest projected completion date is sometime in 2019.

Polk is not the only place where private entrepreneurs have proposed composting g sludge (the solid residue from sewer plants) and other materials.

But in at least one other Florida county, local officials are taking an entirely different approach to regulating such operations.

The St. Lucie County Commission refused to approve one outdoor composting operation similar to the one Polk officials approved in December, TC Palm reports.

Instead, the St. Lucie County Commission is poised to consider an ordinance that would require composting operations to be located indoors on a concrete or asphalt surface and have a site plan that requires extra stormwater storage and setbacks from other buildings as well as various measures to control potential nuisances ranging from odors to vermin.

The first hearing of the ordinance is Thursday in Fort Pierce.

That proposed 15-page St. Lucie ordinance is much more detailed in expected standards than the six-page revision of the development regulations that the Polk County Commission approved last August.

St. Lucie’s ordinance comes a year after the County Commission there adopted a temporary moratorium on considering applications for commercial composting operations. Polk commissioners did not approve a temporarily moratorium until after they realized they had screwed up in approving the original ordinance and the permit for BS Ranch & Farm, which is the center of the current ongoing dispute in Polk County.

Some Polk officials have complained privately that BS Ranch did not act honestly, but that’s beside the point.

The reason governments enact and enforce ordinances (also known as laws) is to protect the public interest. When local officials rely on assurances provided during a PR tour and promises of jobs, , which appears to have been Polk’s approach., in making development decisions it can end badly, as it has here..

Composting is nothing new. It is a process that has been used for centuries to recycle waste materials.

However, as everyone who didn’t understand this has learned, composting operations can pollute air and water, which is something St. Lucie County is taking more seriously than Polk County did until recently.

I will repeat the point from a previous post that Polk’s development regs are up for their biennial review. The lessons learned from the BS Ranch & Farm affair should be part of the discussion.

As officials in St. Lucie County are demonstrating, there are better ways to do this.

The Florida Legislature has adjourned for the year and now comes the complicated task of figuring out what happened.

Florida Forever money was diverted to other projects once again in the biggest shell game since the lottery started.

They promise to approve money next year. We’ll see.

The test ban on single-use plastic bags for coastal cities died before the session ended. However, Coral Gables passed a ban anyway, which is predicted to trigger a lawsuit from the bullyboys in Tallahassee who don’t want local officials daring to do what they don’t have the integrity to do. It seems aiding and abetting littering is still official state policy.

Polk officials were able to get approval of a bill that will qualify them for water supply project funding if they provide detailed information on how they plan to spend the money. A provision that would have allowed Polk to seek a sales tax increase at the polls to pay its local share of the project cost was deleted during the bill’s review.

One of the areas where the result is unclear relates to drones. They are banned now in conservation lands such as Circle B Bar Reserve because of their effects on wildlife and other users. But it seems the only places where drones are restricted under the recently passed legislation is sewer plants, utility lines and other infrastructure and everyone else has to petition the Federal Aviation Administration for permission to restrict these craft. The only good news is that it is illegal for civilians to weaponize drones.

The only septic tank bill proposed this year that went anywhere—but didn’t pass—would have required anyone selling a home with a septic tank to disclose the existence of the septic tank and to let the next owner know that the septic tank needs to be maintained to avoid polluting the environment. Inspections and funding for replacement didn’t come up.

Also failing this year were bad bills that would have potentially intimidated people challenging zoning and environmental permits by threatening them with paying the defendant’s legal costs if they don'[t win.

Finally, it appears there will be money for Lakeland’s Se7en Wetlands Park, though not as much money as was originally sought. However all expenditures are still under review by the Governor’s office.

Stay tuned.

If you’d like to get an idea of how local government officials see the current water planning effort and perhaps receive a fresh perspective on politics, two events on Thursday might be worth your time.

At 10 a.m. The Ledger will host a forum in which local government managers will discuss water, the recently ended legislative session at the Polk State College for Public Safety . 1251 Jim Keene Blvd., Winter Haven, which is off Winter Lake Road. The program is free and open to the public.

Rob Lorei, one of the founders of WMNF, an alternative Tampa radio station and managing editor of WEDU’s Florida This Week politics and public affairs program, will be the guest speaker at the Tiger Bay Club meeting at 11:30 a.m. at the Bartow Civic Center, 2250 S. Floral Ave. The cost is $15 for Tiger Bay members and $25 for non-members.